並木 明夫

In this paper, a new zoom and focus mechanism for a high speed-vision is proposed. The mechanism consists of a varifocal lens and two AC servo motors. It is lightweight, and it has good performance to be controlled at high speed. We propose a visual servoing control for the zoom and focus mechanism. As the image features, the area of a target and SML (Sum of Modified Laplacian) are used. The relationships between these features and the joint angles of motors are measured to decide the parameters of control.

Multifingerd hand is capable of using tool and can increase its ability. With high-speed actuator and vision robot can do more advanced tool manipulation than human. The task multifingered hand catches a small ball in parabolic and free fall motion using tweezers is taken up for its demonstartion. Experimental results are also shown.

In order to achieve a skillful handling like a human hand, it is necessary that a hand has a capability to manipulate tools. One important problem of tool handling with a multifingered hand is that relative positions among a robot hand, a tool and a handled object change during the handling. For this reason, it is necessary to measure the relative positions in realtime, and to control a hand so as to cancel the changes. In our research, we have resolved this problem by using a high speed visual servoing and a passive joint model. Using the passive joint model, dexterous and flexible tool handling is achieved. In this paper, as an example, a tweezers is handled by a multifingered hand. A new method to control tools and some experiment results are shown.

In this paper high-speed manipulation system is developed, which consists of two manipulators and active visions. The design concept and the features of the system are described. In addition a task using non-contact state is taken up in order to achieve high-speed dynamic manipulation. Experimental results are also shown in which a manipulator throws a ball and the other manipulator hits the ball.

In this paper, we propose a new zoom and focus tracking system. First, a new zoom and focus mechanism for a high speed-vision is proposed. The mechanism consists of a varifocal lens and two DC blush motors. It is lightweight, and it has good performance to be controlled at high speed. Next we design a control system for a high-speed zoom and focus mechanism for a high-speed vision. In the control system, zoom is controlled by the area of a target, and focus is controlled based on SML(Sum of modified Laplacian).

In this paper we propose a novel display system that consists of a high-speed vision and high-speed projector. And this system can control a view of the projected image by controlling the original image acquired from high-speed vision. The projection image is generated based on the affine transformation estimated from present and desired positions of feature points on the camera image. By repeating these processes, a desired view of the projected image can be achieved on any deformable screen.

The purpose of the study is to achieve various types of paper handling such as turning over, bending, and folding, and the final goal is to achieve Origami task by multifingered hand. As a first step, in this paper, a position control of a paper by visual servoing is achieved. A paper is moved by using two fingertips. Each fingertip is controlled independently, and the paper can be controlled to a desired position and orientation by controlling the rotation speed of each fingertip and the angle of each finger link at the contact point. Experimental Results are shown

To develop a dexterous robot hand is one of the most important subjects in the robot research field. The purpose of this paper is to achieve skillful manipulation by a multi-fingered robot hand with fingertip revolution axes. First, the kinematic relationship between the fingertip revolution and the orientation of a grasped object is proposed. Secondly, based on the kinematics, a new orientation control method of a grasped object is proposed. This control method uses the rolling contacts between the fingertips and the object. As the target, a sphere, a cube and some tools were used.

The purpose of the study is to achieve high-speed throwing motion using the hand-arm. In order to achieve high-speed motion, a human motion is referred to. Most of human sports players can use kinetic energy efficiently based on dynamics of body. As a result, they achieve high-level performance. By simplifying the human swing motion, a two-link three-degree-of-freedom swing model is proposed. This model is easy to extract key points of dynamic swing motion: two-dimensional kinetic chain, and three-dimensional inertia force. Experimental results by high-speed robot arm are shown.

One of the most important functions for robot hand is to regrasp a target object. In recent years, the strategy which is called "Dynamic Regrasping" has been introduced to achieve high-speed regrasping. In this strategy, the regrasping task is achieved by throwing a target up and by catching it. In this paper, in order to improve the success rate of dynamic regrasping and achieve dynamic regrasping for any target, we introduce the new throwing strategy for dynamic regrasping by creating a throwing model.

This paper explains the dynamic manipulation of a linear flexible object with a high-speed robot arm. As an example of the dynamic manipulation, we perform the dynamic knotting of a flexible rope. First, the dynamic knotting by human is analyzed in order to extract the arm motion. Then, the arm motion is implemented to the robot arm. From the experimental result, the rope behavior during the high-speed dynamic manipulation can be approximated by the robot arm motion. Namely, it can be considered that the rope dynamics depend on the robot dynamics. According to this discussion, we construct ...

In this paper. visuomotor integration in high-speed manipulation system is discussed, and "dynamic pen-spinning" anti "one-handed knotting" ale proposed as the examples. These applications are based on not only the improvement of the vision and the multi-lingered hand but also new control strategies. The balanced development of the hardware and tire control method can produce new capability of manipulation.

