through where you did your phd and who
you worked with and then
talk about some of your projects um and
some of the
organizations that you've worked with
like ras
or rsj oh yeah and
you know talk about where your funding
for your projects came things like that
and then i see ah it may not be easy
[Laughter]
my mystery a little bit complicated no
problem
already started not yet yeah we're ready
to go okay
when you're ready and we'll be editing
it so you know so
i i should i should give you a kind of
an answer by myself
well i'll ask you okay yes yes
okay um could is it good
yeah okay so um if you could start by
telling us
your name um and where and when you were
born
uh i'm casa hiroko i was
born in japan
in 1955 and
[Applause]
yeah japan uh actually i was born in
sioux city
which is located in mia prefecture it's
this is adjacent to ice prefecture
prefecture is uh the main city is a
nagoya city so you may know where it is
and uh is it okay
definitely where did you start at school
uh well actually i was graduated from
tokyo institute of technology
and my career is a little bit different
from other professors in japan and after
finishing
master goes there i entered the nippon
denzel
one of the toyota light companies and
now it's called denzel
and the denso means electric equipment
for automobiles and so they are now i
think one of the largest companies in
the world concerned with the
electrical equipment for automobiles and
i
worked there for two and two years and
three months
and then i graduated from the company
i went back to the again at the original
previous
laboratory at tokyo tokyo tech and
department of control engineering and
after that
i i joined the laboratory as a research
associate
and when i was i became a research
associate
japanese we have a a little bit
different japanese system
which means that i mean i i could become
or associate
research associate without having phd
degree
and then that i either as a working as a
research associate and doing some
research
i've got a phd there
and and after that
uh it took about eight or eight years
for me uh because i was working
during the daytime and so my my time for
the research is a little bit limited
and but i learned a lot and
then i became i joined
i first i visited the united states for
one year
i was with hari asada and uh he hosted
me
at martin mechanical engineering
department and
i learned a lot from him and then i
became i joined the
nagoya university uh tashi of kudas lab
as a associate professor and stayed
there
and four years and a half and then i
moved to tohoku university
as uh joined the kind of
one of the departments relating to
mechanical engineering
and became our professor
so i became a professor at the age of 39
years old
and the main reason why i moved is that
i'd like to have i mean
do something by myself and
that is a kind of a reason why
i moved so i mean i moved i changed my
job many times so your degrees were in
control engineering and control
engineering yes
and actually uh my my supervisor at the
tokyo tech
was a professor furuta katsuhisa furuta
he is now serving as a president of
tokyo denke university and he is very
very active in the field and he is one
of the pioneers and
the area of control theory in japan and
also
i learned a lot in some sense and a
the education which i received from his
lab is really really valuable for me
uh i learned the kind of a basic uh
fundamentals
concerned with the control theory i mean
that
how to develop the theoretical work
and very interesting thing is that uh
maybe this is a kind of a joke uh furuta
means old rice field
okay and asada means a shallow rice
field
fukuda means a fortune rice field
and so after having served the four four
years and a half
i i i've got a fortune and we become a
professor at
tohoku university yeah that is my career
i have to i mean it cultivate it by
myself
and that is what i'm doing now what was
your thesis project
uh for the uh phd uh
it's a control theory i i developed in
some sense uh
i forgotten at the time i was interested
in non-linear control theory
and uh my work is a kind of a
generalization well class of nonlinear
systems
uh by utilizing uh
a uh nonlinear feedback
okay that is uh my a master thesis
uh based on that i i we proposed a kind
of a
kind of a model following controller uh
for the linear system and uh
together with the arduinization binomial
feedback
uh we made a kind of a robust controller
uh which could which could control the
manipulator based on the uh many
different
types of sensory information and that is
still i mean i'm still using
the results of my phd thesis
for the kind of uh for the current work
which manipulators were you using at the
time at the time
actually it was a long time ago uh first
manipulator which i
used is the i don't know i try to
remember yes
it's a kind of a prototype manipulator
uh developed by one company at the time
we had a collaboration with the company
and they developed a manipulator
and so we designed a controller at the
time uh
a still we don't have a
fast computer system and we
uh we we use a novel from
data general and it was really
really slow and the memory size was uh
at the beginning 32 kilobytes and then
extended to finally 128 kilobytes
and so the memory is very limited so we
made our own assembly language on our
own uh floating point uh
computation system by ourselves so as to
so that we could increase the uh
computational speed
and so i still remember that
we tried to increase the computational
speed but the
maximum sampling rate was which we could
attain
is around a i think uh
a uh something rate is maybe
around 30 30 health or something like
that
it was very very strong and after that
uh we uh
that is a time when i first directed
drive
manipulator was introduced uh invented
uh by hari asada as well as uh
professor takeo canada the group at cmu
and later uh we
we in some sense uh we we received
uh several direct drive models from a
company
and uh by utilizing that we did several
experiments using the
2d or 3d planar
manipulator system and we we did a
force control as well as dual
