Yoshihiko Murakawa

RSi-cloud for integrating Robot Services with internet services

This paper proposes the RSi Research Cloud (RSi-Cloud), which enables integration of robot services with internet services and mash-up of robot services. The feature of RSi-Cloud is to use a standardized communication protocol, that is Robot Service Network Protocol (RSNP). By using the robot service specification, we can provide novel services combining various kinds of service components. In addition, since RSNP is determined based on web services, many researchers and engineers in the internet field can join robot service development. We also implement a surveillance camera service as a prototype system using the proposed platform. This paper reports the implementation result.

Research and development environments for robot services and its implementation

We have proposed the RSi Research Cloud (RSi-Cloud), which enables integration of robot services with internet services. Until now, we have developed a surveillance service using robot cameras on the cloud environment, and have realized internet connection from robots implemented with RSNP (Robot Service Network Protocol). This paper reports a design result of Robot Service HTML interface (RSHi), which is a mechanism to treat robot applications deployed in RSi-Cloud by the same way as RSNP robot clients. RSHi makes it possible to deploy RSNP service applications within firewall systems, and as a result, a robot service expansion can be expected. Moreover, in this paper, we show a usage example of micro-services on a service robot which uses a face detection function.

Push communication for network robot services and RSi/RTM interoperability

We, RSi (Robot Service Initiative) organization, have been developing a common network based robot service platform, named RSNP (Robot Service Network Protocol) since 2004. As spreading actual use of RSNP, strong requirements are raised on the push communication in limited conditions such as fewer operators and/or limited resources, and on the robot service integration with various devices supported by the other robot platform, such as RTM (Robot Technology Middleware), particularly. In this paper, we clarified these requirements and solved them by pseudo PUSH communication method, by introducing multimedia/sensor profile and by building RSi/RTM gateway. Moreover, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme through the performance experiments. And also these results have been also reflected in RSNP 2.0, the latest specification.

Verification of the effectiveness of robots for sales promotion in commercial facilities

Over the course of 4 years, we have conducted field operational tests by placing robots in commercial facilities to examine what services are possible and what are the issues faced in achieving practical use. As it stands now, we found great disparity between the users perception of using robots and actual robot functions. Also, we found that there were issues with items such as the cost of achieving functions in line with user perception. Thus, it is necessary to examine services that are feasible given the limits of current technology, as well as verify and evaluate the services in an actual environment. Among the services we conducted, we focused on sales promotion services, which can clearly show costs and quantitative effects. The effectiveness was measured and evaluated. We present these results and observations. We also present guidelines for operation for practical application and contents of service to be implemented.

Affective motion for pleasure-unpleasure expression in behavior of robots

Existing human-robot interaction generates the robots emotion based on the information acquired from an interaction. In this paper, we propose generating a robots feelings from external environmental information(temperature and, humidity) which is completely unrelated to the interaction. Additionally, we found a strong correlation between a robots forward-bending angle and the pleasure-unpleasure feelings communicated by it, for about 60 percent of the subjects from the experimental results of our previous research. Therefore, we investigated whether the impression of “being harmonized” could be given to subjects when expressing the robots feelings by a comfort index. As a result, the group that shows a strong correlation between a robots forward-bending angle and pleasure-unpleasure feelings communicated by it could be given to subjects impression of “being harmonized”.