Takao Ueno

A tele-operated humanoid robot drives a lift truck

We have been developing new abilities of humanoid robots to realize proxy driving of a lift truck. Construction machines such as a lift truck play an important role in many tasks, but sometimes the environments are too hazardous for human operators. If a tele-operated humanoid robot can drive a construction machine, it can work at a dangerous place. This humanoid robot operator has two advantages over an automated construction machine. It is much easier to carry the robot to a disaster site than moving the special construction machine. Besides, the robot may be less expensive than developing the special automated machine whose required number is relatively small. We have been developing new abilities of the tele-operated humanoid robot HRP-1 to realize the application. The paper describes results of investigations and experiments for proxy driving of a lift truck by HRP-1.

A tele-operated humanoid robot drives a backhoe

In this paper, we will describe our attempt for a tele-operated humanoid robot to drive a backhoe. It will be possible for a humanoid robot to drive an industrial vehicle instead of a human operator. If a humanoid robot can be operated by a human operator from a remote site, it enables to use a general type of vehicle safely in a dangerous field. We introduced a backhoe as the target vehicle to show the possibility of driving a vehicle in a sitting posture. The robot sits down with balancing on a cockpit of the backhoe and manipulates control levers for driving. We developed a portable remote control device and remote control methods to operate the humanoid robot. For the evaluation, it is tested to sit down and manipulate the levers on the driving cockpit of the real backhoe. To compare it with a humans work, the efficiency is close to practical use.

A Tele-operated Humanoid Operator

This is the first successful trial of remotely controlling a humanoid robot to drive an industrial vehicle in lieu of a human operator. These results were achieved through the development of three technologies: 1) remote-control technology to instruct the humanoid to perform total-body movements under remote control 2) a remote-control system to execute tasks, and protection technology to protect the humanoid against the shock and vibrations of its operating seat and against influences of the natural environment, such as rain and dust, and 3) full-body operation-control technology to autonomously control the humanoid’s total-body movements to prevent the robot from falling over. The humanoid has promising application potential for restoration work in environments impacted by catastrophes and in civil-engineering and construction-project sites where it can work safely and efficiently.

Experiment of Mobile Light-Section Device for Automatic Crack Inspection on Actual-Size Tunnel Lining Concrete

There are approximately 10,000 road tunnels in Japan. Based on the road law enforcement regulations of Japan, human visual inspections of the road tunnels are conducted once every five years. However, presently, the number of inspection engineers is insufficient and the cost incurred for the inspection is significantly high. In conventional crack inspection methods, engineers process many images off site. However, this method requires a lot of effort to identify the cracks and dirt. We have studied an automatic detection method to determine the crack positions by using highresolution texture/depth images that are acquired by using the mobile light-section method. In this report, we present the study outline and introduce the prototype of the devices developed. Furthermore, we present the results detected by our method using both concrete test samples and simulated actual-size tunnel lining concrete.

Development of the Waste Management System with the use of Next-Generation Manipulator

Authors propose “Development of the Waste Management System with the use of Next-Generation Manipulator” as “Development of Construction System Processing Industrial Waste Disposal RT System” in “ Project for Strategic Development of Advanced Robotics Elemental Technologies” for which NEDO advertised, and have been researching for three years.