manipulator coordinated motion
controlled ddr manipulators
using only on the plane
horizontal manipulators and
then we had another collaboration with
our industrial robot company
and we tried we implemented our control
scheme in that
industry robots and we did several
experiments
and after that we had another
collaboration with the
industrial robot maker and manufacturer
and i think that at that time we
we extended our planar results
into the real 3d d space
and so by utilizing two
six degrees of freedom manipulator we
developed a
single master multi-stream systems a
single master means
we developed the two joysticks each have
three degrees of freedom so as a total
six degrees of freedom
uh master manipulator could control the
uh 12 degrees of freedom to two
industrial robots
and i think that that is one of the uh
earliest work uh relating to the uh
coordinated motion control dual
manipulators using
rear indus robots at the time as long as
i know only
two or three groups are doing uh this
similar work except us
one is the osama khadib's work and
another one is uh there is a one group
in
montpelier france uh pierre de chess
group was doing that
and i think
by through the uh i think uh real
experiments
using a real industry robots we learned
a lot and we are confident that
uh our our system works with the uh for
the
could be applied for the uh their
applications what year was that and what
were
what kind of robots were you using what
year
uh yeah and many years ago it was
before just before i a
i joined i would say i visited the
united states for one year
and so i think it was uh 1988 or 1989
yes i i joined the mit uh 1989 so i
think 1988
and uh it's many years ago
what what companies robots were you uh
that was uh i supported by
nachi fujikoshi company and
at the time i mean uh we had a friend
there
later he moved to another company so i
i don't want to embarrass his name it is
a kind of secret
now he is disa confidential but he
the guy who supported our research uh at
the
national company is now a kind of
a what i say one over a i think a
say i don't know how you call it in i'm
one of the manager of
fanak
[Music]
so this part is confidential in some
sense
[Laughter]
and uh i also okay of course i had to to
implement a control scheme at the time
we need a high speed control i have high
speed
a computational system okay uh we had a
very good relation at the time with sony
okay we have several friends
and one day a sony's guy and visited us
and he said that
they said that they are willing to
provide us with our
new server controller system sub
amplifiers the sub control systems
and each each controller i mean could
control two axes
okay two motors and but i told them that
no i'm not interested in math joint
control systems we are interested
in the kind of a what is say a total
control so we'd like to control at least
six axis uh then what's interesting the
time is sony looks
very very i mean uh in some sense i'm
very active
and uh they are interested in my my idea
so they told me that they are going to
develop
uh a kind of a customized uh computer
system
uh it's called a bitus rising system so
by putting a lot of chips they can they
can
in they can develop a kind of their
their own control c control
cpus so the uh developed cpu a
computational system consists of two
floating point systems
two fpus and one au
and several memories and something and
uh the length of the uh
micro assembler i thought the name
precisely
has a the bad range is 128 bits
it was really really uh powerful
and after that i i i was a japanese
i'm a japanese so we couldn't know how
to i mean give a presentation concerned
with this
special processor and a similar work was
uh
presented in the united states they call
it a very
long world instruction something
so i think that we if we we knew
i mean how to present it how to publish
the results and maybe
it could attract some people but that
that was very powerful
and uh it has a
capacity capability of floating point a
computation of uh
maybe at the time of each 20
20 mega megaflops
so now of course
now the cp is very very the performance
is very high
and i 20 megaflops is almost nothing
but at that time it's a amazing cpu so
with by utilizing a cpu
and together with the uh nazi physical
robots drm system uh we can we could
realize a
single master multi-service systems so
you mentioned that you had a lot of
friends in industry how did you meet
meet these brands or how did you make
these connections
connections ah it's a good question
uh when i was uh at the time
i was with tokyo tech took institute of
technology and it of course it's located
inside of tokyo area and so many people
are coming
and actually uh maybe probably uh
partially they are interested in my
research and partially they'd like to
support my research and
i have a lot of networks and based on
the network i'm
i'm still using doing some collaborative
research
based on the network which i established
i mean
when i was at tokyo tech so people were
generally visiting tokyo tech and then
they would also
um come see you all yeah because uh
uh tokyo is very convenient okay
so as long as we are doing something
interesting uh
there they can easily i mean visit our
visitors and uh of course my boss at the
time of professor furuta was a
well-known professor
in the field of control engineering so
actually they are interested in that
what was the first robot you worked on
first robot first robot is a manipulator
as i mentioned developed by by a company
and it's a kind of collaborative
research
and they thought that maybe the
application were
at the time a control theory is a kind
of
is called the modern control theory and
so they consider that
by applying an advanced uh control
theory they could uh
i mean improve the the performance of
their own robots
but but actually it we couldn't do it
[Laughter]
because of kind of a computational
button uh computer system was so slow
to implement about implement our own
controllers
so this was the these were projects that
you
still did while you were at tokyo
institute no no no
no um a
i'm now i'm uh i mean i've already
