Three Principles on Research Themes and the concrete research topics
Now, our research themes are roughly divided as follows.
- Realization of high-level autonomous behavior based on task-oriented approach and system integration
- Development of new fundamental technologies for intelligent mobile robots
- Development of the YAMABICO autonomous mobile robot as our platform of robotics research
These three principles are overlapping on research contents and fields. The reason for this division is to avoid the common pitfall of robotics research that is “to have an unclear objective”.
At the present time, the concrete research topics we are interested in and are under progress in our laboratory are as follows.
1. Robotic system by task-oriented approach and system integration
- Autonomous navigation in indoor and outdoor real environment
- Autonomous robots working in daily life through cooperation with human
- Remote control of a mobile robotic avatar via the Internet
- Long-term activity of an autonomous robot in a real environment
- Autonomous robot to tidy up real environment
- Map building in unknown environment and localization
- Multiple robot cooperation for searching in the environment
- Conceptual design of the rover for moon inspection
- Robotic technology applied to security and surveillance system
- Object manipulation by a mobile manipulator
- Autonomous mobile machine for construction and agricultural tasks
2. Development of the fundamental technologies for autonomous mobile robots
(a) Architecture and controller for autonomous robots
- Functional architecture of autonomous robot and guide for design
- Hardware and software of controllers - Small-sized low power controller / distributed robot controller
- Description of robot behavior and tasks, and programming language of robot behavior
- Developmental environment for robot programming
(b) Mechanism of wheeled mobile robot
- Robotic mechanism for climbing over the step
- Unicycle robot with a Rugby ball-shaped wheel
(c) Control
- Locomotion control language and locomotion control system
- Command system / Four legged walking robot / Trailer system
- CCV approach to vehicle control
- Balance and locomotion control for two power wheeled (left and right / front and back like a bicycle) driving system / Locomotion control of unicycle
- Control technology of small sized mechanical system
(d) Sensors and Environmental recognition
- Vision based environmental recognition
- Active vision for robot / Obstacle detection by binocular or trinocular stereo vision
- High performance ultrasonic sensor systems
(e) Localization of mobile robots
- Position estimation by fusion of odometry and external sensors
- Extended Kalman filtering / Utilization of GPS / Landmark detection sensor for localization
- Localization by automatic corresponding to environmental map information
(f) Cooperation of multiple robots
- Inter robot communication system
- Cooperation method of multiple autonomous robots
(g) Mobile manipulator technologies
- Methods of cooperative control with locomotion and manipulation
- Design and control of small-sized and lightweight manipulator
- Exchangeable hand system for multiple purpose manipulation
(h) Human interface for mobile robots
- Novel vehicle control interface
- Monitoring system for internal state of robot
3. Development of the autonomous mobile robot “YAMABICO” as our research platform
(a) Wheeled mobile robots with standard functions
- Functional distributed controller with extensibility and modularity
- Real time OS for robotic controller
- Standard locomotion control language and system
- Ultrasonic sensing system for mobile robots
- Maintenance of environmental model and path planning sub-system
- Localization sub-system
- Inter robot communication network for multiple robots
(b) Mobile manipulator
- Small-sized manipulator and its control
- Mobile manipulator control language