Browse Proceedings

Nowadays we frequently find big amounts of data to work with, what facilitates many robotic tasks and helps to solve perception problems. At the same time, this fact origins an interesting ongoing research problem: how to organize and arrange big sets ...

This paper investigates the controllability properties of planar snake robots influenced by viscous ground friction forces. The paper provides three contributions: 1) A partially feedback linearized model of a planar snake robot is developed. 2) A ...

This paper presents an analysis of snake locomotion that explains how non-uniform viscous ground friction conditions enable snake robots to locomote forward on a planar surface. The explanation is based on a simple mapping from link velocities normal to ...

A snake-like robot can locomote in various environments; and it can manipulate objects when one end is fixed. A method of dynamic modeling for locomotion-manipulation of the snake-like robot is developed in order to unify the dynamic equations of two ...

Unlike ordinary snake-like robots, a propulsion mechanism that does not rely on electricity for control and actuation is proposed in this paper. Analysis of a snake's propulsion based on a continuum model unveils that the lateral undulation can be ...

Snake robots with active wheels provide interesting opportunities within many areas such as inspection and maintenance and search and rescue operations. The highly-articulated body of a snake robot combined with the advantages of wheeled locomotion ...

Many calibration methods calibrate a pair of sensors at a time. For robotic systems with many sensors, they are often time-consuming to use, and can also lead to inaccurate results. In this paper, we combine a number of ideas in the literature to derive ...

In the growing field of collective robotics, spatial co-ordination between robots is often critical and usually achieved via local relative positioning sensors. We believe that range and bearing sensing, based on infrared technology, has the potential ...

According to the characteristics of airfield and harbor from remote sensing images, a method of large target recognition based on the combination of target region and shape features is presented. First, edge detection and improved Hough transform are ...

In this paper, we introduce a high-speed vision platform, H³ (Hiroshima Hyper Human) Vision, which can simultaneously process a 1024 × 1024 pixel image at 1000 fps and a 256 × 256 pixel image at 10000 fps by implementing image processing algorithms as ...

In this paper, we propose a sensor for detecting particles flowing in a micro channel fabricated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip. A light source placed at one side of a micro channel irradiates the micro channel through plastic optical fibers (POF)...

Research in rehabilitation engineering shows that electrodes can produce tactile sensations with appropriate electrical signals tailored to stimulate the multiple tactile receptors located under the fingertip skin. However, electrical stimulation that ...

In this paper, we propose a tendon skeletal finger model and discuss which finger postures the human feels easy to pinch based on the tendon forces and the human experimental results. The finger model mimics a human tendon skeletal structure. The tendon ...

An exoskeleton haptic interface is developed for functional training in virtual environments. A composite control scheme enables a variety of tasks to be implemented, and a "Qt" graphics library is used to generate the virtual environment for the haptic ...

In order to eliminate the drawbacks of conventional force feedback gloves, a new type of master hand has been developed. By utilizing three "four-bar mechanism joint" in series and wire coupling mechanism, the master finger transmission ratio is kept ...

Spring drive amplifiers utilize the natural inductive properties of a DC motor to produce stronger position feedback than is achievable with traditional current amplifiers. Impedance-type haptics devices can leverage these amplifiers to render superior ...

This paper describes the hardware and algorithms for a realtime social touch gesture recognition system. Early experiments involve a Sensate Bear test-rig with full body touch sensing, sensor visualization and gesture recognition capabilities. ...

Recently, many humanoid robots have been developed and actively investigated all over the world in order to realize partner robots which can coexist in an environment shared with humans. having good communication skils is essential in order to interact ...

A communication robot must recognize a referred-to object to support us in daily life. However, using our wide human vocabulary, we often refer to objects in terms that are incomprehensible to the robot. This paper focuses on lexical entrainment to ...

There is recent evidence that males and females view robots differently, from the way robots are conceptualized, to the way humans respond when they interact with them. In this paper, we further explore gender-based differences in human-robot ...

In order to develop a friendly and safe interaction between humans and robots, it is essential for the robot to evaluate user's affective states and respond accordingly. However, affective states are typically assessed using offline questionnaires and ...

In this paper we present a formation reconfiguration methodology designed for controlling groups of autonomous agents in environments densely populated with obstacles. Our approach is based on abstracting the group of agents by a discrete rectangular ...

In this paper we discuss an algorithm for distributed formation of a lattice structures using a team of mobile robots. Lattice structures can be used for solving task allocation problems, as well as for utilizing cooperative swarm like motion for the ...

In this paper we describe a novel decentralized control strategy to realize formations of mobile robots. We first describe a methodology to obtain a formation with the shape of a regular polygon. Then, applying a bijective coordinates transformation, we ...

Despite the large body of work in both motion planning and multi-agent simulation, little work has focused on the problem of planning motion for groups of robots using external "controller" agents. We call this problem the group control problem. This ...

This paper presents a new approach to formation forming of multiple mobile robots with decentralized motion planning. When the robots enter the required formation, there exists the formation-structure constraint, which causes disorder or even deadlock ...

Cameras are becoming a common tool for automated vision purposes due to their low cost. Many surveillance and inspection systems include cameras as their sensor of choice. How useful these camera systems are is very dependent upon the positioning of the ...

We present here a real time active vision system on a PTZ network camera to track an object of interest. We address two critical issues in this paper. One is the control of the camera through network communication to follow a selected object. The other ...

This paper describes a method for removing adherent noises from image sequences. In outdoor environments, it is often the case that scenes taken by a camera are deteriorated because of adherent noises such as waterdrops on the surface of the lens-...

We report an autonomous observation system with multiple pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras assisted by a fixed wide-angle camera. The wide-angle camera provides large but low resolution coverage and detects and tracks all moving objects in the scene. Based on ...