The Tsukuba Challenge received the 11th Robot Grand Prize (Japan Machinery Federation Chairman Award, Human Resource Development Category / Manufacturing Field), in which Our labvoratory, Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, has participated for many years and Professor Ohya currently serves as executive committee chair.
https://www.robotaward.jp/winning/prize/pdf/RobotAward_GB_2024_7-1.pdf
At the "Tsukuba Challenge 2023", a technology challenge that makes mobile robots autonomously run on real environments such as promenade in Tsukuba City, our laboratory robot "kerberos" and ”Tsukutsuku” achieved Milestone 3 "Completion (Goal), which Only 6 of the 66 robots achieved.
Mr. Hidemi Ando, an alumnus of our Laboratory (then Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Master Program), received The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) 2023 Control Division Young Author’s Award: Technology Area. The award-winning paper was: Hidemi Ando, Shintaro Nakatani, Hisashi Date, “Trajectory Generation of Center of Mass for Biped Robot by Monte Carlo Model Predictive Control Considering Upper Body Contact with Walls and Constraints of ZMP”, the 9th SICE Multi-Symposium on Control Systems (MSCS2022).
Mr. Toyama Jyunya (Master's and Doctoral Program in Computer Science) received the Best Poster Presentation Award at the 10th SICE Multi-Symposium on Control Systems (MSCS2023). The award-winning paper was: Toyama Jyunya, Akihisa Ohya, Hisashi Date, "Walking control of a quadruped robot with a self-weight support mechanism".
At the "Tsukuba Challenge 2022", a technology challenge that makes mobile robots autonomously run on real environments such as promenade in Tsukuba City, our laboratory robot "Panjyan" achieved Milestone 3 "Completion (Goal), which Only 10 of the 60 robots achieved.https://tsukubachallenge.jp/2022/
Mr. Isami Kamae (Master's and Doctoral Program in Computer Science) from our laboratory was awarded Excellent Presentation Award in 22th SICE Sytem Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2021). The award-winning paper was: Isami Kamae, Ayanori Yorozu, Akihisa Ohya, "Generation of map that containing step, dent information that hinder mobile robots and route planning using the map".
Mr. Ryodo Tanaka from our laboratory was awarded Excellent Presentation Award in 22th SICE Sytem Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2021). The award-winning paper was: Yuki Onishi, Ryodo Tanaka, Shin’ichiro Nakaoka, "Enhancing ROS Integration of the Robot Simulator Choreonoid".
Mr. Shigeki Kobayashi (Master's and Doctoral Program in Computer Science) from our laboratory was awarded Excellent Presentation Award in 22th SICE Sytem Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2021). The award-winning paper was: Shigeki Kobayashi, Shogo Katsuhara, Yosuke Ida, Hisashi Date, "Participation Report for tsukuba Challenge 2021 by Team Tsukurno Tsukuvanna".
Mr.Shintaro Nakatani (Department of Intelligent and Mechanical interaction System, Doctoral Programs) from our laboratory was awarded Excellent Presentation award in 64th Japan Joint Automatic Control Conference. The award-winning paper was: Shintaro Nakatani, Hisashi Date, "Parallel Model Predictive Control using Sample-Based Newton-Like Method based on Quadratic Hypersurface Regression" .
Mr. takashi Watanabe (Department of Computer Science, Master Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in 20th SICE Sytem Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2019). The award-winning paper was: Takashi Watanabe, Hisashi Date, Akihisa Ohya, "The automated bird repellent system for lotus farm".
The Concrete Floor Finishing Robot「T-iROBO® SlabFinisher 」developed by Associate Professor Hisashi Date, cooperating with Taisei Corporation, has received Excellent Award (Infrastructure・Disaster Response・Construction Field ) in the 8th Robot Award. The Robot Award is awarded to robots and robot application systems that are considered to have great contribution and expectation for the creation of future society as well as the business・social implementation・elemental technology・research and development related to robots.
