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We present a new transporting device, the omnidirectional transporting table that exhibits a driving mechanism with two perpendicular degrees of freedom based on gear meshing. By implementing omnid...

The locomotion experience in early childhood is very important for child in development. We are developing the electric mobility support device to promote the physical and mental development of physically handicapped children. In this study, we propose a system recording the locomotion experience using electric mobility support device and evaluating the development of the children. The record system is constructed by an omnidirectional camera and a micro-computer. From the recorded data, the video evaluating children is generated by offline processing using personal computer and we propose two methods indicating the improvement of the operation ability. By these methods, we were able to confirm how to improve the operation of the device and how to interact with the surrounding environment.

The standing-up movement from chair and/or bed is important and necessary in life for all parson, in order to start the locomotion, et al. However, some elderly or handicapped persons cannot stand up by themselves with their remaining ability, and they need the help to stand up. For care-receivers and care-givers both, in the early stage of standing-up movement, their physical burden is the biggest. Therefore, we have developed a prototype of the assist system for early stage of standing up with a pneumatic actuator. In order that the care-receiver himself operates the proposed assist system, the micro-computer control system is constructed. Furthermore, the system can provide slow and safe sitting. In this paper, a developed assist system is mounted on a wheelchair and helps the transfer between the wheelchair and bed, or between the wheelchair and the toilet seat.

In recent years, with the aging of the population, home health care using a home blood pressure monitor has been emphasized. I think that more measurements during the day are needed for people to observe blood pressure more accurately and use it to manage their physical condition. Therefore, in order to reduce the number of measurement procedures as much as possible, the purpose is to reduce the number of measurement procedures in a compact size by performing the measurement only by placing the wrist from above. In this study, we manufactured a device that restrains, compresses, and measures the wrist using a soft actuator made of film. We designed three types of triangular prism type soft actuators with active mechanisms, and constructed a drive sequence using solenoid valves. A pulsation measurement experiment was conducted using the manufactured device, and I was able to measure accurate pulsation by myself.

Robot fingers with many joints driven by a small number of motors are useful for low-cost, light and highperformance robot hands. We propose a robot finger with many joints driven by one motor. Many kinds of motion of the finger can be selected using shape memory gel and tendon-driven mechanism. The rotation of one joint, two joints and many joints of the finger are shown in this paper. Rotatable joint can be selected from many joints. The rolling motion of the finger can be done when many joints rotate in the same direction. The routes of the tendon strings are designed so that the number of required motors can be reduced. The new robot finger has a skeleton while our previous finger does not have a skeleton. The advantages and disadvantage of the skeleton are also discussed in this paper. Experiments of one finger shows its ability of various motion. We also design a prototype robot hand using three fingers and show the motion for some kinds of objects.

A humanoid robot is a robot with an overall appearance based on that of the human body (Hirai et al., 1998, Hirukawa et al., 2004). Humanoid robots are created to imitate some of the same physical and mental tasks that humans undergo daily. They are suitable to coexist with human in built-for-human environment because of their anthropomorphism, human friendly design and applicability of locomotion (Kaneko et al., 2002). The goal is that one day humanoid robots will be able to both understand human intelligence and reason and act like humans. If humanoids are able to do so, they could eventually coexist and work alongside humans and could act as proxies for humans to do dangerous or dirty work that would not be done by humans if there is a choice, hence providing humans with more safety, freedom and time. Bearing in mind that such robots will be increasingly more engaged in human’s environment, it is expected that the problem of “working coexistence” of humans and humanoid robots will become acute in the near future. However, the fact that no significant rearrangment of the human’s environment to accomodate the presence of humanoids can be expected. Eventually, the “working coexistence” of humans and robots sharing common workspaces will impose on robots with their mechanical-control structure at least two classes of tasks: motion in a specific environment with obstacles, and manipulating various objects from the human’s environment (Vukobratovic et al., 2005). As far as this working coexistence is concerned, a suitable navigation system combining design, sensing elements, planning and control embedded in a single integrated system is necessary so that humanoid robots can further “adapt” to the environment previously dedicated only to humans. To date, research on humanoid robots has arrived at a point where the construction and stabilization of this type of robot seems to be no longer the key issue. At this stage, it is novel practical applications such as autonomous robot navigation (Saera & Schmidt, 2004, Tu & Baltes, 2006), telerobotics (Sian et al., 2002) and development of intelligent sensor devices (Omata et al., 2004) that are being studied and attracting great interest. Autonomous navigation of walking robots requires that three main tasks be solved: self-localization, obstacle avoidance, and object handling (Clerentin et al., 2005). In current research, we proposed a basic contact interaction-based navigation system called “groping locomotion” on the humanoid robots capable of defining self-localization and obstacle avoidance. This system is based on contact interaction with the aim of creating suitable algorithms for

This paper presents the prototype of a robot hand using shape memory gel (SMG) and tendon-driven mechanism based on our concept. The finger of the robot hand can be designed to have many bendable parts which can be considered as joints. The number of the motors can be smaller than that of bendable parts. We can select a bending part of the finger as desired. Bending part of the SMG finger is heated by nichrome wires and becomes soft enough to be easily bent by tendon-driven mechanism. An efficient driver circuit for heating many parts of SMG by many nichrome wires is proposed. Examples of finger motion and grasping an object are performed to show the effectiveness of our concept.

