This paper proposes a method to simultaneously estimate two degrees of freedom in wrist forces (extension - flexion, adduction - abduction) and one degree of freedom in grasping forces using Electromyography (EMG) signals of the forearms. To correlate the EMG signals with the forces, we applied a multi - layer perceptron(MLP), which is a machine learning method, and used the characteristics of the muscles constituting the forearm to generate learning data. Through the experiments, the similarity between the MLP target value and the estimated value was investigated by applying the coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. As a result, the R2values with respect to the wrist flexionextension, adduction - abduction and grasping forces were 0.79, 0.73 and 0.78 and RMSE were 0.12, 0.17, 0.13 respectively.

Peg-in-hole assembly is the most representative task for a robot to perform under contact conditions. Various strategies for accomplishing the peg-in-hole task with a robot exist, but the existing strategies are not sufficiently practical to be used for various assembly tasks in a human environment because they require additional sensors or exclusive tools. In this paper, the peg-in-hole assembly experiment is performed with anthropomorphic hand arm robot without extra sensors or devices using “intuitive peg-in-hole strategy”. From this work, the probability of applying the peg-in-hole strategy to a common assembly task is verified.

This paper focuses on a development of an anthropomorphic robot hand. Human hand is able to dexterously grasp and manipulate various objects with not accurate and sufficient, but inaccurate and scarce information of target objects. In order to realize the ability of human hand, we develop a robot hand and introduce a control scheme for stable grasping by using only kinematic information. The developed anthropomorphic robot hand, KITECH Hand, has one thumb and three fingers. Each of them has 4 DOF and a soft hemispherical finger tip for flexible opposition and rolling on object surfaces. In addition to a thumb and finger, it has a palm module composed the non-slip pad to prevent slip phenomena between the object and palm. The introduced control scheme is a quitely simple based on the principle of virtual work, which consists of transposed Jacobian, joint angular position, and velocity obtained by joint angle measurements. During interaction between the robot hand and an object, the developed robot hand shows compliant grasping motions by the back-drivable characteristics of equipped actuator modules. To validate the feasibility of the developed robot hand and introduced control scheme, collective experiments are carried out with the developed robot hand, KITECH Hand.

Reliable functionalities for autonomous navigation and object recognition/handling are key technologies to service robots for executing useful services in human environments. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to make the service robot perform these operations with its own sensors, actuators and a knowledge database. With all heavy sensors, actuators and a database, the robot could have performed the given tasks in a limited environment or showed the limited capabilities in a natural environment. With the new paradigms on robot technologies, we attempted to apply smart environments technologies-such as RFID, sensor network and wireless network- to robot functionalities for executing reliable services. In this paper, we introduce concepts of proposed smart environments based robot navigation and object recognition/handling method and present results on robot services. Even though our methods are different from existing robot technologies, successful implementation result on real applications shows the effectiveness of our approaches. Keywords:Smart Environments, Service Robot, Navigation

This paper proposes an emotional interaction model between human and robot using an android. An android is a sort of humanoid robot that the outward shape of robot is almost the same as that of human. The android is a robot platform to implement and test emotional expressions and human interaction. In order to behave for the android like human, a structure of internal emotion system is very important. In our research, we propose a novel emotional model of android based on biological hormone and emotion space. Proposed emotion model has an advantage that it can represent emotion change as time by hormone dynamics.

This paper introduces a prototype smart home environment that is built in the research building to demonstrate the feasibility of a robot-assisted future home environment. Localization, navigation, object recognition and handling are core functionalities that an intelligent service robot should provide. A huge amount of research effort has been made to make the service robot perform these functions with its own sensors, actuators and a knowledge base. With all complicated configuration of sensors, actuators and a database, the robot could only perform the given tasks in a predefined environment or show the limited capabilities in a natural environment. We started a smart home environment for service robots for simple service robots to provide reliable services by communicating with the environment through the wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we introduce various types of smart devices that are developed for assisting the robot in the environment by providing sensor and actuator capabilities. In addition, we present how the devices are integrated to constitute the smart home environment for service robots.