In this paper the robotic throwing task is taken up in order to achieve high-speed dynamic manipulation. We propose a kinetic chain approach for swing motion focused on the torque transmission. In addition the release method using robotic hand is analyzed for ball control. Experimental results are also shown in which a high-speed manipulator throws a ball toward the target.

This paper illustrates the relationship between the knotting process and robot hand skills. To extract a necessary hand skill for knotting, the knotting motion by human is analyzed. As a result, loop production, rope permutation, and rope pulling are extracted. Moreover, taking the handling of both ends of a rope into account, rope moving is added. Then, the characteristics of these skills are clarified from viewpoint of the intersection description. Based on the analysis of knot and the characteristics of robot hand skill, the knotting process is described. Finally, the experimental result...

In order to achieve a skillful handling like a human hand, it is necessary that a hand has a capability to manipulate tools. One important problem of tool handling with a multifingered hand is that relative positions among a robot hand, a tool and a handled object change during the handling. For this reason, it is necessary to measure the relative positions in realtime, and to control a hand so as to cancel the changes. In our research, we have resolved this problem by using a high speed visual servoing. In this paper, as an example, a tweezers is handled by a multifingered hand. A new meth...

To achieve a human like grasping with a multi fingered robot hand, an interaction with vision and tactile information is indispensable. The method to use the camera for the vision information acquisition of the robot hand is common. The camera is effective globally but incorrect locally because of blind spot and the shadow of robot hand itself. Therefore it is thought that acquisition of approach and contact information to the object continually is very effective for grasping by introducing the proximity sensor which is sensing distance of several centimeter from an object. This time we pro...

「高速マニピュレーションプロジェグト」の目的は,人間を超える高速マニピュレーション能力を持つ多指ロボットハンドシステムを開発することであり,これまでに,高速多指ハンドの開発,様々なタスクのダイナミックスキルの解析,センサフィードバックによるダイナミックスキルの実現などについて研究を行ってきた.本稿では,本プロジェクトの現状の研究成果と今後の展望について述べる.

To achieve a human like grasping by the multi-fingered robot hand, grasping force should be controlled without information of the grasping object such as the weight and the friction coefficient. In this study, we propose a method for detecting the slip of grasping object by force output of the Center of Pressure (CoP) tactile sensor. CoP sensor can measure center position of distributed load and total load which is applied on the surface of the sensor within 1 [ms] . This sensor is arranged on finger of the robot hand, and the effectiveness as slip detecting sensor is confirmed by experimen...

To achieve a human like grasping by the multi-fingered robot hand, grasping force should be controlled without information of the grasping object such as the weight and the friction coefficient. In this study, we propose a method for controlling grasping force of multi-fingered robot hand based on slip detection using the Center of Pressure(CoP) tactile sensor. CoP sensor can measure center position of distributed load and total load within 1ms. With the CoP sensor, incipient slip can be detected as the sensor force output signal change before the slip displacement occurs. We propose a meth...

Handling behavior of human can be divided into Pinching and Grasping. In multi-fingered robot hand, wrapping grasp which permits the object to contact with the finger link other than the tip of finger, or palm is called Power grasp. The interaction with the tactile sensor is indispensable for the achievement of Power grasp to and unknown object with the multi-fingered robot hand. In this study, for the achievement of Power grasp operation which doesn't depend on the grasping object wit the multi-fingered robot hand, we propose a method for multi-point contact force control in inside of the ...

The speed of recent robotic manipulation is very slow although a mechanical system excels in the speed of motion fundamentally. On the other hand various inventions which contribute to fast movement are reported in human motion. For instance, in human throwing motion we can observe the movement called "kinetic chain" which enables to propagate kinetic energy. Based on this motion, a throwing strategy focused on the superposition of wave patterns is proposed in order to achieve high-speed robot motion. The evaluation on contact modeling for control of a target is also analyzed.

In this study, we propose a strategy of knotting using a high-speed multifingered robot hand and tactile sensors. The strategy is divided to three steps: a loop generation, a replacement of ropes, and a pulling of a rope. Through these three steps, a knotting is achieved by only one multifingered hand. And, in order to allow the continuous motion, we have added one step: "a shift of rope". The experimental results are shown using the multifingered hand with tactile sensors. Finally, we analyze a behavior of the replacement of rope to produce a high rate of success.

This paper newly proposes a multi-fingered robot hand with a common rotational axis shared by all base joints of finger. By focusing on a manipulation around such a particular axis, finger motion planning drastically becomes simple. In order to generate the common rotational axis, we introduce the dual turning mechanism where two and two other fingers can independently turn along the inner and the outer circles with the common center axis, respectively. Due to this mechanism, the developed hand is good at twisting motion based tasks, for example opening a cap from a bottle, within one hand,...

Speeding up of robot motion provides not only improvement in operating efficiency but also dexterous manipulation using unstable state or non-contact state. To produce high-speed manipulation, we have developed a robot system with 1 [kHz] vision sensors. In this paper, a hybrid trajectory generator is proposed so as to get high performance out of high-speed robot system. This algorithm consists of both mechanical high-speed motion and sensor-based reactive motion to target movement. As an example of high-speed manipulation, a robotic batting task have been achieved. In addition, performance...