uh spent uh 17 18 years
at the tohoku university and i have my
own
network and part of the network is
relating to the
uh the network other kind of which i
established he created during my
yeah and when did you first
engage the international community of
robotics
uh international community robotics uh i
when i was uh
i was young i mean i was a research
associate and at the beginning of course
i have nothing to i mean
to present and after that what's
interesting that at that time
uh linear control theory in some sense a
theoretical work
has been saturated had been saturated at
the time
so uh my my supervisor
uh professor furuta recommended me
to do something in the robotics field
but because at that time robotics is a
kind of emerging field
uh for the control people so i i first
started yeah that's the reason why i
started the uh
robotics research and as a fruita
laboratory itself and they are also
doing a lot of research
like uh one is a a at the time
the largest project was uh is consignor
easy to develop
uh our own computer-aided design
control design system for the uh for cad
for the control system design
and uh so i i'm the only one guy
who is doing robotics in that lab
and that was really good for me because
uh
everything i mean i have to do
everything by myself
and nobody knows nobody nobody uh
nobody has a knowledge concerned with
robots so
i i did everything by myself so that's
why it takes a
it took a long time to get the phd
and when you first got your uh
appointment
as a professor or assistant associate
professor
were you working on robots then or were
you working on multiple areas
uh okay toscio's field is really very
wide okay he just at the time he when i
joined
his laboratory he just started uh
micro machine stuff uh probably at the
beginning he was expecting that i will
be involved in the
micro mechanical system
microelectromechanics micro
electromechanical systems but
unfortunately i
i had in some sense i had a lot
at the time in other fields so
i i was involved in both
[Laughter]
and also i saw i learned a lot
and i when i was a tokyo tech in some
sense
i did kind of my research field a little
bit i mean limited
and after joining natasha's group he's
doing a lot of things
of course so i have to take care of our
students we have to take up students
and each student has a his or her own
area so that helps me a lot to learn
a lot of different things and how
how to in some sense how to develop the
kind of uh
uh suppose that you are you you have to
do something different
uh also as a research in as long as you
are doing research you have to do
something
different and so i learned how to
i mean in some sense how to
supervise students so that he or she
could do something different
in that field and that's a good
experience
very very good experience for me what
were some of the projects that you
remember from
that time at the time i think that
really a lot and also
i a my previous sponsor at the tokyo
tech uh
gave me two robots
with different controllers okay and by
utilizing the system i continue the
research of a
drm system okay and that is one of my
field
another one is that by utilizing the
manipulator
in some sense i i i we developed a kind
of a
human augmentation power augmentation
system
and it's a kind of a human robot
interaction the human
physical human robot interaction system
and uh
i think that that is still continuous in
some sense
my most well-known robot
in tohoku university is the dance
partner robot
it has a physical physical human robot
interaction
and the idea came from the
of my experience at nagoya university
and concerned with the human power
augmentation system
and we developed a very robust and
stable controller
for the augmentation suppose that we'd
like to
amplify human's power by utilizing a
mechanical system
then the system interacts with the
environment and also assist the system a
lot is interact with the human okay
so in order to assure
the stability of the system
stability of the system depends on the
human dynamics
as well as environment dynamics so what
we did
is that by controlling the a
dynamics of the mechanical system so
that it has a kind of a
uh it behaves like uh two
okay passive tool then
we can we can make sure that the total
system
is stable
and the stability doesn't depend on the
human dynamics as well as the
environment dynamics and that is idea
which we developed
at the time and it still works very well
and the the application would be for
exoskeletons
but unfortunately uh japan is a kind of
uh
over uh in some sense too much
uh like the too much regulation
concerned with the safetiness
and uh of robots and uh so
we couldn't uh bring the technology
into the uh real environment and
after that uh uh we are still searching
for that as some field
uh infidel we can apply the technology
but nowadays in japan for example they
have those robot free zones where
you can basically take your robot and
send it out and kind of
use it in public without a lot of
limitations so is there
is that view changing in terms of a lot
of safety security or
no no no still still uh our country in
some sense
is a maybe i should not say that
it's a very conservative in some sense
in a good world
very conservative okay uh without
regulation uh we couldn't we
without the regulation we couldn't do
anything different
okay so it's a kind of a contradiction
we'd like to develop something different
get something new
but if it was new we couldn't
we couldn't do any experiments using
that
system in the public and of course
in these days some they have a kind of
special rule
if the local authority approves it
then we can we can do some experiment
but the experiments are very limited
and i think that is one of the reasons
why i mean japanese uh we couldn't
uh a something
produce a different robot
and in some sense it's over restricted
where did you get funding for this
project
which one the augmented augmentation
actually uh we had we had no funding at
the time because
we had manipulators at the time i was
young
so we don't have so much uh a research
fund and by so
