Plenary Talk
 Thursday August 21,
Prof. Shigeo Hirose (Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
"From Biologically-Inspired Robots to Reality: Snake and Quadruped Walking"
 *** Time is CHANGED. ***


Prof. Hirose Abstract.
Mother Nature is a precious source of imagination to develop a new type of robotic system. I was inspired by the motion of snakes in 1971 and since then I have been studying and developing several types of snake-like robots. Among these robots, I will discuss the design and control of amphibious snake-like robot ACM R-5 which made 3D swimming motion in swimming pool, and the latest type of snake-like rescue robot Souryu V which consists of three crawler units connected in series. I also started the study of a walking robot inspired by the walking motion of a spider. I will introduce our on-going research about the quadruped walking robot. I will introduce our on-going research about the quadruped walking robot. I will especially discuss the design of our latest model TITAN XI which weighs 7 tons and has legs with 3.7m in length and which are designed to perform construction tasks on a steep slope.

Biography.
Shigeo Hirose received his M. Eng. and Ph.D. Eng. Degrees in Control Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1973 and 1976, respectively. He was a Research Associate from 1976, Associate Professor from 1979, and Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1992. His research interest is in creative design of robotic mechanical systems, and developing multiple robots, such as snake-like, walking, wall climbing and crawler types. Prof. Hirose has been awarded more than twenty academic prizes including: Medal with Purple Ribbon in spring 2006 from Japanese government, the first Pioneer in Robotics & Automation Award in 1999 and Best Conference Paper Award in 1995, both from IEEE Robotics & Automation Society. He is also recipient of the first award of Merit in 2004 from IFToMM. He has published more than 200 academic papers as well as several books, including "Robotics" (Shokabo Publishing Co. Ltd., 1987, in Japanese), and "Biologically Inspired Robots" (Oxford University Press, 1993). He is the fellow of IEEE, JSME and RSJ.