Robot Motion Research Team
One of the most serious problems in developed nations is that a caregiver burden increases reflecting an aging society. Robotics is expected to solve the problem. Our team is studying the motion of nursing care to determine the motion planning of nursing robots. We focus on the flexibility of human body to evaluate the optimality of the motion.
Research Issues
1. Motion planning of nursing robot: RIBA
- Theme 1: Optimal motions for care receivers
- Theme 2: Modeling of nursing motion of human
- Theme 3: Development of robot motion
Since nursing robots contact to care receivers directly, unconsidered care motions may make care receivers uncomfortable. We find out physically and psychologically optimal motions by analyzing biological information during nursing care.
We measured the nursing motion of a human by a motion measurement system and succeeded to extract the important motion.
In order to develop a motion for the nursing robot we analyze a human motion in a nursing task. However the measured joint data of the human motion is not directly applied as the joint data of the robot because the arrangement and the number of the joints of human are not different from them of the robot. Therefore we extract an important motion of the nursing task by the human and make the data that the robot can reproduce the important motion.
2. Development of measurement human phantom for nursing motion
- Theme 4: High precision musculoskeletal model
- Theme 5: Flexible curved surface sensor
- Theme 6: Topological geometric approach
Instead of numerical models, we develop a mechanical model with the analog form of human body for the evaluation of nursing motion.
We develop a curved surface sensor with the same flexibility of human body for stress and shearing. The sensor will be implemented to the high precision musculoskeletal model.
3. Nonlinear control theory for flexible body
With the miniaturization and diversification of technologies, the following problems that we cannot treat as a traditional linear system became an issue: 1) Large different multi-scales between mixed physical systems like human body models requiring from rigid body dynamics to molecular dynamics, 2) Non-negligible nonlinear phenomena in microscopic systems, for example, dynamical frictions, interactions between atoms and quantum effects, 3) Effective utilizations of an infinite-dimensional freedom, which a human-interactive robot with a soft body essentially has, and 4) Complexities of multi-critical points in global state space appearing in vehicles and robotic arms with links. For these problems, we are trying to create a nonlinear control theory by reviewing mathematical models. Especially, we focus on the control of global systems having the dynamics on a manifold with a complex shape (non-Euclidian) and the integration of control theory and numerical calculation.