Akihiro Kawamura

Kyushu University | Kyudai · Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering

This paper presents a method to improve the accuracy of human pose estimation using RGBD images. 3D pose estimation based on mapping depth images to RGB images has a problem. It is the error in the depth direction caused by the low accuracy of the depth image and the fact that the estimated points are on the surface of the body. This paper proposes...

This study proposes a new software platform, called ROS2-TMS, for an informationally structured environment. An informationally structured environment is vital for developing intelligent service robots by embedding various sensors in the environment to enhance the sensing capability and intelligence of robots. Thus far, we have been developing a so...

This paper presents a comparative study of two AR training systems for Humanitude dementia care. Humanitude is a multimodal comprehensive care methodology for patients with dementia and has attracted considerable attention as a gentle and effective care technique. To provide an effective training system for Humanitude, we developed HEARTS 1, which...

Autonomous robots are expected to replace dangerous, dirty, and demanding (3D) jobs. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. The present paper attempts to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system and co-experience system at a large theme park. For realizing such autonomous service robots used in o...

Sport climbing is one of the most popular sports and was adopted as a new official sport at Tokyo Olympic 2020. Players climb walls with holds in this event. Movements and postures of climbers have a tendency to become complicated compared with other sports due to a wide variety of holds and walls. Therefore, it is difficult to measure and analyze...

As an effective way to grasp an object softly and robustly, many soft grippers have been developed and reported. However, it is still difficult to grasp objects that are easily damaged by local contact forces such as fruits. This paper proposes a soft gripper which grasps such easily damaged objects by wrapping around. This approach gives a wide ar...

This paper proposes a training system for a multimodal comprehensive care methodology for dementia patients named Humanitude. Humanitude has been attracting much attention as an effective care technique for dementia patients. Humanitude consists of four main techniques, namely, eye contact, verbal communication, touch, and standing up, and more tha...

We focus on environmental informationally structuring that makes the environment around the robot intelligent, not just the robot itself. We have developed a software platform ROS-TMS to realize a service robot that coexists with humans in an informationally structured environment. ROS is currently being developed with a new ROS2 with significantly...

3D jobs (dangerous, dirty, demanding) are expected to be replaced by autonomous robots. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. This paper aims to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system and co-experience system at a large theme park. One of the characteristics of the tour guide robot we develope...

In this research, we develop a near-future perception system named “Smart Previewed Reality” for humans and robots to coexist safely. This system consists of a smartphone and the management system of informationally structured environment “ROS-TMS”. Informationally structured environment is so-called a smart environment, in which various sensors ar...

In this study, we aim to quantify care skills in the dementia care technique called "Humanitude". Humanitude has been attracting much attention as a gentle and effective care technique for a dementia patient in recent years. The developed wearable whole body tactile sensor aims to quantify the "touch" skill among the four representative skills in H...

The present paper introduces a near-future perception system called Previewed Reality. In a co-existence environment of a human and a robot, unexpected collisions between the human and the robot must be avoided to the extent possible. In many cases, the robot is controlled carefully so as not to collide with a human. However, it is almost impossibl...

For safe human-robot coexistence, we have developed a near-future perception system named Previewed Reality. In this paper, we propose the latest system ”Previewed Reality 2.0”, which realizes a quasi-real-time processing. The system consists of an informationally structured environment (ISE), a Microsoft HoloLens, and a dynamic simulator. In an IS...

This research aims to develop a high-speed spatial change detection technique using point clouds and NDT (Normal Distributions Transform). Three techniques are introduced to make the proposed system robust for noise, that is, classification of point distribution, overlapping of voxels, and voting using consecutive sensing. This paper describes the...

In this study, we aim to quantify care skills in the care technique called "Humanitude". Humanitude has been attracting much attention as a gentle and effective care technique for a dementia patient in recent years. The developed wearable tactile sensor aims to quantify the "touch" skill among the four representative skills in Humanitude, which are...

Over the past decades, 3D jobs (dangerous, dirty, demanding) are expected to be replaced by autonomous robots. At a theme park, surveillance, cleaning, and guiding tasks can be regarded as 3D jobs. This paper aims to develop an autonomous tour guide robot system at a large theme park. One of the characteristics of the tour guide robot we developed...