the only two robots is a kind of very
precious system for me
and by we try to utilize uh
the robot for any purposes uh to to
prove the that uh our system works our
control system works very well
at the time i'm apparently i'm still
stick to the design
of the new control system which is
robust against the kind of
disturbance and everything yeah
originally i was a control guy over the
course of your career what have been
your
primary sources of funding and support
for your research
uh actually we have a two funding
three findings and uh but in my case uh
of course uh we we have a
nsf like uh a research fund it's a jsps
uh researching aid
kakeenji it's called and another one is
an nvdo
project and it's a kind of uh it's a
funding for the collaborative research
with
industries and the third one is a purely
from industries
at this moment i have many
research funding i have a several
research funding sources from
industries and the amount is larger than
that of the
government research fund and
so uh okay there is a reason why
i started uh i i started a more
industrial project is that uh without
being
involved in the real issues uh we
we don't know what kind of issues exist
in the real field
and i noticed that many people
are trying to do some basic research of
fundamental research of robotics
but it's not easy i
to find that the new issues relating to
the uh
in the field of robots okay uh but in in
case of the united states uh you have a
very good system
adapter dapper works very well uh
you have a lot of interesting uh
initiatives uh
like a grand challenge and uh a lot of
them in
funding uh is given for the uh kind of a
more a let's say dialogue oriented
uh robotics issues so in this country
researchers i think that have some idea
concerned with
what kind of robotics technology have to
be developed
for doing our for developing a
new new field okay but in japan uh
uh unfortunately as long as if you said
that
kind of this research is relating to the
kind of
application or application oriented and
then that we couldn't get research fund
from jsps as well as gst and
something they believe that
scientific research only science
scientific research is fundamental
research and
which could be applied to many fields
which should be applied to many views
and they find only such research and
so they don't know usually it's not easy
to
to notice kind of real issues
existing in real applications so now
i put more emphasis on the kind of
collaborative research in
industries because they
usually bring us a kind of a real issues
which contains a lot of interesting
scientific issues
um maybe based on the through the
collaborative research we could
establish some new field
that is what i'm trying to do at this
moment
and have you found it difficult to
kind of use that also in the scientific
community
of the kinds of results that are more
application oriented
[Music]
i think recently
when this is a will be published i think
i'd like to know
okay because depending on when this uh
interview is open i
i sometimes i couldn't say something
it'll be at least it'll be yeah not this
year
more than a year more than a year okay
and i think at the one week
uh okay for example
uh suppose that we are doing some
uh some work okay then
uh we use both vision and haptic
information
okay and i think that we found a very
good research topic
concerned with the kind of a fusion of
haptic information
as well as visual visual information and
we are now developing a new controller
based on
different different types of information
okay
kind of so i couldn't say
uh so much at this moment but i think
it's very it's very interesting because
uh
uh it is it the issue
came from the industries or through the
discussions
and concerned with some uh problems
which we would like to solve
uh uh we found that
we have to develop something different
and i think uh
probably we can develop probably uh we
are going to
present it maybe in next year
i hope and is that also for a
manipulator
oh it's concerned with the uh
manipulator uh
sensor fusion uh sensor fusion is in
some sense
and who has been some of the
corporations that have industries that
have sponsored your work
uh it's secret compliance convention i
i'm not allowed to say
but for your whole career other than
others that are not secret
[Music]
they don't want to invade unfortunately
very interesting because
of course of course if the research was
open okay
then the people company people
do not want to bring me the real issue
okay so that's a very difficult
and uh companies in japan has a
different culture
okay uh i think that uh i don't know
whether it's good or not
but they have a different culture so
uh based on the kind of a contract uh
most strict contract we can we can see
the real issues
and we are what we can do is that try to
uh let's say a abstract
the issue and so that we can
we can utilize the result to many
different fields
and then you can publish it basically
when it's not
related exactly that's right that's
right that's right that's right
do you think there's a difference in the
patent structures in japan from the us
and europe that make that
uh patent structure may be the same i
think so
yes yes it's the same
but the one difference is uh i
i don't know whether i i can say it but
this is true so
keep this part secret in some sense it's
very
strange okay japanese companies are
they try to try to get all the patterns
uh which will be produced uh
through the uh collaborative research
uh it's not so good okay if we
our university hold the patents uh we
can we can you
use the patents for different
applications but
usually people say that uh they let
company people try to
to keep the patents by themselves
so uh we are encouraged to sell the
rights
of the patents to the uh companies
actually i
uh we we developed several i mean uh
practical systems
uh we we've got the patents and uh
unfortunately our comp
our university has sold a potential
company
so i'm a bit shocked
and um um yes
so you mentioned in 89 and 90 that you
went to mit
yeah for a year yes um how did you
decide to go there because uh
that is uh okay that's