The Award is awarded by the Ministrry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Japan Machinery Federation in association with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communitcations, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. In the 8th Robot Award, 13 winners were selected from 161 applications.
Mr. Ichiho Ojima (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies,Master Program) from our laboratory was awarded Student Presentation Award in the 62nd Annual Conference of the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers (SCI’18). The award-winning paper was: Ichiho Ojima, Hisashi Date, "Graph Drawing Algorithm with Monte Carlo Tree Search "
At the "Tsukuba Challenge 2017", a technology challenge that makes mobile robots autonomously run on real environments such as promenade in Tsukuba City, our laboratory robot "Kerberos" achieved all missions required, and received the Tsukuba Mayor Prize. Only 2 of the 65 robots from 53 teams, achieved all missions of the course including the crossing of the crosswalk. The challenge included autonomous running of a course of 2,000 meters in length, finding 4 people to be searched, recognizing the traffic light of a crosswalk. In addition, the robot "MASARU" of our laboratory found 2 people to be searched and achieved autonomous running of 760 m. "Stella" did not use the laser scanner, aimed at autonomous driving by the video camera, was autonomous running up to 23 m.
Concrete floor finishing robot semi autonomous control operation system developed by Associate Professor Hisashi Date, cooperating with Taisei Corporation, was press released (https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/171026taisei.pdf). It is aimed at labor-saving concrete floor finishing work at the construction site and improving the work environment, and the technology of self-position estimation and control of mobile robot is applied in automation.
Professor Takashi Tsubouchi received the "industry-university collaboration special prize" from the Resona Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion Foundation and the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun. This award is part of the "29th Small and Medium Enterprise Excellent New Technology / New Product Award" sponsored by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration and operated by the foundation. As a forest measuring device OWL, which is the result of joint research and development between Professor and the add-on research institute, received the "Outstanding Award of Excellent New Technology / New Product Award", Professor was awarded as having a high contribution in terms of technical guidance. 10 outstanding prizes were selected from among about 360 entries.
Mr. Azumi Suzuki (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies,Master Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 17th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2016). The award-winning paper was: Azumi Suzuki, Hisashi Date, Takashi Tsubouchi, Akihisa Ohya, Kosuke Shigematsu, Ryosuke Mitsudome, "Navigation Dependent Solely on Metric Route Information as Prior Information"
Mr. Kiyoshi Suwabe (Department of Computer Science,Master Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 17th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2016). The award-winning paper was: Kiyoshi Suwabe, Akihisa Ohya, "Proposal of the guidance system for the visually impaired person using a three-dimensional range sensor -Avoidance and detection of obstacles-"
Mr. Kosuke Shigematsu (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies,Doctor Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 17th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2016). The award-winning paper was: Kosuke Shigematsu, Yuichi Konishi, Takashi Tsubouchi, Kiyoshi Suwabe, Ryosuke Mitsudome, Hisashi Date, Akihisa Ohya, "Recognition of a Traffic Signal and a Search Target using Deep learning for Tsukuba Challenge 2016"
At Tsukuba Challenge 2016, a technological challenge to run autonomous mobile robots in real environments in Tsukuba City promenade, our lab's robot "Rossy" completed all tasks and was awarded Tsukuba City Mayor's Prize. It was the only robot out of 64 from 53 teams to complete all tasks, including to autonomously navigate the 2,177 m course, find all search target people, and cross a crosswalk with traffic light recognition. Also from our laboratory, the robot "Kenaf" ran for 600 m, and "Kerberos" for 530 m.