Abstract Spatial change detection is a fundamental technique for finding the differences between two or more pieces of geometrical information. This technique is critical in some robotic applications, such as search and rescue, security, and surveillance. In these applications, it is desirable to find the differences quickly and robustly. The prese...

This paper proposes a navigation system of a personal mobility robot in informationally structured and unstructured environments. First, we introduce a group of robots named Portable Go, which are equipped with laser range finders, gyros, and omni-directional wheels. The Portable Go robots expand the informationally structured environment by deploy...

Sport climbing is one of the sports attracting attention all over the world and expected to become more popular. Therefore, motion measurement and analysis system have been required to improve the performance of players and instruct them. In several researches, the systems on motion measurement and analysis of climbing have been presented. Most of...

This paper proposes distributed sensor systems to construct an informationally structured environment by using LRFs (Laser Range Finders) and active beacons. With the proposed system, a personal mobility can localize its position and automatically move in indoor and outdoor environments. Experiments show that the personal mobility is guided appropr...

In recent years, Personal Mobility Vehicle (PMV) have been attracting much attention as the new future vehicle. In this paper, we propose a new control system which provides automatic driving function or driving support function to PMVs using a small sensor terminal named “Portable”. This system enables to add intelligent functions to various PMVs...

This paper presents an overview of pick and place operations performed by an inflatable robot. The inflatable robotic arm is composed of inflatable links and pneumatic bag actuators. This technology is expected to be applied to service robots working in human daily life, since the robotic arm has many advantages such as lightness, softness and safe...

Abstract An informationally structured environment (ISE) is a key technology for realizing service robots in daily life in the near future. In ISE, the information of the service robot and its surroundings is structured and provided to the robot on time and on demand. We started the development of a management system for ISE named TMS (Town Managem...

In recent years, inflatable robotic arms have been developed so that physical contact with humans and working environments could be performed safety. In industry, there is a growing demand for safe industrial robots to collaborate with people and work in various environments. In general, however, the positioning accuracy of inflatable robotic arms...

This paper proposes a navigation system of a personality mobility in informationally structured and unstructured environments. With the proposed system, a personal mobility can automatically move in an informationally structured environment where rich sensory information is obtained, a temporary informationally structured environment where a group...

In this paper, we present a near future perception system named “Previewed Reality”. We integrate an immersive VR display, a stereo camera and a dynamic simulator into our informationally structured environment(ISE) platform for service robot. In ISE, a human wearing the immersive VR display can see the next possible events as virtual images overla...

This paper proposes new software and hardware platforms for an informationally structured environment named ROS-TMS and Big Sensor Box. We started the development of a management system for an informationally structured environment named TMS (Town Management System) in Robot Town Project in 2005. Since then we are continuing our efforts for the imp...

This paper proposes a pulse-width modulation method combined with visual information (VPWN) for precise motion control of a SCARA robot. In general, friction effects on joints are considerable and difficult problem for precise motion control of robotic arms. Various methods to overcome friction effects have been proposed, however it is still diffic...

Inflatable robotic arms have been researched because of its unique feature of the lightweight and flexible robotic structure. The feature seems to be suitable for several new robot fields. To increase of application fields, the power performance of the inflatable robot should be improved. For this purpose, we investigate material characteristics an...

This paper presents the service robot system based on informationally structured environment named ROS-TMS that supports a robot to provide services to human. The development of the system was started in 2005 in the project named Robot Town Project, and recently we launched a new version named ROS-TMS4.0, which enables to utilize the high scalabili...

This paper presents a place categorization technique using a real-time omni-directional laser scanner for outdoor environment. Firstly, we created a large database consisting of range data of six categories, that is, coast, forest, indoor parking, outdoor parking, residential area, and urban area. Two kinds of features, spin-image and local binary...

In this paper, we present a control architecture that enables a service drone to navigate in an informationally structured environment (ISE) and to accomplish a specific service task autonomously based on the ROS-TMS framework. The ROS-TMS is a ROS-based distributed information management system for ISE. It manages a variety of subsystems ranging f...

In this paper, we present a control architecture that enables a service drone to navigate in an informationally structured environment (ISE) and to accomplish a specific service task autonomously based on the ROS-TMS framework. The ROS-TMS is a ROS-based distributed information management system for ISE. It manages a variety of subsystems ranging f...