just after the hari asada uh
went back to the united states
and when he was staying at the kyoto
university
he asked me whether i can join his group
or not
and at the time but it was a secret that
he's going back he was going back
uh yes
that so i i've got the invitation in
some sense and
he supported my uh living expenses
uh in boston and
that's why i went i joined his group and
again that it was very interesting mit
is an exciting place
and yes i i learned a lot again
and uh during the uh only it's only one
year
but i really learned a lot uh yeah
who were the people who were there and
the kinds of projects that were
happening at the time
at that time at mit
well i i don't know what i mean by what
did you work with
oh okay uh i i was working with the
uh i okay
i hardly has his own idea concerned with
the
robot structure so uh
we've got uh uh by utilizing a direct
drive motor we developed a
i don't know the name of the student
but uh i think maybe probably kevin so
this part should not be included
he may be disappointed if they noticed
that i forgot their names
and by you by using the uh drive motors
uh which i i received from from
a company uh uh
another student a director a
let's say a planar link manipulator
system
so my work i was at the time is how to
implement the
uh how to control i implemented
i developed the control system which
could a kind of a master server control
system by using
that direct drive motor and
of course i was interested in the uh how
how to make the
uh how to create a different type of
intelligent control system
but one er was too short for me
and now who are some other people that
you've collaborated with over the years
[Music]
over the years
so it's uh it's uh
it's a difficult question and because uh
you i'm
in some sense i'm doing everything by
myself
[Laughter]
uh i was doing everything by myself in
the past
and uh so until recently uh i think that
in some sense my research is self uh
contained okay and uh recently
i noticed that the collaboration is very
important and
we try to i try to invite
several professors uh in our university
and uh yes and
we are we are doing something different
uh by
by converging uh different technologies
i'm
i'm good at coming control control part
of the manipulator
and our force control or impedance
control it's my
favorite area and some guy from vision
joined joined that and some guy from uh
mechanical design part joined joined us
and
again that is uh robotics is a kind of a
product
based on the technology convergence and
uh i like the collaboration with other
people
can you say who the vision and uh
mechanical person
uh yeah it's something hey
i i don't know james bond no no no no no
no no no no no no no i i'm not sure
whether
yeah because uh that's related to the
kind of confidential project so at this
moment i should not say that
we'll know in a year yeah hopefully yes
so how did you start working on the
dancer project
because you talked a lot about um these
realistic applications and things like
that and
okay okay and at the time
when i started a dancer about the
project
i was uh we are doing uh
some uh cooperative
robot control system cooperative control
of multiple mobile robots handling a
single object
in coordination okay and
[Music]
okay at the time i was interested in how
how to make the robot more intelligent
okay of course the definition of
intelligence is not so easy
so i thought that maybe it might be a
good idea to develop a kind of a pet
robot
okay uh so i wanted to develop a mobile
pet robot
uh we named it
mobile okay but unfortunately the
student who was involved in the
moped project is a i i i
in in my lab each student has its own
has his own his or her own
uh a kind of research topic okay
he's been hospitalized for two months or
something
and uh so we noticed that
we don't have it we didn't have enough
time i mean for him
to to do something in the mobit
mobile because uh that is a completely
different field
from our i mean previous experience
experiences
and so uh we had a discussion and i
noticed that maybe
if we created something different uh
a probably i mean that could be
appreciated as a
uh that could be utilized as a master
thesis uh
other time the students are mastercard
students
and also i mean through the uh
multiple robot coordination we are doing
a lot of things okay multiple robot
coordination and
human robot coordination and uh
especially
uh the human robot coordination uh
through the several experiments
over human robot coordination
it turned out that i mean
we need something different for the
robots i suppose that of course i mean
in these days many people are interested
in how to develop a robot assistant for
example
uh in order to in order to assist
a human for a robot the robot
has to know what the human is doing what
the user
its user is doing or how
its user would like to be assisted
or or what kind of i mean
of course what kind of a
task the the guy is doing and
all of the such information is very
important how
he or she is trying to do in some sense
their intentions without this
information and robot couldn't assist
the human
okay up to the uh
collaborate let's say physical uh other
time
we are we have a very limited knowledge
concerned with the human
robot interaction that's a from based on
the pure control system design
so we found that that something is
missing
so i uh we saw that oh it's a good idea
to develop a ballroom dance robot okay
and dance
in case of ballroom dance a male dance
at least a female dancer okay
so if we could develop a female dancer
uh
we could reproduce the female dancers
function
then probably we could apply the results
for the
uh assistant robot by future
robots which could assist humans
and uh so this idea
combined with the situation of that
student
and uh something that created the
idea of a dance pattern robot by
utilizing a mobile robot
we have several mobile robots and we
decided to use one of the robots
we modify the mobile robot so that
it could dance with a human and that is
a really really starting point
it's about i think at the more than
i think it's around 1997.