Mr. Ryohsuke Mitsudome (College of Engineering Systems, Bachelor Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 16th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2015). The award-winning paper was: Ryohsuke Mitsudome, Hisashi Date, Takashi Tsubouchi, Akihisa Ohya, Kosuke Shigematsu, Azumi Suzuki "Simulation of Tsukuba Challenge Environment in Gazebo"
Mr. Yusuke Fujii (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies,Master Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 16th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2015). The award-winning paper was: Yusuke Fujii, Akihisa Ohya, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Effective LIDAR Data Processing Method for Mobile Robot Localization in Crowded Environments -Evaluation through Experiments-"
Meanwhile we have also challenged the technology of Autonomous travel for mobile robot to walking on the promenade in tsukuba city. Robot "Rossy" from our laboratory is the only robot which has finished all task and walked 1.3km using autonomous travel technology in bad weather. Another robot from our laboratory "Kerberos" has walked 670m autonomously as well.
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) and Prof. Takashi Tsubouchi from our laboratory, and Mr. Akira Oshima from Doog Inc. were awarded Outstanding Paper Award in the 20th Robotics Symposia (ROBOSYM 2015). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Takashi Tsubouchi, Akira Oshima, "Grid-based SLAM with Accumulated Scan Matching for Considering Previous Data".
At Tsukuba Challenge 2014, a technological challenge to run autonomous mobile robots in real environments such as pedestrian walkways in Tsukuba city, the robot Rossy from team robolin.jp of our lab completed the course, running autonomously for 1,482 m, found all five search target people, and received Tsukuba City Mayor's prize.
The robot Lo~op from team Tamagokakegohan, also of our lab, completed the course, running autonomously for 1,804 m and found one of the search targets.
Prof. Takashi Tsubouchi was awarded Fellowship of the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) in the 32nd Annual Conference of the RSJ (RSJ 2014). Commendation reason is his research and management contributions to RSJ.
Prof. Takashi Tsubouchi was awarded The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) Certificate of Merit of Outstanding Contribution to the Robotics and Mechatronics Division in the Robotics and Mechatronics Conference 2014 (ROBOMECH 2014). Commendation reason is his activity as the General Chair of the Robotics and Mechatronics Conference 2013 (ROBOMEC 2013).
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded the Prize of the Head of the Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba. Commendation reason is his research activity as a doctoral student and as a JSPS Research Fellow DC1.
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) Young Author's Award for Basic Research in SICE general meeting. The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Shigeru Bando, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Point Cloud Matching for Localization Using Maximum A Posteriori Estimation to Prevent Over-Confidence," the 13th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2012).
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 14th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2013). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Akira Oshima, Shun Kawamoto, Atsushi Watanabe, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Installation of Embedded PCs and Implementation of Autonomous Navigation Technologies for a Passenger Vehicle Based on an Electric Wheelchair".
Mr. Atsushi Watanabe (Department of Computer Science, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 14th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2013). The award-winning paper was: Atsushi Watanabe, Akihisa Ohya, "Estimation of Back-EMF Constant for Mobile Robot Embedded Motors by Only Using a Rotary Encoder".
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) System Integration Award for Outstanding Young Researchers in the 14th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2013). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Shigeru Bando, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Point Cloud Matching for Localization Using Maximum A Posteriori Estimation to Prevent Over-Confidence," the 13th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2012).
At "Tsukuba Challenge 2013", which is a technological challenge to run fully autonomous mobile robots on pedestrian walkway in Tsukuba city, the robot "Lo~op" from team "Tamagokake Gohan" of our lab completed an autonomous run of 1,843 m to the goal and completed all five human-searching tasks, and received Tsukuba City Mayor's Prize.
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded The Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) Young Investigation Excellence Award in the 31st Annual Conference of the RSJ (RSJ 2013). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Shigeru Bando, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Formulation of a Point Cloud Matching Method for Localization Based on the Bayesian Approach to Prevent Over-Confidence," the 30th Annual Conference of the RSJ (RSJ 2012).
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in the 13th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2012). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Shigeru Bando, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Point Cloud Matching for Localization Using Maximum A Posteriori Estimation to Prevent Over-Confidence".