Inflatable robotic arms have been studied as a lightweight and flexible robotic structure for applications to new fields. In general the motion control of inflatable robotic arms is difficult, because they have complicated nonlinear characteristics. This paper proposes a new control method suitable for inflatable robotic arms that realizes precise...

This paper proposes an actuation mechanism of robotic arms using rotational counterweights. The robotic arm is driven by gravitational and inertia forces of the counterweight mounted on links. The joints of the robotic arms are able to rotate freely though this robot does not have any actuators on joints. Thereby, the robot has high joint flexibili...

This paper proposes an inflatable robotic arm controlled by a joystick for welfare robots. The robot arm is constructed of inflatable links, pneumatic bag actuators, and ABS joints. The robot arm has softness and lightness in comparison with general robotic arms which made of metal and heavy elements. The softness and lightness realize intrinsic sa...

This paper introduces a robotic arm which has 2DOFs using rotational counterweights. We already have proposed the actuation mechanism in previous report. However, the performance of the system was verified only for a 1DOF system. In this paper, the robot arm is extended to 2DOFs system. Joints of the robot arm between links are completely free thou...

This paper describes a new underwater robot for dam inspection. Dam inspection needs exact crack positions. However it is very difficult for usual underwater robots to detect the exact crack points in water due to inaccuracy of position measurement of an underwater robot near a dam wall. In this paper, we propose a new method to detect the robot po...

This paper proposes a motion control method for robotic arms mounted on an underwater robot. The method utilizes visual information to realize the position control of the end-effector of the robotic arm. The usefulness of the proposed method is practically verified by experiments.

This paper presents a practical usefulness of a proposed method which realizes precise motion control of a SCARA robot by the integration of PWM signals and visual information. In our previous work, a precise reaching task of an end-effector of a SCARA robot was accomplished. In this paper, Pick-and place tasks are demonstrated by the method as an...

We developed an antagonistic variable elastic mechanism (AVEM) which can control the elasticity and the equilibrium position of the joint. However, the elasticity and the equilibrium position of the AVEM change depending on the joint angle. Therefore, it was difficult to precisely make the elasticity and the equilibrium position. To overcome this d...

This paper focuses on a possibility of application of a method to simplification of robotic arm systems by removal joint encoders. The method which has been proposed achieves precise control of robotic arms using visual feedback with camera calibration errors. In this paper, the method is improved for an encoderless robotic arm system to ease sever...

This paper proposes a new robotic arm which has active movable counterweights as an actuator in addition to motor drives. The active counterweights reduce gravity effect of cantilever structure adaptively by movement of counterweights. Additionally, the counterweight has offset angle between links and movement axis of the counterweight. This struct...

This report describes dynamic characteristics of inflatable robot systems. Inflatable robots have unique features, such as flexibility and light weight. Therefore, it is expected that they can be applied to new fields. We have designed a new type of inflatable robot arm and demonstrated the motion performance. However, the basic dynamic characteris...

We propose three mechanisms which can change rotational elasticity and equilibrium positions in this report. The proposed mechanisms consist of two elastic elements, two bearings, two slide screws and two actuators. Each structure of the proposed mechanism is described and the torque characteristics of the proposed mechanisms are depicted in this r...

This paper proposes a PWM control method based on visual servoing for precise robot motion control. We use a visual deviation between a target position and an end effector position in order to modulate a pulse width. This method does not require precise calibrations for both robot kinematics and visual sensors. The usefulness of the method is demon...

The calibration-free visual feedback control method had been proposed in 2012 and the experimental validation of the proposed method was demonstrated by using a 3-DOF robot arm. Furthermore, the control method applicable to 6-DOF robot arms was proposed in 2013. This paper experimentally investigated the validation of the proposed method for 6-DOF...

We had proposed a novel robot design and control method. The proposed robot has movable counter-weights and the robot joint angle is controlled by the position of the counter-weight. However, the proposed control method was affected by parameter estimation errors. To overcome this problem, this report proposes an adaptive control method for counter...

An inflatable robot arm with light weight and flexibility was proposed by the authors. The proposed robot arm is composed of inflatable links, pneumatic actuators, and plastic joint-parts. The robot motion is controlled by pressure regulated valves. This report discloses the positioning accuracy of the inflatable robot arm under visual feedback con...

