Kohei Kimura

A sensor-driver integrated muscle module with high-tension measurability and flexibility for tendon-driven robots

We propose a sensor-driver integrated muscle module by integrating necessarily components for tendon-driven robot which is likely to complicate. The module has abilities of high-tension measurability and flexible tension control. In order to achieve flexible tension control, we developed the new tension measurement mechanism with high-tension measurability and the new motor driver which enables current based motor control. We demonstrate the tension control ability of the module by several experiments. Furthermore, utilizing the module advantage of design facilitation, we made two types of tendon-driven robots and confirmed effectiveness of the module.

Self‐Organized Superlattice and Phase Coexistence inside Thin Film Organometal Halide Perovskite

Organometal halide perovskites have attracted widespread attention as the most favorable prospective material for photovoltaic technology because of their high photoinduced charge separation and carrier transport performance. However, the microstructural aspects within the organometal halide perovskite are still unknown, even though it belongs to a crystal system. Here direct observation of the microstructure of the thin film organometal halide perovskite using transmission electron microscopy is reported. Unlike previous reports claiming each phase of the organometal halide perovskite solely exists at a given temperature range, it is identified that the tetragonal and cubic phases coexist at room temperature, and it is confirmed that superlattices composed of a mixture of tetragonal and cubic phases are self-organized without a compositional change. The organometal halide perovskite self-adjusts the configuration of phases and automatically organizes a buffer layer at boundaries by introducing a superlattice. This report shows the fundamental crystallographic information for the organometal halide perovskite and demonstrates new possibilities as promising materials for various applications.

Spine Balancing Strategy Using Muscle ZMP on Musculoskeletal Humanoid Kenshiro

In this paper, we propose a new balancing strategy for musculoskeletal humanoids by using their redundant musculoskeletal structures. This strategy is based on the idea of muscle Zero Moment Point(ZMP) and involves the use of a balance stabilizer utilizing the spine. The muscle ZMP is a stabilization indicator instead of a normal ZMP that is computed from 6DOF force sensors installed on robots’ foot. In order to compute the muscle ZMP, we use the joint torques obtained from muscle tensions. The spine stabilizer compensates for the COG displacement of the whole-body by utilizing the spine movements. Further, we confirm the effectiveness of the proposed strategy by demonstrating several balancing motions of Kenshiro, a musculoskeletal humanoid.

Development of task-oriented high power field robot platform with humanoid upper body and mobile wheeled base

We present a field robot platform HRP2G with humanoid upper body and a high power mobile wheeled base that focus on outdoor tasks. We assemble the hardware of both parts and create a software bridge between the humanoid upper body and the mobile wheeled base through popular robotics software ROS. For the humanoid upper body, we use HRP2 robot and for the mobile wheeled base we buy individual parts and create our own control unit with both hardware and software. The kinematics of the robot is well modelled and we design the corresponding control law. We will apply this robot platform to participate in the second task of MBZIRC(Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge) in 2017. In the experiment we show how our platform accomplished certain tasks with customize designed gripper and sensor equipments, which demonstrates the feasibility of our integrated system.

Tricycle manipulation strategy for humanoid robot based on active and passive manipulators control

Humanoid robot has the potential to manipulate wide range of tools in daily life. Arms and legs of humanoid robot contribute this ability. Above all, manipulation tasks for vehicles which are the same size as a life-sized humanoid or larger size than it require the operational motion by both arms and legs of humanoid robot. In addition to the arms and legs cooperative motion control, it is also important for humanoid robot to stabilize self posture during driving vehicle. In this research, we focus on the arms-legs-integrated manipulation task for tricycle controlled by humanoid robot. We propose dual manipulators control law that is defined as active manipulator which works movable objects such as handle and crank, and passive manipulator which follows the movement of this objects. We discuss the self stabilizing strategy for humanoid robot by both active manipulating legs as well as manipulation strategy for objects. Furthermore, this paper contributes the strategy of recognition and planning for outside obstacle situations and configures the tricycle manipulation system. Applying this proposed system, we show the experimental result for tricycle manipulation by life-sized humanoid robot HRP2-JSK on obstacle-mixed situation.