Abstract
〈Vol.2 No.6(2009.11)〉
Titles
《Special Issue on Integration of Intelligent Technologies in Our Daily Life》
[Contributed Papers]
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■ RTC-Lite:Lightweight RT-Component for Distributed Embedded System:
AIST・Noriaki ANDO,Osaka University・Ken'ichi OHARA,
NTT DoCoMo・Takashi SUZUKI,and AIST・Kohtaro OHBA
We have studied software platform for robotic system integration, and proposed component based software platform called RT-Middleware (RTM) and RT-Component (RTC). In the networked robotic systems, such as intelligent space or ambient intelligence, a lot of embedded devices are distributed and networked. In such system, very light-weight middleware for microprocessor is needed.
In this paper, model based robotic system integration approach to realize interoperability between microprocessor based devices and conventional RT-Component based systems is proposed. Based on the scheme of model driven way, lightweight RT-Component named RTC-Lite is derived from original RT-Component's abstract model, and it is implemented as a new platform specific definition for microprocessors. Finally, it is shown that the microprocessor based RTC and the conventional PC based RTC can be developed by the almost same manner, and interoperability can be realized.
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■ Reader Placement Effects of a Moving Robot on Floor-Installed-Type RFID
Systems
Waseda University・Kenri KODAKA, Haruhiko NIWA, and Shigeki SUGANO
This paper offers a significant evaluation of reader's placement for wheeled
robots to estimate their posture from a lattice of RFID tags. RFID systems
where IC tags are installed under/on floors have widely been utilized in
recent years as the next positioning infrastructure. There is a model room
in the Wabot-house Laboratory of Waseda University, where the floor has
a lattice of RFID tags, and some actual experiments previously revealed
that robots could accurately estimate their posture. The readers' antennas
should be properly configured on a robot so that such an environment can
give full play to its potential capabilities of positioning the robot.
This problem calls for something like guidelines in designing the placement
of readers. Experiments using actual robots cannot offer sufficient data
because of time and physical limitations, which prevent helpful and reproducible
evaluations of configurations. We construct a simulation environment using
a localization model and evaluated the effects of configurations on positioning
accuracy by using detailed computations. Then we obtain the simulation
results, which enable us to identify some useful clues in designing where
readers should be placed. In addition, a validation experiment using an
actual robot verifies a part of the simulation results.
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■ Discrimination and Implementation of Emotions on Zoomorphic Robot Movements
Shizuoka University・Takafumi MATSUMARU
This paper discusses discrimination and implementation of emotions on a
zoomorphic robot aiming at designing emotional robot movements and improving
robot friendliness. We consider four emotions; joy, anger, sadness, and
fear. Two opposite viewpoints, performer and observer, are considered to
acquire emotional movement data for analysis. The performer subjects produce
emotional movements and movements that are easy to be recognized as expressions
of the intended emotion are selected among the measured movements by the
observer subjects. Discriminating the emotion embedded in a movement is
tried using feature values based on the Laban movement analysis (LMA) and
the principal component analysis (PCA). By the discrimination using PCA,
the resultant rates of the correct discrimination are about 70% for all
four emotions. The features of emotional movements are presumed from the
coefficients of the discrimination function obtained in the emotion discrimination
using PCA. Emotions are implemented by converting a setup for basic movements
by employing the design principle based on the movement features. The result
of the verification experiment suggests that four emotional movements are
divided into two groups; the joy and anger group and the sadness and fear
group. The emotional movements of joy or anger are dynamic, large-scale
and frequent being relatively easy to interpret the intended emotion, while
the emotional movements of sadness or fear are static, small-scale and
little making difficult to understand the feature of movements.
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■ Object Tracking Based Calibration of Poses of Distributed Laser Range
Finders for Intelligent Space
The University of Tokyo・Takeshi SASAKIand Hideki HASHIMOTO
This paper presents an automated calibration method for laser range finders
distributed in the environment. Laser range finder has recently been considered
to be one of the most useful sensors for applications for Intelligent Space
(iSpace) which is a space with many distributed sensors and actuators since
it can realize both object tracking and map building. In this research,
the object tracking function is used for pose estimation of the sensors.