"Dynamics matching" is a design concept in sensory-motor fusion systems, where the performance is maximized by ad adjustment of the dynamics of the system under the physical and computational constraints. This paper models dynamics matching as all optimization problem and constructs an adaptive acquisition algorithm. A numerical experiment on the target-tracking task using active vision is presented as an example, and it is shown that a reasonable Solution is acquired by the proposed approach. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this paper, visuomotor integration in high-speed manipulation system is discussed, and several dynamic manipulation strategies are proposed as the examples. These applications are based on not only the improvement of the vision and manipulator but also new control strategies. The balanced development of the hardware and the control method can produce new capability of manipulation.

Speeding up robot motion provides not only improvement in operating efficiency but also improves dexterous manipulation by taking advantage of an unstable state or noncontact state. In this paper we describe a hybrid trajectory generator that produces high-speed manipulation. This algorithm produces both mechanical high-speed motion and sensor-based reactive motion. As an example of high-speed manipulation, a robotic ball control in a batting task has been achieved. Performance evaluation is also analyzed.

In most previous studies, it has been difficult for a robot hand to regrasp a target quickly because its motion was static or quasi-static, in a constant cantact state. In order to achieve high-speed regrasping, we propose a new strategy which we call dynamic regrasping. In this strategy, the regrasping task is achieved by throwing a target up and by catching it. In this paper, the regrasping strategy based on visual feedback is presented and experimental results using a high-speed multifingered robot hand and a high-speed vision system are shown. A cylinder is chosen as a specific example ...

We propose a tactile feedback system in real time using a high-speed multifingered robot hand and high-speed tactile sensor. The hand and the sensor is respectively capable of high-speed finger motion up to 180 deg per 0.1 s and high-speed tactile feedback with a sampling rate higher than 1 kHz. We have achieved the pen spinning task using the two robot fingers. In this paper, we describe dynamic pen spinning as an example of a skillful manipulation task with the three robot fingers using the system. The paper describes the tactile feedback control strategies and experimental results.

A multifingered hand system which can catch a thrown ball at a high-speed by visual feedback control is developed. The system consists of 1ms vision chip system, high-speed multifingered hand system, and visual feedback control system. A ball is thrown from a launcher, and it arrives at a multifingered hand about within 0.1s. The hand catches the ball by its fingertips. This is a result of the project "Artificial Hand and Brain Based on Sensory-Motor Fusion Theory" in the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). I...

In this paper we discuss the design of the 100G capturing robot from the point of view of dynamic pre-shaping where all finger links make contact with the target object simultaneously. After briefly explaining the overview of the 100G capturing robot, we mathematically formulate the dynamic pre-shaping problem where we discuss how to determine the mechanical parameters, such as pulley positions, pulley radius, mass of finger link, and spring constant. We show a couple of experiments where the robot parameter is determined based on the dynamic pre-shaping problem.

This paper newly proposes the four-fingered robot hand with dual turning mechanism where two and two other fingers can independently rotate inner and outer circles with the common center, respectively. Due to this mechanical configuration, it has the particular rotating axis where the manipulation around the axis can be completely decomposed into the velocity control around the axis and the internal force control in the contact plane. We achieved a manipulation task around the axis with the time of 0.8[sec] for one rotation, while it is relatively slow for another axis.

In order to achieve faster and more dexterous manipulations, we propose a strategy called "dynamic holding." In the dynamic holding condition, the object is held in a stable condition while moving at high-speed. In this paper, we first explain the concept of dynamic holding, then we describe an experiment of dribbling by a robot as an example of dynamic holding using a high-speed multifingered hand and a high-speed vision system.

The coexistence of humans and industrial robots in a common workspace provides the advantage of increased flexibility in production or longer system up-time during maintenance. However, it is fundamentally necessary to guarantee the safety of the human. This paper presents an approach that uses a specialized tracking-vision-chip to realize a high-speed emergency-stop for safe human-robot-coexistence. The presented approach uses the ability of the vision-chip to perform pixel-parallel masking and fast summation-operations on binary images to detect whether the robot and human are too close. After initial evaluation in a (semi)-simulation, the approach was realized in an experimental system. Even with only a small 8-Bit microcontroller controlling the vision-chip and the communication, a cycle time of more than 500Hz was achieved.

This paper discusses the 100G Capturing Robot that can produce the maximum acceleration of 100G in design specification. To achieve such a high acceleration, we utilize spring energy with a light arm/gripper. The Arm/Gripper Coupling Mechanism (AGCM) is newly introduced so that we can efficiently transmit a single energy resource for finally closing the gripper. Experimental results show that the developed robot can capture a dropping ball with the maximum acceleration of 91G and the capturing time of roughly 25ms. We also discuss various technical issues to be considered when designing such a high speed capturing robot.