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In super aged society, system that assists social activities of older adults is needed for cognitive enhancement. Group conversation is one of the social activities. One of the largest problems for older adults is the imbalance of participation to conversation. Our approach is to develop a system that assists group conversation of older adults, by evaluating speech duration and facial expression of...
This paper presents a work on fast robotic grasping by a mobile robot based on partial shape information of an object. The information is acquired by a laser range finder installed on the robot at an inclined angle. Feature data are extracted by scanning part of the object to calculate the grasping point. The robot grasps the object without needing to acquire and process all of the object information...
Fast transition from a stable initial state to a stable handling state is important when multiple mobile robots manipulate and transport a heavy and bulky object. In this paper, a cooperative system consisting of two mobile robots was designed to realize fast transition. A gripper robot grasps and lifts an object from one side to provide enough space for a lifter robot to lift the object. Fast transition...
When a male silk moth senses sexual pheromone of a female partner by using its antenna, it repeats certain series of walking pattern and arrives to the partner. This walking pattern is generated in Lateral Accessory Lobe (LAL) and the ventral protocerebrum (VPC) domain which controls physical exercise. Therefore, in this study, we elucidate the process of this behavior by constructing a neural network...
In this paper, we focus on a batch manufacturing system with multiple industrial robots. In this system, material-handling robots (MHRs) and material-processing robots (MPRs) are operating. Since various operations are conducted at certain places, one of them might include a localized bottleneck. A localized bottleneck is a constraint that dominates the maximum amount of production in a system, that...
We propose a control methodology of stacker cranes to avoid collisions in warehouse environment including the constraint on trajectories caused by dynamics. In a warehouse environment, there are three problems: constraint on trajectories caused by the consideration of dynamics (e.g., vibration control), safety in the case of an emergency stop, and practical calculation time. In the proposed method,...
This paper focuses on a batch manufacturing system with multiple industrial robots. In this system, material-handling robots (MHRs) and material-processing robots (MPRs) are operating. Inappropriate operations of these robots might cause a bottleneck. In addition, a bottleneck is a constraint that dominates the entire system performance, that is, the productivity. Therefore, for an efficient system,...
This paper focuses on an automated batch manufacturing system with material-handling robots (MHRs) and material-processing robots (MPRs). In this robotic manufacturing system, materials transported by the MHRs are processed by the MPRs. These operations cause a bottleneck in the system. Furthermore, the bottleneck induces congestion of the MHRs. In the system, the effect of an operational delay due...
A work cell is generally designed to achieve a high throughput and its size is typically viewed as contingent to component sizes. In this paper, we aim to design a compact work cell (spatial requirement) and to minimize its task completion time (temporal requirement) to a value set as a constraint. By doing so, a work cell occupies a minimal space and achieves its desired throughput. The work cell...
Muscle fatigue is commonly associated with the musculoskeletal disorder problem. Previously, various techniques were proposed to index the muscle fatigue from electromyography signal. However, quantitative measurement is still difficult to achieve. This study aimed at proposing a method to estimate the degree of muscle fatigue quantitatively. A fatigue model was first constructed using handgrip dynamometer...
Long-time exposure to repetitive or monotonous work is associated with increased risk for musculoskeletal disorders that are due to muscle fatigue. Previously, researchers reported that muscle fatigue can be estimated using a low-frequency band of an SEMG signal. However, these studies were performed exclusively during static contraction tasks. The objective of the present study was to evaluate and...
In a container terminal, the workload distribution among storage blocks (container stacking areas) changes over time. Therefore, transfer cranes (TCs), which are mobile cranes for container handling in storage blocks, have to move among blocks appropriately according to the distribution, and, the efficiency of yard operations depends heavily on the productivity of TCs. In the proposed method, we calculate...
A robot having a multi-task function can carry more than two objects simultaneously; however, a robot without that function can carry only one at any given time. A multi-task function robot has the potential to shorten the transfer path, which reduces the process time; however, a single-function robot does not have that capability. In this paper, a planning algorithm that consists of simulated annealing...
In this paper, we address a multiple robot rearrangement problem. We focus on a small working environment composed of narrow corridors. In such an environment, adequate priority settings are required to prevent robots from having collisions. As a result, enormous calculation time is required. We propose a practical method utilizing partitions that divide the entire complicated problem into multiple...
We have proposed the attentive workbench (AWB), which helps workers to perform tasks at their desks from both informational and physical sides. In this report, we propose a method for constructing pointing gesture-based input interface in AWB in the view of usability. The usability is evaluated by the necessary time for users to accomplish deskwork tasks.
We propose a method for performing rearrangement tasks in a real environment using multiple mobile robots. In our proposed method, robots develop an offline plan, convert the plan into a sequence of behaviors and carry out these behaviors. To perform the rearrangement task, robots need to carry out at least five behaviors. We show experimental results of rearrangement tasks in a real environment which...
In most Japanese hospitals, different nurses handle the pre-assigned nursing cares in different ways, which directly affect the quality of nursing cares. To our knowledge, there has been less attention on ensuring that nurses provide nursing cares in a timely and accurate fashion. Consequently, in this paper, considering the similarities to the traditional job shop scheduling problems, we will model...
When robot maintenance impedes the operation of other robots in a seaport container terminal, the operational efficiency is reduced. Therefore, robot reliability is necessary. In this paper, we propose a reactive robot control system with hybrid operational models for flexible and efficient container handling in consideration of robot reliability. For this purpose, we focus on three operational models...
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