In the proposed method, each sensor first obtains positions of moving objects
in the environment in its local coordinate system. If these sensors have
overlapping observation regions, position of the same object is acquired
as a corresponding point. The relative position and orientation of two
laser range finders are then estimated from a set of corresponding points.
Finally, poses of the laser range finders with regard to arbitrary coordinate
system are calculated based on the relative pose estimations. The proposed
method does not require global positions of objects and information on
the objects. In addition, multiple objects can be utilized in order to
calibrate laser range finders distributed in a wide area efficiently.
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■ Hand-Arm Coordinated Manipulation Using Active Body-Environment Contact
Waseda University・Taisuke SUGAIWA,
Hiroyasu IWATA, and Shigeki SUGANO
Human-symbiotic humanoid robots that can perform tasks dexterously using
their hands are needed in our homes, welfare facilities, and other places.
To improve their task performance, we propose a motion control scheme aimed
at appropriately coordinated hand and arm motions. By observing human manual
tasks, we identified active bodyenvironment contact as a kind of human
manual skill and devised a motion control scheme based on it. We also analyzed
the effectiveness of active body-environment contact in glass-placing and
drawer-opening tasks. We validated our motion control scheme through actual
tests on a prototype human-symbiotic humanoid robot.
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■ Measurement and Modeling of Electro-chemical Properties of Ion Polymer
Metal Composite by Complex Impedance Analysis
Suzuka University of Medical Science・
Taro NAKAMURA, Tadashi IHARA,
Mie University・Takashi HORIUCHI,
RIKEN・Toshiharu MUKAI, and NAIST・Kinji ASAKA
The electrochemical and electromechanical characteristics of ion polymer
metal composite (IPMC) were investigated using impedance analysis. The
capacitance and resistance of IPMC were measured with various IPMC thicknesses,
plating repetitions, and preheating times, which are the contributing factors
of force generation. The generated force of IPMC increased with increasing
IPMC thickness, number of plating repetitions, and extended preheating
time. IPMC capacitance correlated with the generated force in all three
cases, whereas IPMC resistance showed an independent change. These results
show a strong correlation of the generated force of IPMC to its capacitance
and structure and to the conditions for the IPMC fabrication process that
increase its capacitance.
▲ ■ Finger Pose Estimation Based on Anatomical Motion Constraints
Tokyo University of Technology・Akinori SASAKI,
Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology・Hiroshi HASHIMOTO,
Setsunan University・Sho YOKOTA,
and Tokyo University of Technology・Yasuhiro Ohyama
In this paper, a finger pose estimation method is presented. Directly using fingers is useful in some applications such that requires handling of 3D position information. Our finger pose estimation method exploits anatomical constraints on finger motion, and ring-shaped markers to achieve simple and practical measurements applicable to daily life situations. Use of the anatomical constraints ensures that no exact placement of the marker is required.
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■ Modeling and Control of 2-D Grasping of an Object with Arbitrary Shape under Rolling Contact
RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center/
Ritsumeikan University・Suguru ARIMOTO,
RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center・Morio YOSHIDA,
Ritsumeikan University・Masahiro SEKIMOTO,
and Kyushu University・Kenji TAHARA
Modeling, control, and stabilization of dynamics of two-dimensional object
grasping by using a pair of multijoint robot fingers are investigated under
rolling contact constraints and an arbitrary geometry of the object and
fingertips. First, a fundamental testbed problem of modeling and control
of rolling motion between 2-D rigid bodies with an arbitrary shape is treated
under the assumption that the two contour curves coincide at the contact
point and share the same tangent. The rolling constraint induces the Euler
equation of motion that is parameterized by a common arclength parameter
and constrained onto the kernel space orthogonally complemented to the
image space spanned from the constraint gradient. By extending the analysis
to the problem of stable grasp of a 2-D object with an arbitrary shape
by a pair of robot fingers, the Euler-Lagrange equation of motion of the
overall fingers/object system parametrized by arclength parameters is derived,
together with a couple of first-order differential equations that express
evolutions of contact points in terms of the second fundamental form. It
is shown that 2-D rolling constraints are integrable in the sense of Frobonius
even if their Pfaffian forms are characterized by arclength parameters.