and of course after that uh
we are doing as a new students are
continuing the
research and a
and unfortunately in 2005 it expo was
held in japan
we we gave a proposal uh for the
nato project uh and saying that i would
like to demonstrate
a dance pattern robot i and
our proposal was accepted and so we
could hire uh the
uh the designer uh it's a very
interesting uh
a a designer of the uh the well-known
dance pattern about
pvdr is uh tatsuya okanogi
who is a real designer a dress designer
and when we found him
we met him uh he was in the uh
in the he was one of the key designers
of uh ise miyakes group ise miyake is a
well-known designer in japan
and after that he left the group
and he is now independent and so we had
a collaboration with the designer dress
designer
and also uh in order to a demons have a
demonstration about robot
uh during the ig expo actually it's a
two weeks
demonstration it's not so long but uh
it's not a one time demonstration
so we thought that it's not easy to
build everything by myself by ourselves
so we found a company a generous company
who could support us to develop the
robot
so and so the company
uh and it's uh it's called the uh
normalization and now now they change
the name it's called numeric
normalization
and uh a mr okanogi
and uh ourselves and uh
set up a group and uh mr conoy has a lot
on his own networks
okay uh he found a good a moniker
company who could produce a
beautiful panel robot
and himself a design
created a completely different design uh
of a dance battle robot and it's
it's a really beautiful
and uh when i saw the first uh what i
say
we so managing company which produced
the outer panel
is located in kyoto okay
we are located in sendai and
mr okanogi is located in tokyo and
nomura initial is located in chino chino
city and nagana prefecture
so four different entities are involved
in the project
and again that we learned a lot and
we noticed that we we don't know so much
about i mean how to produce
something different how did people react
to the
dancing robot ah yes the reaction was so
nice and
actually uh before that uh our robot
actually sado generation robot uh was uh
in some sense i was broadcasted and i
we did we had some presentation
in the rsj robotic society of japan's
annual conference
and one one media
is uh interested in the
the robot and they filmed
our robots and uh some some broad
several broadcasting companies uh
broadcasted uh the
the robot then they in same way at the
time
i was already in sendai and uh one of
the broad
one of the company were sendai
i broadcasted the uh dance pattern robot
an original version and uh newscaster
said that
she doesn't like the face the face of
the lover
and uh was this the one was it at that
point the turquoise and the pink one or
was this
no no different different different
designs original one actually after
south generation
so in some sense i mean we are
disappointed
to hear the uh comments and uh something
discouraged
uh so uh this uh ij exposed project was
really nice
uh by inviting the real designer
dress designer of course his major is
addressed
design with dress and uh but uh
he has his own idea i mean how to make
the
uh the system or robot
is more attractive to the ordinary
people it's very beautiful
and according to him uh our robot is a
kind of combination of a
mickey mouse and marine monroe i don't
know how to pronounce it in a precise
way
and actress were an actress and
according to him in order to attract
make the robot attractive to all the
ordinary people
then that he said that the kind of
design should be a kind of a combination
of
well-known characters he does he didn't
want to make the lord like a human
okay so he he liked his
include the kind of design and similar
to the mickey mouse it has a
large you know large ears
and marine monologue is maybe
his favorite actress so by combining
combining them actually it's very
beautiful and uh
so and also i first demonstrate the
first part of the demonstration consists
of like solo dance
uh sodas was created by my students and
together with
mr okanogi and it was again that very
beautiful
so uh it could attract many people
after that actually of course we did a
demonstration of the physical human
robot interaction
my my our student uh dr takeda
as a dancing danced
with the robot and uh yeah it was
successfully done
and many people likes like the robot
do you think that's your most famous
robot hey yes i think it does still
people know
yeah what about technically
oh technically technically is a kind of
uh
i'm not sure whether i could say that
guy behavior estimation
estimation of the next step following
step
uh based on the uh resultant force
applied to the upper body from the uh
male dancer and we we designed the
in some sense on behavior step estimator
uh based on the
uh used by utilizing his marker model
and
it works now of course i'm still we are
still doing the research
how to increase the robustness or how to
make
the system more adaptable uh adaptive to
the
uh to the different different people
or yeah we found a lot of i mean
issues and actually during this article
conference uh one student our student
uh mr hongowan is going to give a
presentation concerned with the
how to realize our coupled dynamics of
our
both those dancers uh it's another issue
what do you think is the biggest
technical challenge to this kind of
human robot and physical interaction
physical interaction
uh of course the different types of we
have a
human level interaction means a lot of
different things
okay so uh probably they
uh
in okay generally speaking
uh most of the difficult issue is how to
uh
create uh safety safety safetiness
a lot have to be safe okay
uh so it's it's a kind of uh
issues uh which we have to solve but in
our case
in case of dance robot uh
[Music]
several server issues one is the uh how
to estimate the human's behavior
this is also general okay suppose that
you would like to develop an
assistant robot the the robot has to
know the human's intention
in some sense intentional estimation or
behavior estimation more precisely and
the next one is uh
a in our case uh in case of dance robot
uh it's a a issues a kind of a
a synchronization of motions
or coupled dynamics okay so suppose that
you'd like to do something together with
a robot suppose that you like to
a carry something like a desk
together with a robot these two dynamics
have to be in some sense
have to be coordinated okay
and sometimes uh you you may need some
synchronization
okay and another one is uh
oh i'm sorry i'm not very organized
another one is uh a as long as i mean
robotics interact with a human
uh maybe uh robot we human
may expect some characters
are some emotions in the robot so
emotional behavior uh emotion
aspects should be implemented
in the uh robot system
that's a kind of a final goal
[Laughter]
it's very difficult i mean we are
starting with the
uh human level physical human robot
interaction means that the kind of