This paper proposes a novel dynamic stable grasping method of an arbitrary polyhedral object for a hand-arm system with hemispherical fingertips. This method makes it possible to satisfy the force/torque equilibrium condition for the immobilization of the object without knowledge of the object. Two control signals are proposed which generate graspi...

This research aims to realize a service robot for grasping various objects in daily life. Therefore, this paper presents a grasping method based on joint angle control for a multi-fingered hand with soft fingertips. This method is robust to the fingertip position error and the object position/posture error. Since the soft fingertip deforms elastica...

This paper proposes a robust visual servoing method for object manipulation against temporary loss of sensory information. It is known that visual information is useful for reliable object grasping and precise manipulation. Visual information becomes unavailable, however when occlusion occurs or a grasped object disappears during manipulation. In t...

This paper proposes a new visual servoing method for object manipulation robust to considerable time-delays of visual information. There still remain several problems in visual servoing methods although they are quite useful and effective for dexterous object manipulation. For instance, time-delays to obtain necessary information for object manipul...

In this paper, experimental results of the visual servoing method proposed by us are shown to verify the robustness against temporary loss of visual information. The visual servoing method proposed in our previous work achieves stable grasping and manipulation of an object even if visual information becomes suddenly unavailable during manipulation....

This paper proposes a new radar tracking filter called Noise-estimate Particle Filter (NPF) which combines kalman and particle filters. The tracking performance of the kalman filter depends on the setting of several parameters such as a system noise and an observation noise. However, it is quite difficult to choose proper parameters for various sce...

This paper presents an improvement of our previously proposed dynamic object grasping and manipulation method. This method, which utilizes a dual-fingered hand of which each soft and hemispheric fingertip owns a torsional joint, has performed novel 3-dimensional dynamic object grasping and manipulation stably without the use of any external sensing...

抄録 This paper proposes a novel control method for stable grasping and attitude regulation of an object using a multi-fingered hand-arm system. This method is based on a task space sensory-feedback control using real time information of an object attitude. A unified control signal is designed for a whole hand-arm system. Firstly, nonholonomic rollin...

This paper proposes a novel vision-based grasping and manipulation scheme of a multi-fingered hand-arm system robust for a temporary lack of sensory information. Visual information is one of the fundamental components for reliable grasping and manipulation by a multi-fingered hand-arm system. However, in case that visual information such as positio...

In this paper, an enhancement of a dynamic object grasping and manipulation method, which has been proposed by us previously, is presented. This enhancement makes it possible to grasp more various shaped objects which could not have been grasped by our previous method. In our previous method, a force/torque equilibrium condition to satisfy stable o...

This paper presents an experimental verification of the externally sensorless dynamic object manipulation which has been proposed by us. This method enables robot to achieve stable object grasping and manipulation in dynamical sense without any external sensing. However, the effectiveness of the proposed method has been shown through only numerical...

This paper proposes a novel method for stable grasping and attitude regulation of an object using a multi-fingered hand-arm system. The proposed method is based on a simple sensory-feedback control using the information of an object attitude, and any mathematically complicated computation, such as calculation of inverse dynamics and kinematics, are...

This paper proposes a novel control method for stable grasping using a multi-fingered hand-arm system with soft hemispherical finger tips. The proposed method is simple but easily achieves stable grasping of an arbitrary polyhedral object using an arbitrary number of fingers. Firstly, we formulate nonholonomic constraints between a multi-fingered h...

This paper proposes a novel control method for stable grasping using a multi-fingered hand-arm system. The proposed method is simple and easily achieves stable grasping of an arbitrary polyhedral object using an arbitrary number of fingers. Firstly, we model nonholonomic rolling constraints between a multi-fingered handarm system and an object, and...

This paper proposes a novel control method for stable object grasping and orientation control using a dual-arm manipulator with multi-fingered hands. The control signal of the proposed method is simple but it can easily achieve stable grasping without external sensors and an orientation control of a grasped object. Firstly, holonomic constraints be...

This paper proposes a novel control method for stable grasping and attitude control of an object using a multi-fingered robotic hand with a redundant arm. The proposed method is based on the simple sensory-feedback control using the real-time information of an object attitude. Any mathemat-ically complicated computation, such as calculation of inve...