Distinguished Lecturers
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Tokyo, Japan
Professor Tatsuo Arai received B.E. M.S. and PhD degrees from the University of Tokyo in 1975, 1977, and 1986, respectively. He joined the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, the Japanese Government in 1977, and was engaged in research and development of new arm design and control, mobile robot, teleoperation, and micro robotics. He stayed at MIT as a visiting scholar in 1986-1987. He moved to Osaka University in 1997 as a full professor at the Graduate School of Engineering Science. In April 2017, he moved to Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, as a State 1000 Talent Program Professor. His current research topics are mechanism design including parallel mechanisms, legged working robots, micro robotics for bio application, human robot interaction. He has published more than 550 journals and reviewed conference papers on robotics, 5 books, and has 37 patents. He is IEEE Fellow, RSJ Fellow, JSME Fellow and IAARC director. He is a deputy editor-in-chief of the Robomech Journal. He worked for the Cabinet Office as a chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Destruction of Abandoned Chemical Weapon in 2000-2007. He was a project leader of National Project on Hyper Bio Assembler in 2011-2016.
Talk # 1
Service Robot and Its Safety
The service robot is a promising tool to provide daily care, support and welfare in our near future society. The service robot is defined in the World Robotics 2015 as such a way, “a robot that performs useful tasks for humans or equipment excluding industrial automation application.” As service robots would inevitably work near around people, they could make interaction with humans in not only physical but also psychological way. In the former sense the robot safety is crucial issue, however, in the latter also we need to take attention on another safety issue, that is, psychological or mind safety. What is the psychological safety? When you stay with some service robot which provides you daily services, i.e., bringing a cup of coffee, suggesting you some information, or whatever daily issues, you want to feel comfortableness, friendship, controllability, satisfaction of its good performance and no stress toward the robot. This sort of feeling is called “ANSHIN” in Japanese. The ANSHIN is another aspect of robot safety. The talk will cover the state-of-the-art of service robot technology and its ANSHIN issues.
Coimbra, Portugal
Anibal T. De Almeida (PhD) is a Full Professor in the University of Coimbra and Director of the Institute for Systems and Robotics (UC). He has been responsible for over 40 funded national and international projects in the areas of industrial automation, robotics, advanced motors and drives. He has been Associate Editor of the journal IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics. He is one the Editors of the Energy Efficiency Journal from Springer. He was General Chair of major IEEE conferences: IEEE EPQU 2011 and IEEE IROS 2012. He is co-author of six books and over 300 papers in international journals and conferences. He was Member of the High Technology Panel of NATO Scientific and Environmental Affairs Division 1993-2000. He is a consultant of international institutions including the European Commission, US-Department of Energy, US-Agency for International Development, California Institute for Energy Efficiency, International Academy of the Environment, Electric Power Research Institute, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, UNDP, UNIDO GEF and CLASP. He is member of the Board of Directors of CLASP (Washington, USA).
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3641-5174
http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=7102581109"
Talk # 1
Energy Harvesting for Mobile Robots
Energy harvesting is a prominent research area which continues to grow at rapid pace, with potential application in a wide range of applications. In particular, one area with a large application potential is mobile robotics, in which energy storage capacity greatly limits their autonomy. By using energy harvesting is possible to run a robot during a significant long period of time, or even indefinitely. It should be noted that due to energy harvesting constrains, in terms of the amount of power that can be extracted from the environment, the mobile robots that can greatly benefit from this technology are in general small robots, with low energy consumption and low processing capabilities, such as robots used in swarm applications and environmental monitoring. Different technology options for energy harvesting and energy storage are presented.
Talk # 2
Eco-Design of Service Robots
Recent worldwide trends of the world show that it is very important to develop new systems for saving energy and creating alternative/new energy sources for many sectors of the technical systems, in particular, in the field of robotics and automation. Service robots that are being produced in bulk deserve special attention. Domestic robots include vacuum cleaning and lawn-mowing robots, but a variety of other product ideas are being developed, including food and beverage waiters, robots for handicapped or elderly assistance, and even automated butlers. The presentation will addresses strategies to optimize energy performance of service robots. Advanced energy efficient motors and drives, power management and energy storage are key tools for that purpose. The ecodesign approach is presented, leading to a reduction in energy consumption along with the environmental impact over their life cycle, as well as other benefits such as longer autonomy.
Tokyo, Japan
Keiko Homma received B.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1989 and in 2004, respectively. In 1989 she joined the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, which was reorganized into the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 2001. She is currently a senior researcher at Service Robotics Research Team, Robot Innovation Research Center, AIST. From 1995 to 1996 she was a visiting researcher at Helsinki University of Technology (current Aalto University). Dr. Homma is a member of IEEE, and her current research interest centers on assistive and therapeutic robot systems, including their safety aspects.
Talk # 1
Safety issues of assistive robots
Assistive robots have the following safety issues. - Many of the potential users of the robots, including elderly and handicapped people, are not trained to operate the robots. - There are people who do not operate the assistive robots by themselves but accept the effects and risks from the robots. - Safety of the assistive robots cannot be established by isolating the robots from the users. - An emergency stop may not ensure safety. For example, when a robotic walking assistant device suddenly stops by using the emergency stop, the user may fall down. Therefore, assistive robots must be designed with safety in mind. I will introduce studies related to safety of the assistive robots including development of a risk assessment assistance tool for the manufacturers of the assistive robots, development of test dummies for durability test of exoskeleton-typed physical assistant robots.