One of the most frequently performed tasks in human-robot interaction (HRI), intelligent vehicles, and security systems is face related applications such as face recognition, facial expression recognition, driver state monitoring, and gaze estimation. In these applications, accurate head pose estimation is an important issue. However, conventional methods have been lacking in accuracy, robustness or processing speed in practical use. In this paper, we propose a novel method for estimating head pose with a monocular camera. The proposed algorithm is based on a deep neural network for multi-task learning using a small grayscale image. This network jointly detects multi-view faces and estimates head pose in hard environmental conditions such as illumination change and large pose change. The proposed framework quantitatively and qualitatively outperforms the state-of-the-art method with an average head pose mean error of less than 4.5° in real-time.

This paper studies how to combine devices such as monocular/stereo cameras, motors for panning/tilting, fisheye lens and convex mirrors, in order to solve vision-based robotic problems. To overcome the well-known trade-offs between optical properties, we present two mixed versions of the new systems. The first system is the robot photographer with a conventional pan/tilt perspective camera and fisheye lens. The second system is the omnidirectional detector for a complete 360-degree field-of-view surveillance system. We build an original device that combines a stereo-catadioptric camera and a pan/tilt stereo-perspective camera, and also apply it in the real environment. Compared to the previous systems, we show benefits of two proposed systems in aspects of maintaining both high-speed and high resolution with collaborative moving cameras and having enormous search space with hybrid configuration. The experimental results are provided to show the effectiveness of the mixing collaborative and hybrid systems.

This work proposes structure of spring backbone micro endoscope. For effective surgery in narrow and limited space, many manipulators are developing that different to existed structure. This device can move like elephant nose or snake unlike the existing robots. For this motion, a mechanism that uses spring backbone and wires has been developed. The new type endoscope that has Z axis motion for spring structure, therefore it has 3 degree of freedom, two rotations and one linear motion. And new kinematics for backbone structure is proposed using simple geographic analysis. The Jacobian and stiffness modeling are also derived. Exact actuator sizing is determined using stiffness model. Finally, the proposed kinematics are verified by simulation and experiments.