desired controller first and then try to
move to the uh more
in some sense uh intelligent part
so we are still trying to climb up the
stairs
climb up the mountain and it takes time
and is this also funded by industry or
is it funded by the government
uh which one uh uh
uh different maybe different parts are
funded but um
now uh of course uh uh consumers are
with dan slobot
in the past we received a research fund
from jsps
and also nato with the ig export
and the country we are using are doing
that by ourselves
and what do you consider the biggest
technical accomplishments of your career
uh theoretically okay uh
it might not be theoretical okay i'd
like to say
that okay based on this uh human-level
interaction experiments uh
dance robots okay we found
several applications in the uh
in industries
one is a party party
and it's a robot is which is supposed to
be utilized for the
automobile companies factories and uh
at least in japan there is a lot of
workers
human workers are still involved in
assembling
of automobiles okay and sometimes they
have to go back to the
workbench to pick up parts and put the
parts to the
uh to the vehicle and we found that by
developing a kind of assistant robot uh
which assisted
these workers uh to assemble the
parts maybe the workers uh
what is a yeah we can make
the work uh their works more efficient
okay so with
uh what about this parts and the tools
delivery
robot okay uh paddy stands for
it's it's a bit strange in english
parts two's delivery to you robot
[Laughter]
parts tools delivery to you okay paddy
and the robot i mean captures uh
some parts uh necessarily for the
assembly
so the worker is uh doing some assembly
tasks and then that
uh lobot is going to bring him or her
with a different parts i mean it depends
on the
so the robot has to estimate to which
extent the work has been done
uh which parts is uh uh is it necessary
for him or her to
to assemble to do the next assembly task
or something like that so it depends
in some sense the concept is completely
comes from the
uh dance pattern robot i mean uh which
we
we were we expected at the beginning uh
so but some people may
may be interested in why we didn't uh
develop a home use robot okay uh
because uh in some sense uh now many
people are trying to develop robot for
home use
but uh a home is a really really
difficult environment uh
we have a what is the ordinary user
which means that the robot is completely
have to be completely safe
we couldn't educate the user
at home so in case of our
factories uh by limiting the kind of we
can first we can educate
the user user is a worker usually are
educated
for that i mean production system uh
and we can control the environment
of course it's a in some sense uh
it's less unstructured than compared to
the
uh uh home okay so i think that uh
it might be a good idea to bring the
assistive robot system
into the factory first then based on the
cyber i mean maybe uh experiences
in the factories probably the concept
could be brought into the
uh the real real i mean ordinary
environment
i think um yeah i
yeah we are we are still working on it
and uh it's so exciting very exciting
did it help you improve your dancing
did it help you improve your dancing the
dance program uh
yeah yeah the student did all the
differences
unfortunately i couldn't dance so who
are
some of your more successful students
who are still working in robotics
uh still working on robotics and uh
successful students what do you mean uh
okay uh
in our case since maybe uh since we are
doing a lot of
kind of uh systems integration type of
research
and so many people after
having got the phd and many people would
like to join the company companies
and uh many students are working
in companies some of them are developing
uh
next generation robots and some of them
doing
something different and concerned with
the academia
yes and uh my associate professor
is our own student uh
this is professor hirata and uh
he's doing uh he's trying to apply the
kind of physical human robot interaction
technology
to the uh assistive systems uh
i mean the assistive systems of the
working assist
system or other types are usually uh
mainly uh mobility assist system for the
elderly or some disabled person
yeah i think uh i think that he's most
successful can you also tell us a little
bit about your work
for ras and rsj
uh-huh yeah and the jj is jsme
by somehow i have been heavily involved
in
society activities uh in japan i
it was a kind of a uh
a there are
three societies relating to the
uh robots one is a sic
society of instrument and control
engineers uh once i was uh
we had we when i was a a
uh as a member of the board of uh
directors or board of governors
we established a new new division
in that society a society of instruments
and control engineering and the new the
division is
a system integration division okay
i was a kind of uh the head of the
division and i also
served as a kind of several positions in
the
board of governors of that organization
and
after that i i also concerned with the
robotics society of japan
again i was a a
i don't know
i usually remember the english word but
uh today i
i forgot the english name it's okay okay
yeah yeah yeah yeah member of the board
i'll be uh okay we're ready
okay and the concern with the a rsj
robotic society of japan uh
i was i mean a also a member of the
board members of the board and uh i also
served uh as an editor-in-chief of
advanced robotics
uh for five years and uh
okay for concern with jsme
japan society of mechanical engineers
and
i was we we have our
a robotics and mechatronics division
and i also serve the head of the
division and of course before that i was
involved in many
uh a functions
many many roles of that uh running the
division so
and i think uh i like being involved in
the
society's activities uh because uh it
gives me a lot of chance
to know something different something
which i don't know
okay and uh russ is also the same
a igp russ robertson automation society
and gives me has given me
a lot of opportunities to meet new
people
and to know uh something different
and uh to catch
they get well to get information the
most most
up-to-date information concerned with
the uh the research in our fields
and i also so if you are when i was
only involved in the uh domestic
organizations
uh what i i could i could get is only
domestic
so we didn't know the outside the
country and now i mean after being
involved in this uh
uh igp robotics and automation society
i definitely broadened uh
kind of uh the information source so
i i think that i know more
about uh foreign outside of japan than
inside of japan
and so i think that in that sense i mean
i'd like to recommend our young people
to be involved in
the society activities at any level
and some people say that
it's not directly related to the
research and
some people especially in japan and some
some some of our
young researchers do not want to be
actively involved
