Kazuyuki Morioka

Human-following mobile robot in a distributed intelligent sensor network

The robots that will be needed in the near future are human-friendly robots that are able to coexist with humans and support humans effectively. To realize this, humans and robots need to be in close proximity to each other as much as possible. Moreover, it is necessary for their interactions to occur naturally. It is desirable for a robot to carry out human following, as one of the human-affinitive movements. The human-following robot requires several techniques: the recognition of the target human, the recognition of the environment around the robot, and the control strategy for following a human stably. In this research, an intelligent environment is used in order to achieve these goals. An intelligent environment is a space in which many sensors and intelligent devices are distributed. Mobile robots exist in this space as physical agents providing humans with services. A mobile robot is controlled to follow a walking human using distributed intelligent sensors as stably and precisely as possible. The control law based on the virtual spring model is proposed to mitigate the difference of movement between the human and the mobile robot. The proposed control law is applied to the intelligent environment and its performance is verified by the computer simulation and the experiment.

Human centered robotics in intelligent space

Intelligent space is a space where many sensors and intelligent devices are distributed. Mobile robots exist in this space as physical agents, which provide human with services. To realize this, human and mobile robots have to approach each other as much as possible. Moreover, it is necessary for them to perform interactions naturally. It is desirable for a mobile robot to carry out human-affinitive movement. In this research, a mobile robot is controlled by the Intelligent Space through its resources. The mobile robot is controlled to follow walking human as stably and precisely as possible.

Appearance based object identification for distributed vision sensors in intelligent space

Robots would be able to coexist with humans and support humans effectively in near future. We proposed the intelligent space in order to achieve such human-centered system. The intelligent space is the space where many intelligent devices, such as computers and sensors, are distributed. The intelligent space achieves the human centered services by accelerating the physical and psychological interaction between humans and intelligent devices. As an intelligent device of the intelligent space, a color CCD camera module, which includes processing and networking part, has been chosen. The intelligent space requires functions of identifying and tracking the multiple objects to realize appropriate services to users under the multi-camera environments. In order to achieve seamless tracking and location estimation, many camera modules are distributed. They cause some errors about object identification among different camera modules. This paper describes appearance based object identification for the distributed vision system in intelligent space to achieve consistent labeling of unknown objects. First, we discuss how to obtain the object color information for constructing the color appearance based model. Then, we propose the global color model based on the color information for the object identification.

Physical agent for human following in intelligent sensor network

Intelligent Space is a space where many sensors and intelligent devices are distributed. Mobile robots exist in this space as physical agents, which provide human with services. To realize this, human and mobile robots have to approach each other as much as possible. Moreover, it is necessary for them to perform interactions naturally. It is desirable for a mobile robot to carry out human-affinitive movement. In this research, a mobile robot is controlled by the Intelligent Space through its resources. The mobile robot is controlled to follow a walking human as stably and precisely as possible.

Color appearance based object identification in intelligent space

Robots coexists with humans and supports humans effectively. We proposed the intelligent space in order to achieve such human-centered system. The intelligent space is the space where many intelligent devices, such as computers and sensors, are distributed. The Intelligent Space achieves the human centered services by accelerating the physical and psychological interaction between humans and intelligent devices. As an intelligent device of the Intelligent Space, a color CCD camera module, which includes processing and networking part, has been chosen. The Intelligent Space requires functions of identifying and tracking the multiple objects to realize appropriate services to users under the multi-camera environments. In order to achieve seamless tracking and location estimation many camera modules are distributed. They causes some errors about object identification among different camera modules. This paper describes appearance based object representation for the distributed vision system in Intelligent Space to achieve consistent labeling of all objects. Then, we discuss how to learn the object color appearance model and how to achieve the multi-object tracking under occlusions.

Intelligent Space for Human Centered Robotics

Robot systems for supporting human life are desired recently. For that purpose, the robots need to recognize a human living environment that changes dynamically. However, it is difficult to achieve it only with the sensors carried in a stand-alone robot. Then, the research field on the intelligent environments based on the sensor network has been expanding [Sato], [MacDorman]. The intelligent environments generally utilize many intelligent devices, such as computers and sensors in order to improve the performance of the robots. We proposed the intelligent space (iSpace) [Lee, (2002)] as the human-robot coexistent system. The Intelligent Space is designed to achieve a human-centred service by accelerating the physical and psychological interaction between human beings and robots. The iSpace exploits intelligent devices with processing and networking parts in addition to sensing images from colour CCD cameras. The iSpace with vision based intelligent devices achieves a contact-free wide-area location system without an additional burden to users. Vision based iSpace also has the possibility that the further information can be obtained depending

Physical distance based human robot interaction in intelligent environment

Physical distance based human robot interaction in intelligent environment is introduced in this article. Since intelligent environment possess lots of sensors and intelligence and they are distributed among the environment, people in the environment are monitored and supported with many services. To monitor people in the space, sensors to watch them are necessary and how to place the sensors is a big issue. Human robot interaction is an open problem that many people try to solve. When high accuracy localization on people and robot is achieved, physical distance based human robot interaction become possible. The possibility of achieving the interaction in intelligent space is shown with some experimental results.

Development of 6-DOF haptic interface for tele-micromanipulation systems

Discusses a control scheme for a 6-DOF haptic interface for tele-micromanipulation systems. We have developed micro-teleoperation systems for micro tasks, such as assembly or manufacturing. We introduce a haptic interface that gives operators a sense of presence, as if he/she is touching an expanded version of the micro-object with his/her fingers. First, the system structure of the master manipulator and its system configuration are shown. To improve the free-motion performance and response-force isotropy of the master haptic device, a model-reference adaptive controller (MRAC) is introduced. Some experiments are conducted and their results are evaluated. Furthermore, we connected the master systems and a slave system through a network and evaluated the teleoperation property. Finally, we conclude with a discussion about our experimental results and a statement about our future work.

Distributed Sensor Network for Multi-Agent Motion Tracking in Intelligent Space

Latest advances in hardware technology and state of the art of mobile agent, and artificial intelligence research can be employed to develop autonomous and distributed monitoring systems. The intelligent space (lSpace) is the space where many intelligent devices, such as computers and sensors, are distributed. According to the cooperation of many intelligent devices, the environment, it is very important that the system knows the location information to offer the useful services. In order to achieve these goals, we present a method for representing, tracking and human following by fusing distributed multiple vision systems in ISpace, with application to pedestrian tracking in a crowd. And the article presents the integration of color distributions into particle filtering. Particle filters provide a robust tracking framework under ambiguity conditions. We propose to track the moving objects by generating hypotheses not in the image plan but on the top-view reconstruction of the scene. Comparative results on real video sequences show the advantage of our method for multi-object tracking. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the proposed performance. Also, the method is applied to the intelligent environment and its performance is verified by the experiments

Condition-based placement of distributed active vision sensors for guiding robots in intelligent environment

To make intelligent environment with distributed intelligent cameras, one of the most important problems is to monitor the service area seamlessly. Since the recognized objects in the image, captured by camera, is deeply related with distance and location between the camera and the objects, even though cameras in the intelligent environment cover the entire area, the recognition error varies roughly. To provide stable service to clients, such as robot, human and other dynamic objects, the recognition results should keep a certain quality, and to satisfy this, the distributed cameras should be placed well.