At "Tsukuba Challenge 2012", which is a technological challenge to run fully autonomous mobile robots on pedestrian walkway in Tsukuba city, the robot "Hitotsubo" from team "Outdoor Group 2012" of our lab completed the 1.4 km autonomous run to the goal, and received Tsukuba City Mayor's Prize.
Mr. Yoshitaka Hara (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in 12th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2011). The award-winning paper was: Yoshitaka Hara, Takashi Tsubouchi, Shinichi Yuuta, "Development of an Autonomous Mobile Robot for Outdoor Environments on ROS Platform".
Mr. Atsushi Watanabe (Department of Computer Science, Doctoral Program) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in 12th SICE Sytem Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2011). The award-winning paper was: Atsushi Watanabe, Akihisa Ohya, Shin'ichi Yuta, "Desgin of High-efficiency Feed-forward Current Control for Small Brushless DC Motor", and: Watanabe Atsushi, Bando Shigeru, Yuta Shin'ichi, "Outdoor Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robots Based on Road and Intersection Recognition and Direction Detection".
Mr. Shun Kawamoto (College of Information Science) from our laboratory was awarded SI Excellent Presentation Award in 12th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI 2011). The award-winning paper was: Shun Kawamoto, Yuki Tadokoro, Taku Shikina, Takashi Tsubouchi, "Visualization of the Internal State and Real-time Sensor Data in Outdoor Autonomous Mobile Robot".
At "Tsukuba Challenge 2011", which is a technological challenge to run fully autonomous mobile robot through 1.4 km of public road, the robot "Lo~op" from team Pedestrian of our lab completed all tasks from the 1.4 km run and received the Tsukuba City Mayor's Prize.
Also from our lab: robot "Rossy" from team Tsukuba Intelligent Robot Research Group run up to the 1,413 m point, robot "Hitotsubo" from Outdoor Group 2011 run up to the 1,225 m point, robot "Yamabico Melos" from Indoor Group 2011 run up to the 1,010 m point, and robot "Saburo" from team Saburo and Friends run up to the 60 m point.
At "Tsukuba Challenge 2010", which is a technological challenge to run fully autonomous mobile robot through 1.1 km of public road, the robot "Hitotsubo" from Outdoor Group 2010 of our lab and robot "TUFS2010" from Fujisoft Inc./University of Tsukuba MRIM Project completed all tasks from the 1.1 km run and received the Tsukuba City Mayor's Prize.
Robot "Yamabico Melos" from Indoor Group 2010 of our lab was able to run up to the 365 m point.
Mr. E. Magid (Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Doctoral Program) from our lab was chosen as a finalist for RoboCup Best Paper Award in 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010). The award-winning paper was: E. Magid, T. Tsubouchi, E. Koyanagi, and T. Yoshida, "Static Balance for Rescue Robot Navigation: Losing Balance on Purpose within Random Step Environment", Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 349-356, 2010.
Assoc. Prof. Ohya received Education Contribution Award in the first faculty meeting of Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering of 2010 for his significant contribution to education in informatics and information sciences in 2009 as a model graduate school instructor.
"Tsukuba Challenge 2009", which took place in November, was a challenge to run robots autonomously in a 1 km course around Tsukuba Koen-dori and Tsukuba Central Park. Sixty-five teams from all over Japan participated in the challenge, five robots completed the course. Apart from Prof. Ohya's team (robot: TUFS), the following teams also completed the course: Chiba Institute of Technology, Hitachi, Tohoku University. Roboken alumni played a role in every team.
The robot "Hitotsubo" from our lab's outdoor group 2009 passed the trial but retired at 620 m point. Also from our lab, the robot "Yamabico Melos" from group TsukuRobo passed the trial as well.
Prof. Takashi Tsubouchi received the award after a fair and impartial examination by the committee
This award honors Professor Fumio Harashima, founder of the IROS (IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems), by recognizing a member of the IROS community who has pioneered activities in robotics and intelligent systems. Prof. Yuta was recognized for his technological contribution in "Yamabico" platform and his leadership in IROS so far.
