okay so we're rolling um
i'm just going to ask you to tell us
your name introduce yourself
tell us where you were born and went to
school
okay the professor of
osaka university actually i have been
involved in robotics research and
development
almost for 30 37
years after i graduated uh
masters at the
university of tokyo the first i joined
a national institute called the
mechanical engineering laboratory
it was uh in the north east of uh
tokyo uh 70 kilometers from tokyo
and uh i got there for 20 years
and there uh there i
was involved in the research robotics
20 years
so i have been involved in many
developments including a
manipulator control
mobile robot
micro robot mechanism special mechanism
called parallel mechanism
and
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in 97 i moved to osaka university
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i get the position of professor
and there
i have spent uh almost 17 years
and i'm teaching robotics
and also doing
research robots of course
and currently
i have two major topics one is a
mobile robot called rim mechanism here
it has six rims
and our major concept
is uh we can use this these limbs
uh as a manipulator and of course a
leg and
our objective is to to
obtain a very compact mobile
robot capable of
doing manipulation and
we have applied
these robots in a little complicated
environment for example of course a lot
of terrain
or a lot of climbing
or even
working under steering
if the ceiling has some
grit so it can the
uh hook uh down his body
from sitting and moving
and another
project is micro manipulation
this is a micro hand which has two
fingers
and each finger
is driven by a parallel mechanism
here we have here uh two stories of a
parallel mechanism
and one a finger uh so maybe maybe you
can
see three plates
and we have one power mechanism
and another parallel mechanism here
and one finger comes from the middle
plate
through the hole of the
top plate and
another finger comes from the top plate
and if you move this parallel mechanism
you can just move this finger
and this works for
example some small object
holding releasing like this motion
okay and once you grasp the
micro object and we want to move
globally you know so in that case we
only move this part parallel mechanism
this mechanism drives two fingers
at the same time so you can uh
obtain the some global motion
and so we apply
this uh micro hand to hold
uh says micro objects
say a few micrometer
to 100 micrometer size
and currently we
are applying this micro hand
to the
well assembly of the
cell you know
so we try to pick up cell
one by one and uh
precisely trace
the cells and
assemble the
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some sort of 3d three-dimensional
cellular system that means a tissue okay
and so our challenge is to make a
tissue by
assembly in vitor that means the outside
of the body
and
currently we have a big project a
national project
which is supported by minister of
education
and we spend approximately
a 2 million us dollars
a year and it's five year project
and of course we have a
consortium including nine
major research teams from
different universities
osaka university and nagoya university
university the university of tokyo the
chiba
chiba university tohoku university and a
woman
medical college in tokyo
and that's our current
major project so um
could you go back a little bit and tell
me when did you decide that you were
going to become an engineer
well that's a very essential question
yeah actually
in my
younger i mean
in elementary school i like
to make something
even also i like to
disassemble something and
so maybe
i played
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and built a craft
or some small gadgets or machines
and so and also
i i was good at math
or
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physics or
chemistry so i
decided to go to
engineering school that's simple
well i
studied at the department of
applied mathematics and
instrumentation physics at the
in the university of tokyo
as other graduate and masters
and so
it's a little different from the
mechanical engineering
but uh i'm i was interested in the
mechanics of
mechanical things
well uh actually i graduated masters
and i spent 10 years at the
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mechanical engineering laboratory and
after that i submitted my phd
status to the university of tokyo and i
got the phd
in 86
what was the thesis oh it's about a
working robot it was a
kind of mobile manipulation
including a bilateral
tele-operation what was the company that
you were working at for 10 years
no no no it's a national institute
yeah it's affiliated to the ministry of
economy and trade and industry
so it's it's it's not company
what was the first robotics project well
uh it's uh
yeah robot
i mean when i joined the
laboratory they started the new project
on
patient care robot which can
which could uh
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hold up the patient from bed
and carry
them inside in the hospital and
so uh i uh
mainly uh worked on the mobile
robot which has omni uh directional
way because you know uh in the hospital
and the bedroom it's very narrow
so we need a very dexterous
mobile motion
so that's my first topic in robotics
and i developed the sensors
which can locate the mobile robot
and well roon
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it usually utilize the ultrasonics
we have three different frequency
ultratonics
and we have three
transmitters in the kona
and the robot has a
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receiver three different receivers
and each receiver can detect the
source of the uh
sorry sorry and so we
could know the three different
uh station and based on this
information we can locate
the mobile logo including this direction
that's my first and after you did your
phd you stayed at the laboratory
oh yes after
getting a phd i spent 10 years more
but 86 to 87