A control signal called “blind grasping” is introduced and shown to be
effective in stabilization of grasping without using the details of the
object shape and parameters or external sensing. An extension of the Dirichlet-Lagrange
stability theorem to a class of systems with DOF-redundancy under constraints
is suggested by using a Morse-Bott-Lyapunov function.
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■ Simple Adaptive Servosystems with Tuning Parameterst
Kobe University・Yasumasa FUJISAKI
A simple adaptive servosystem with a tuning parameter is considered for a linear continuous-time plant. A reference model is introduced for specifying a desirable transient response, while an integral compensator is used in order to cope with a constant disturbance input. Then, an adaptive control law is proposed, which achieves a suitable model following control independently of selection of the integral gain. In other words, a disturbance rejection property can be tuned by the gain without changing the adaptive control law, which is a feature of this simple adaptive servosystem.
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■ Quantification of Emphysema: A Bullae Distribution based Approach
Keio University・Kok Liang TAN, Toshiyuki TANAKA,
Tokyo Electric Power Hospital・Hidetoshi NAKAMURA,
Keio University・Toru SHIRAHATA, and Hiroaki SUGIURA
Computed tomography (CT)-based quantifications of emphysema encompass, and are not limited to, the ratio of the low-attenuation area, the bullae size, and the distribution of bullae in the lung.
The standard CT-based emphysema describing indices include the mean lung density, the percentage of area of low attenuation [the pixel index (PI)] and the bullae index (BI). These standard emphysema describing indices are not expressive for describing the distribution of bullae in the lung. Consequently, the goal of this paper is to present a new emphysema describing index, the bullae congregation index (BCI), that describes whether bullae gather in a specific area of the lung and form a nearly single mass, and if so, how dense the mass of bullae is in the lung. BCI ranges from zero to ten corresponding to sparsely distributed bullae to densely distributed bullae. BCI is calculated based on the relative distance between every pair of bullae in the lung. The bullae pair distances are sorted into 200 distance classes. A smaller distance class corresponds to a closer proximity between the bullae. BCI is derived by calculating the percentage of the area of bullae in the lung that are separated by a certain distance class. Four bullae congregation classes are defined based on BCI.
We evaluated BCI using 114 CT images that are hand-annotated by radiologist into four bullae congregation classes. The average four-class classification accuracy of BCI is 88.21%. BCI correlates better than PI, BI and other standard statistical dispersion based methods with radiological consensus-classified bullae congregation class. While BCI is not a specific index for indicating emphysema severity, it complements the existing set of emphysema describing indices to facilitate a more thorough knowledge about the emphysematous conditions in the lung. BCI is especially useful when it comes to comparing the distribution of bullae for cases with approximately the same PI, BI or PI and BI. BCI is easy to interpret and potentitally helpful for the purpose of comparative study and progressive monitoring of emphysema.
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■ Forward Method for Crack Profiles Identification using Reduced Order
Decomposition Techniques Arising in Eddy Current Testing
Kobe University・Duong Thanh NGUYEN and Fumio KOJIMA
This paper is concerned with a forward method in inversion systems for identifying crack profiles arising in eddy current testing, using the reduced order Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) techniques. First, an optimal `ordered' basis of parameter-to-output mapping simulation data is created in the sense that the information captured in the first few basis elements is maximized. Then, in the forward algorithm, a fixed number of the first few basis elements, called the reduced POD basis, are used for computing relevant information with the variation of crack parameters. Since only a small number of basis elements are used, it is able to create an optimized forward algorithm in terms of calculation speed and usage of system resource. Numerical experimental results confirm the effectiveness and reliability of this method.
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■ Floquet Factorization Variants in Linear Continuous-Time Periodic Systems
Kyoto University・Jun ZHOU
In this paper, left and right Floquet factorizations for the state transition
matrices in finite-dimensional linear continuous-time periodic (FDLCP)
systems are defined and their general existence is discussed. Then, mutual
relationships and major characteristics of the left and right Floquet factorizations
and their miscellaneous variants are examined. In particular, reducibility/irreducibility,
commutativity and trace relationships among others are scrutinized. The
results are significant for analysis and synthesis of the FDLCP systems.
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