Scientific Achievements

For us, the most important points for robots designed to assist in the home are stability and smooth communication with people.

The techniques we employ to achieve these goals are described below.

Targeting the Correct Individual

We proposed an algorithm for tracking a target individual using a laser range finder in a real environment, such as a room or a corridor, where other people are also moving.

Publication

• Kohei Morishita, Yutaka Hiroi and Akinori Ito, "A Crowd Avoidance Method Using Circular Avoidance Path for Robust Person Following," Journal of Robotics, Volume 2017, Article ID 3148202, 10 pages, 2017. [URL]
• Yutaka Hiroi, Shohei Matsunaka and Akinori Ito, "A Mobile Robot System With Semi-Autonomous Navigation Using Simple And Robust Person Following Behavior," Journal of Man, Machine and Technology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 44- 62, 2012. [PDF]

Demonstration Video

Follow Me by ASAHI. (2015 RoboCup Japan Open @Home League in Fukui)

Robot avatar

ASAHI has a small robot avatar on its head (Fig.1). The avatar is used for smooth communication between a human individual and the robot.

The avatar uses its arm to show it has recognized the human’s pointing gesture.

Fig. 2 illustrate the avatar's behavior. When the human gestures to indicate a point on the floor, the robot should recognize this. Gesture feedback from the avatar allows the human to confirm that the robot has successfully recognized the pointing gesture. If the robot fails to recognize the gesture, the human should repeat it until the avatar confirms that the robot has done so.

Publication

• Yutaka Hiroi and Akinori Ito, "ASAHI: OK for Failure -A Robot for Supporting Daily Life, Equipped with a Robot Avatar-," Proc. of 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp.141-142, Tokyo, Mar. 2013. [IEEE Xplore Digital Library]