lucky to me i had a chance to
stay mit the boston
one year and i stayed with
professor tom sheridan's rubble
he already retired but uh he
at that time he was very famous uh
in the area of uh
machine uh at that time we called
they called a man machine interface
so currently uh human
robot interaction or communication and
yeah so because at that time i was
i worked on the terror operation so i
want
i wanted to study more at his level
but i changed my
mind to completely different topics
because uh at that time i saw a very
interesting uh mechanism uh it's a
parallel mechanism
as they developed the you know
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special arm
which was used undersea
and they built a
machine with a 6 cables
you know the top plate and and
they have six cables and moving six
cables
they control the end
plate of course uh it has uh some
rot in the center which has a
compressive uh motion because you know
the wire can only
produce the tension so we need to
make some compression to
keep the end plate stable
so uh so fast i saw that mechanism i
i was very interesting not to make
anything so
so it's a parallel mechanism so then
after
i have been
involved in the research and development
of parallel mechanisms
and when i returned back to japan
so i started the project
to make uh uh to build a
uh excavation machine uh
because excavation you need a big force
and uh also we need to we needed to
move the end
dexterously and i
applied the power mechanism
so we built a big machine
so that's my uh uh
so first power mechanism what were the
challenges
of designing parallel mechanisms well uh
you know the do you know short platform
it's a you know very simple mechanism
you know we have two
plates and we have six
pistons between two plates and if you
control the
cylinders so you can get the six degrees
of freedom
and so
so if you look at the mechanism
carefully
so it the mechanism can
produce the force much faster
in this direction because the
piston cylinders you know as
the direction and
so but in the
the horizontal axis
we cannot expect a big force so my
first challenge is to
get well isotropic
force
output and uh i
analyzed the statics and
also i applied the
singularity composition to the jacobian
matrix
and compare the how the forces
are produced in
every direction
and to arrange the city in the
uh position and to get the
uh isotropical force
output so that's my major work
at that time
what other projects did you do after
that
well uh you know
at that time i
was working on the you know mainly big
machine
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but sometimes when we develop the
big machine
in the beginning of you know
experience so it's very dangerous so we
cannot accept
how it moves you know so sometimes i
uh i was scared you know it suddenly
moved
toward to me right now so
and if i
could work on the you know the small
machine
so i have no danger you know
during it robots doing things they
should
yeah yeah so uh my next idea is to
welcome to make a
micro and micro this micro
you know so uh as i
mentioned it's also the application
parallel mechanism
because the parallel mechanism has a
nice features compared to the
conventional serial mechanism for
example the
it can produce a big force and also we
can expect a nice
good precision accuracy and
stiffness and high speed
and i i was interested in you know
the application of power mechanics to
the micro hand
because we can expect a nice
good accuracy or precision so
that's my next work
and so i started the
research almost 20 years ago
so now i have been working on for
what 20 years or more
so when did you start working on the
mobile robotics
so what got you interested in the mobile
robotics mobile
mobile robot walking robot
yes well
because uh my first
uh work is was a mobile robot
omnidirectional mobile but it's a width
robot
so it doesn't it can
work only in a flat plane but sometimes
we need to move on the rough training or
even
well climb up some you know
the wall so
i challenged to
you know to make a compact
small leg machine
but i also wanted
i also i was also interested in
making a manipulation task
so that's uh
so we i got a concept
on integrated
locomotion manipulation mechanism so
we call a limb mechanism so this is a
prototype
so you mentioned some people you talk
about in mit
were there other people that you worked
with while you were at the volunteer
mit yes of course
so they are working on mainly
my machine system including
their operation or bilateral control
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and also all they are working on
optimization
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control control theory or
you know i'm not sure
what you say in english really a system
system engine systems and system
engineering
right
soy actually they they are not
active in robotics field now so
they they went to
different themes and then were there
in the united states in japan
other collaborators professor fukuda
atoshi of kuda
he's my
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best quarry because
he and i joined a mechanical engineering
laboratory
at the same time and
we spent several years at the
laboratory and so
since then uh
we have a
nice relationship and collaboration with
him
and actually he is involved in our
project
the uh the bio
approaches and also professor
makoto kaneko he's also
in osaka university and
well
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the people influential to me
well of course professor of cuda as a
very
nice guy you know he
he is very energetic
and aggressive and very talkative
every time and he suggests me
many things
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yeah sometimes he
gives me a password
but it's uh he's very kind
he's a nice guy and of course
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he was also he worked
at a mechanical engineering laboratory
and we spent several years
so he's also involved in our project
and um in terms of the history of the
