Seminars:

15-Dec-2008

Title: Design of the Human-Symbiotic Robot: TWENDY-ONE Presenter: Prof. Dr. Shigeki Sugano, Waseda University, Japan Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of JSME and Fellow of RSJ. Venue: CAS centre, Level 6, Building 2, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, UTS Time/Date: 11am-12noon, Monday, 15 December, 2008

Abstract:
The development of human friendly and intelligent robots is greatly expected for future aging societies. Such robots are distinctively called Human-Symbiotic Robots. They must have abilities coexisting in the behavioral space, working space, and communication space with human. In designing of the human-symbiotic robots, capabilities of ensuring safety while interacting with human must be given top priority.

In 2000, Sugano Laboratory has started to develop the new human-symbiotic robot in collaboration with some companies. The goals of this robot research and development are:

(1) Human Friendly Design including Cutely Designed Head and Body, Gentle Feel Surface Materials, Built-in Wire-Harness, and LED Display in Eyes and Chest

(2) Compliant and High Powered Motion Design including High-Power Actuated Joint with Passive Mechanical Impedance Device, 6-axis Force Sensor at the Finger Tip, Wrist, Mobile Base and Head, and Distributed Tactile/Force Sensors in the Whole Body Surface

(3) Dexterous Design including 47 DOFs in total (7 DOFs Arm, 4 Fingers/13 DOFs Hand, 3 DOFs Neck, 4 DOFs Body), Environment Adjustable Elbow-Joint Cover, Human-Mimetic Soft Finger Tip and Palm, and Omni Directional Mobile Base

This presentation introduces this ultimate human-symbiotic robot platform named TWENDY-ONE from the point of view of the dexterous and safe mechanisms and their system integration. TWENDY-ONE web site: http://www.twendy-one.com

Presenter:
Dr. Shigeki Sugano received the B.S., M.S., and Dr. of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering in 1981, 1983, and 1989, respectively, from Waseda University. From 1987 to 1991, he was a Research Associate in Waseda University. Since 1991, he has been a Faculty Member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University, where he is currently a Professor. From 1993 to 1994, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Stanford University. Since 2001, he has been a Director of the Waseda WABOT-HOUSE laboratory. He is a member of the Humanoid Robotics Institute of Waseda University. His research interests include human-symbiotic anthropomorphic robot design, dexterous and safety manipulator, and human-robot communication. He received the Technical Innovation Award from the Robotics Society Japan for the development of Waseda Piano-Playing Robot: WABOT-2 in 1991. He received the JSME Medal for Outstanding Paper from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2000. He received JSME Fellow Award in 2006. He received IEEE Fellow Award in 2007.

He served as the Secretary of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS) in 2006 and 2007. He has elected as an AdCom member of the IEEE RAS for the term of 2008-2010. Since 2004, he has been a Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Humanoid Robotics. He had served as the IEEE RAS Conference Board, Meetings Chair from 1997 to 2005. He serves as the Associate Vice-President of the IEEE RAS Conference Board from 2008.

He has served as the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Advanced Robotics since 2007. He served as the Head of the System Integration Division of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) in 2006 and 2007, and he is currently a Board of Trustees of the SICE. Since 2001, he has been the President of Japan Association for Automation Advancement.

He served as the General Chair of the 2003 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM2003). He served as a General Co-Chairs of the 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2006). He will serve as a Program Co-Chairs of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2009) and will serve as the General Co-Chair of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2012). He will serve as the General Chair of the 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2013) in Tokyo.

25-Nov-2008

A/Prof. Jie Bao from the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, the University of New South Wales is going to give a talk at UTS.

Time: 1pm-2pm, Tuesday 25th November 2008

Place: CAS seminar area, level 6, Building 2, UTS.

Title: Plantwide Process Operability Analysis on the Basis of Dissipativity

31-Oct-2008

Mike Bosse from CSIRO ICT at Brisbane will visit us next Friday 31st and will give us a talk on his recent work.

Mike joined the robotics group at CSIRO's Autonomous Systems Laboratory in February 2006. Research interests include SLAM, image processing, and robot control.

Mike is originally from Los Angeles, California. He received a PhD in EECS from M.I.T. in 2004, where for his thesis he developed the Atlas Framework for large scale simultaneous localization and mapping.

The talk will be at around 11am, the details of the talk will be announced next week.

14-Oct-2008:

Ms Weizhen Zhou presented her work at the recent IROS in Nice. She will give a presentation 1 to 2 pm in the CAS area about what she found interesting (or not so) at IROS, with particular attention (but not restricted) to her work in visual SLAM.