Intelligent Robot Laboratory, University of Tsukuba

The robot segments the URG sensor data and locates the human feet, finds the center of the segment, and move towards the center of segment with a speed proportioned to the distance from the center of segment. Besides, it can avoid obstacles using potential force, where the segments other than the pair of legs will be imposed with repulsive vector, and attractive vector on the human feet. As an extra, the travelled distance, average speed and current speed are displayed on a graph.

A regenerative brake and regenerative energy drive system is attempted to move the robot without any battery to power its motors. In this demonstration, when the robot slides down the slope it will be able to avoid obstacle while sliding down. Besides, if it is pushed from behind manually, it will avoid obstacles by changing its own direction while moving.

While thinking of the usage of reflection intensity, the fact that Roboken members like coke cooks up the idea of bottled coke recognition. Coke is black in color in general thus it is weaker in laser reflection intensity compared to other drinks so this point is used for recognition. After starting up the robot, it will recognize the bottle coke among other drinks set on a specific location, and delivers the coke. The other drinks are unneeded in Roboken so it will clean them up after the coke delivery.

This is a robot which scans 3D form of human and things. With the URG sensor installed vertically and horizontally, the robot goes around a person once and acquire the 3D information of the person. Then from the data, the height, weight and BMI can be estimated and the person will be assessed as being slim or overweight.

The robot moves in a narrow passage which is surrounded with walls at both sides, similar to the 'L crank' test in driving school. The width of the passage is set as 40cm for the robot with width of 35cm. With the URG sensor detecting the distance of the walls on both sides, the robot moves forward without colliding into the walls. When it is at a turn, it will decide which way to turn to, and goes forward and backwards repeatedly to adjust its position while turning gradually. This demonstration reminds one of the scene at a driving school.

The robot is a small wheeled inverted pendulum robot. When the robot tilts and seems to collapse, it will move forward or backwards to balance itself while advancing to the front. The motor control system making the robot stand and proceed onwards is accomplished by adjusting the output of motor with the input from rotary encoder and gyro sensor. The robot can move up and down a plane surface with low inclination as well. AA battery is used as the power source of the robot.