Many soft actuators have been studied for use in robots that come into contact with humans, including communication, entertainment, and medical/health care robots. One reason for this is that soft robots are expected to exhibit intrinsic safety in case an accident occurs. This paper proposes a plastic-film pneumatic actuator with a pleated structure that do not undergo the elastic deformation typical of rubber materials. By utilizing thin plastic films, the mass of an actuator can be significantly reduced, even if the actuators are the same size as a human arm. If the mass of the actuator is reduced, the kinetic energy when contacts with humans mechanically can be reduced considerably without reducing the working speed. More specifically, we propose a pleated structure made of plastic to achieve structural deformation generated from a two-dimensional pleated film. The pleated structure easily generates various bending motions. In this paper, a design method for determining the shape parameters of ...

Some people with physical disabilities have difficulty transferring alone. Many of them want to transfer by themselves without depending on caregivers. We have been advancing research on “self-transfer assistance robot” based on the concept that a care receiver can transfer alone. However, since the self-transfer assistance robot helps transfer from the sitting position to the sitting position, it is difficult for people who cannot take a sitting position alone to use the robot for transferring by themselves. In this research, we propose a transfer from the supine position by “self-transfer assistance system” composed of “self-transfer assistance robot”, newly added “leg assistance robot” and “electric bed assisting the postural change”. In order to realize this system, a part of the self-transfer assistance robot, the leg assistance robot, and the pneumatic soft actuator arranged on the bed were prototyped. Experiments of assistance using them were conducted and it was shown that the transfer from the supine position using this system was feasible.

Recent years, height of percentage of the person who has subjective symptom of such lower back pain is presented as a problem in aging society. Brace therapy is one of the methods of treatment for lower back pain. However, the method of treatment has possibility to cause muscle deterioration by wearing invariably for a corset. On the other hand, it is difficult for such senior citizens and handicapped person to do removable the corset. Therefore, this paper proposed development of the corset that built pneumatic soft actuators and has on/off switching function in order to solve the problem. So we manufactured the corset and the actuators to the corset. And we instituted the EMG experiment to show the performance evaluation of the corset. We found the problem about the responsiveness and we solved the problem by improving a new structure of the actuator. This structure was able to raise the responsiveness.

Recently, studies of entertainment and communication robots have been conducted. These robots require intrinsic safety features because of the many opportunities to contact humans. For example, conventional robot hands that can grasp an object often consist of metal frames, electrical motors, and gears in order to maintain accuracy. These mechanisms are inevitably complex, high weight, and stiff. If the robot hand heavy, the moment of the elementary part of the manipulator is increased. When these robots operate near people, it is also necessary to perform tasks at low speed to ensure the safety of the people. This has the potential of decreasing work efficiency. Therefore, it is desirable for robot hands to be lightweight and soft. We propose extremely lightweight and supple mechanisms using a pneumatic driven thin plastic-film actuator based on pleated structures. In this paper, the structure of a soft gripper with a bending type actuator and a soft parallel joint with a contraction/extension type actuator are proposed. As a basic characteristics of these mechanisms, generating force are experimentally shown. Although this mechanism is lightweight, high output can be expected.

This paper proposes flexible and efficient control system of a robot hand for intelligent human-interactive tasks. The intelligent tasks require various sensors and lots of software. We designed the hardware and software of the control system. The hardware includes a PC and multiple micro control units (MCUs) so that various sensors such as range sensors, acceleration sensors and photo sensors can be added flexibly and efficiently. The calculation in the system can be distributed to the PC and the multiple MCUs. The software system is designed so that various software elements can be easily integrated. RT-middleware is utilized for the integration. Two applications of the system are presented to show the flexibility of the system. The hand is integrated with range sensor in one application and microphone in the other. The results of the experiments show the effectiveness of the control system.

Problem statement: Humanoid robots have many motors and sensors and many control methods are used to carry out complicated tasks of the robots. Therefore, efficient control systems ar e required for the robots. Approach: This study presented a distributed control system u sing a Personal Computer (PC) and Micro Control Units (MCUs) for humanoid robots. Distributed control systems have the advantages that parallel processing using multi ple computers is possible and cables in the system can be short. For the control of the humanoid robots, r equired functions of the control system were discussed. Based on the discussion, the hardware of the system including a PC and MCUs was proposed. The system was designed to carry out the process of the robot control efficiently. The syste m can be expanded easily by increasing the number of MCU boards. The software of the system for feedback control of the motors and the communication between the computers was proposed. Flexible switching of motor control methods can be achieved easily. Results: Experiments were performed to show the effectiveness of the system. The sampling frequency of the whole system can be about 0.5 kHz and that in local MCUs can be about 10 kHz. Control method of the motor can be changed during the motion in an experiment controlling four joints of the robot. Conclusion: The results of the experiments showed that the distributed control system proposed in this study is effective for humanoid robots.