mechanical engineering laboratory
yes how much has robotics been a feature
of the laboratory
and when did they get involved in
robotics the mechanical ninja robot
yeah actually how was the robotic
situation actually there used to be
a mechanical engine laboratory now it's
a
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aisd
because the government reorganized you
know the national
institutes and
10 years ago or more maybe
2000
and so before that the mechanical
engineering laboratory has 300
researchers and
we had well how many 40 or 50
robot robotics researchers and engineers
and i i was one
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and yeah i studied
many things there you know
about robotics because the mechanical
engineer robert is one of the
founder of the japanese robotics
intelligent robotics can you sort of
pioneer that work
it was some of the early people
yes yes how many
now they are they are too old
senior
well so many people for example
professor nakano
he he was the professor of
tohoku university that he retired and
also professor
susumu touchi he's very
famous in the uh very
existence of terror presence
he is now in the professor of
ko university and
so there are other many
people the founder of robotics
so almost you know 37 years
ago
so since you've been teaching at the
university yes
you trained many phd students yes and
have they gone on to
teach in robotics yes yeah yeah actually
i given a course two courses
about robotics one is for undergraduate
so very you know basic
including kinematics uh statics or
dynamics or
robots you know mechanical arms
in the master course i give
another course which is advanced more
advanced
including the current topics
and yeah
during my
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70 years at osaka university
i i have
i had
to 13 phd
students and
so but uh you know the
the curious thing is you know i had
just two japanese
phd and
one program with the japanese university
current japanese university
so the in the engineering school
the master students do not want to go
phd
they prefer working the company
so i'm not sure but they are interested
in getting money
rather than a phd
degree so unfortunately to me
i have just two master students
going to phd and the other
students are coming came from
oversea south
east asia
middle east turkey or arabic countries
mexico so
so i mainly educated foreign people
have they gone back to tea yes yes they
got a
nice job at their home countries
um so what are some of the big
challenges in terms of the
kind of 3d tissue construction
yes okay
one of the challenges you know
in the conventional sense
we cannot create a thick
tissue because
in outside the body in beetle because
they need oxygen and nutrition
so we need to introduce vascular
blood inside so
we need to
include vascular system in the
artificial
tissue so that's a big challenge so how
we
create the tube tube-like tube-like
tissues which we can throw
the blood inside
and then we can
increase the thickness and the size
of the tissue in beton so that's a
major challenge
and of course
we need to uh position
every uh specific
cell one by one at the
exact place so that's another challenge
and also
we need to speed up the assembly so we
need a quick manipulation
or we need to apply some
microfluidics techniques
so inside the microchamber so we can
cultivate the artificial artificial
tissues
or even assemble the cells to get the
good size of tissue
so that's the challenges
uh but more generally for robotics pc
has some of the big challenges over the
years
five to ten years in terms of
we solve the robotics
personally interested in the application
especially the
service robotics i mean
to provide the services to the human
society and
in that sense we need a robot
safety
and in my idea
i believe there are two types of safety
one is the physical safety it's a
conventional meaning
a safety you know the robot does not
harm the
person the people you know
and the another safety is
psychological mental safety
you know for example
if you get a robot
suddenly he approaches
you maybe sometimes you you are scared
or you're surprised
so in that sense
we need carefully
design the robot motion
as well as a robot motion
robot behavior as well as uh
robot appearance in outlook
uh you know out of design
so in that sense uh
i have been working on the uh
psychological evaluation of the human
drug and
with collaboration collaborating with a
psychologist
actually in our groups we have a
psychologist
and currently she is working on the
you know success evaluation to
correct the many subjects
once we have done the big survey and the
variation
correcting people the number of people
is
almost over 3000
and we show the robot motions robot
appearance and
no and
they gave us
are impressions or
scores of some uh items you know any
surprising results
well yes
in the academic sense
the the impression the
ordinary people impression towards robot
is a little different from the
impression towards
human maybe maybe it's natural
yeah but we
extract a
variation index and
and also we developed the evaluation
scale
based on this survey maybe it's
helpful to design the
nice robot
which cannot give me
some scarceness or bad feeding
to the human user
okay um so one of the questions we'd
like to kind of
wrap up with is what's your advice to
young
people who are interested in robotics
oh
well you know
i'm not sure it's
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it fits to the u.s or european people
but in japan you know japanese
uh likes mechanism or you know actual
robot
and in my experience
anyway we
make actual machine
first try
and of course we need to consider
more before designing a building
but uh
finally you need to make actual machine
and realize your idea
in the form of action robot
to just start building
great uh is there anything we didn't
cover that you would like to talk about
or the uh other things you did in your
career
it's good that's it thank you