Papers by Author: Haruhiko Kawasaki

Abstract: In this paper, a vision sensing system was developed in order to measure the gesture of a serial construction robot and the cylinder displacement of each actuator. The system consists of a single CCD video camera and several light sources which were used to acquire the distance information of key points of the construction robot. The three-dimensional coordinates of key points were obtained from a two-dimensional video image by using image processing. The gesture of the construction robot and the cylinder displacement of each hydraulic actuator were calculated via the inverse kinematics method. In addition, the validity of the proposed method was confirmed through an experiment of parameter estimation for the friction characteristics of a hydraulic cylinder.

Abstract: Haptic interfaces that represent force and tactile feeling have been utilized in the areas of telemanipulation, interaction with microscale and nanoscale phenomena, and medical training and evaluation, to mention only some applications. A multi-fingered haptic interface has greater potential for these kinds of applications than does a singlepoint haptic interface. We developed a five-fingered haptic interface robot named HIRO II, which consists of a hand with 15 dof and an arm with 6 dof. The following research issues are presented: the design method of mechanism, an interface control that takes the redundancy of the mechanism into consideration, physical simulation including frictional force and moment, a haptic rendering with a deformable object, the system architecture and two application systems--a future science encyclopedia and a VR breast palpation system.