Prof. Yuta was recognized for his service as chairman for 10 years since the foundation of the symposia.
This medal is awarded for excellent technology and product development during the year. For the performance, potential applications, and impact on industry of the SOKUIKI sensor series, developed in cooperation with Hokuyo Automatic Co., Ltd, Prof. Yuta and Mr. Mori (of Hokuyo Automatic Co., Ltd.) were awarded the medal.
The three books, "Creative Robot Design A: For Novice Robotics Engineers", "Creative Robot Design B: Deepen your ideas for Robotic Engineering", "Creative Robot Design C: Beginning Robot Control and Embedding Computers" were appraised to have contributed to the increase in the number of people in Japan to be interested in robotics. The award was shared with co-authors of the books Prof. Kan Yoneda (Chiba Institute of Technology) and Prof. Hisashi Ohsumi (Chuo University).
Awarded on June 27th, at Fire and Disaster Management Agency National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster's "60th Anniversary of the municipal fire-fighting system, exhibition of research and development and case studies of emergency management robots and advanced materials and equipments", held in Chofu, Tokyo.
The International Rescue System Research Organization received research assignment from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency on the theme "Development of hydraulic-pneumatic drive advanced search equipment". Each member of the research organization: Osaka Prefectural College of Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Okayama University, and University of Tsukuba are to each form a research group and develop their assigned search and rescue system.
At this time "high-performance materials and equipments for search in rubbles and life-saving work" was evaluated. Our laboratory was in charge of "Stereo camera capable of searching in narrow space". This was the research theme of Mr. Masayuki Hayashi (Master Program, graduated in March 2008).
The other laboratories were in charge of the following: Tokyo Institute of Technology, combining pneumatic jack; Okayama University, hydraulic jack robot and hydraulic artificial muscle jack; Osaka Prefectural College of Technology, miniaturized hydraulic spreader and pneumatic-hydraulic transducer.
In awarding the Academic Achievement Award, the organization recognizes the recipient's engagement in studies on control and planning of mobile robots, and his contribution in the field of mobile robot system and sensor-based navigation.
Awarded for distinguished text books of "Creative Robot Design A: For Novice Robotics Engineers", "Creative Robot Design B: Deepen your ideas for Robotic Engineering", "Creative Robot Design C: Beginning Robot Control and Embedding Computers". The award was shared with co-authors of the books Prof. Kan Yoneda (Chiba Institute of Technology) and Prof. Hisashi Ohsumi (Chuo University).
The three books were chosen for the award for: their wide adoption by universities and technical colleges, large support by robotics education professionals, adoption as reference book in many creative educational training courses, its practical nature, etc.
The award-winning paper was "A 3-D Scan Matching using Improved 3-D Normal Distributions Transform for Mobile Robotic Mapping" from Robotics Symposia 2006.
The award-winning paper was "Development of Autonomous Systems for Loading Operation by Wheel Loader," S. Sarata, N. Koyachi, T. Tsubouchi, H. Osumi, M. Kurisu and K. Sugawara.
Prof. Yuta and Mr. Kawata (Department of Computer Science, doctoral program for working individuals) was awarded the Technical Innovations Award by the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) for "Development of "SOKUIKI" Sensor (Optical Range-Sensor) for Mobile Robot's Environment Recognition."
It was awarded in recognition of the high societal impact of the SOKUIKI sensor, which was commercialized the previous year, among other robotics technologies. The award was shared with Mori et al from Hokuyo Automatic Co., Ltd, the firm in which the commercialization took place.
Prof. Yuta served as project leader during the development, under the grant for strategic infrastructure technology from the organization of small-medium enterprises. He also developed specifications for robot sensor from the point of view of the user. Mr. Kawata played a central role in software development for the sensor from Hokuyo Automatic Co., Ltd.