in the society activities but i think
it's definitely wrong and
you can brush up your skill and
communicate
with uh with different people
i mean uh this society is a collection
uh as a professor david olin uh the
current president
uh told this morning and it's very
diverse
and so we we could meet a lot of people
from a lot of different i mean
backgrounds and environments
and uh based on this
this uh we could create a lot with i
mean
new networks and that's bring us a lot
of
important information uh relating to
our research so that's very important
when did you first become involved with
res
well that's a good question i don't
remember when
okay i think my first uh i
i was involved in the kind of a
editorial board member of robotics and
automation society in new zealand
i think that is my first involvement
of course the first involvement is to
just submit the paper
and paper was accepted and given several
presentations
and when i was a research associate to
tokyo tech
uh of course at the beginning i have
nothing to be to present
and uh later part i mean i i decided
uh to submit the papers as
as many as possible but of course we
have domestic conference
we also have to submit papers to
domestic conferences
and but usually i attended that is to
come for international conferences
outside of japan and i gradually
i mean improve my english skill
and then the the first i mean
faster committee was i think at the
editorial board of our newsletter
it was very interesting
yeah what are some of the kind of
initiatives that you've seen
happen in rsj or ras while
you were there what are some of the
things the societies are trying to do
for robotics uh trying to do for
robotics okay
uh consultant with sic size we we
consider that of course
at the time uh we robotics we have a
group relating to
technical committee on robotics and
uh it was under the uh control control
division
so we we thought that i think that maybe
control division is too narrow i mean to
to handle the robotics field so
we established a
systems integration division and i'm one
of the
initiators of that division and
i when i was with uh
okay rsj and what i did i tried to
remember
okay and when i was a attend chief
of advanced robotics uh i increased the
number
of the issues per year i think
from four to eight uh almost a double
i don't remember exactly but
and uh so i think that uh it
it might be a good idea i thought that
it was a good idea
to frequently publish the issues
and of course to do so we need more
papers and i think
currently they have a i don't know
exactly 18 issues
many issues yes i think uh i think
i'm the first guy to increase the number
of issues
of course we negotiated with the
publisher
and we negotiated with the society
uh boat and uh yeah we had a lot of
things
to do to to do so
and uh hey jsme i don't remember what i
did at tmc
jsme and concerned with itp rush
and from last year
we had a dramatically decreased the
membership fee
okay and until recently
uh every year i mean society says that
they have a lot of sufferers uh
in some sense i i'm afraid that as we so
we revisited uh the budget
uh uh during the past 10 years
and we thought that we we could uh
in some sense uh we could feedback uh
the society suffers to the
uh ordinary um to the members of the
society
so we reduced the membership fee from 22
u.s dollars
to a we created a new
e-membership
which contains the electrical
subscription e-subscriptions
of a magazine as well as a transaction
robotics
and transactional automation science and
test transaction automation science and
engineering
and uh it's now you can subscribe it
with uh
you can become a member with nine
dollars per year
and uh actually in some sense we
subsidize each member
and uh but those money comes from
the income uh for
from the publications uh
distributed through itp and so
i think that that is my major
accomplishment in in
with russ and as a result a current
membership is around them
i think at the more than nine thousand
uh last year we had an increase about
20 percent it's a
yes and so uh i i like something
i like to do something different and uh
and also uh from this year a moment
probably from next year
okay
we made a we
okay our society has several technical
committees
okay each technical committee has its
own activities
like a workshop during the conference or
some some technical committee has its
own conference
a simple symposium or
workshops independently over large
conferences okay
independently health uh of the of this
iqra as well as iris
uh major conferences about society
uh so from i think next year based on
the kind of this year's uh
uh financial situation i think that they
can utilize uh
50 percent of the surplus for the
activity
next year that is what
we we approved last year and the
implementation is coming
soon and uh others
yeah we did a lot what are the venues
where you publish
the most or were you published over the
years
probably so like conferences or
journals which places do you send your
my other work
okay i'm living in japan so in some
sense
it's a little bit different
if i were living in in the united states
of course everything will be published
through the
in english okay but in japan some
company people
do not read english papers unfortunately
so
in our case uh first we published our
research results
in an international conference as well
as domestic conference
uh domestic conference as you know you
may know japanese domestic conferences
everybody we have no review process the
viewing process
but the proceeding has only two pages
okay and so
uh we usually publish it in in
international conferences as well as
domestic conferences
and then uh a
if the i mean students are good at
uh writing english we publish in it
in international journals and uh
some student is not so good at i mean
writing english in that case we
recommend them to publish
the results in domestic journals
so i think but from
last year i mean these years i we
decided
to make to publish mainly in outside of
a of the country okay internationally
uh because i mean uh i think that uh
based on i mean my experience we noticed
that uh
there is no border for researchers
so i think that it's very good for
opportunity for students
uh to to to do everything in english
that helps their future so
and also simultaneously i also
i try to i mean now i decided to accept
more
foreign students and we have
several foreign students at this moment
and so
now i i mean we try to
make our our laboratory uh so borderless
we don't want to consider the
international there's no
no nation concept of nation for research
so that is what except for funding
i say yeah except for funding uh that's
uh that's right that's the point yeah
where are your students your
international students from
uh from okay uh we have several types of
international students
our university has a kind of short stay
short time stay like a half a year or
one year
and also uh a we have
some people i would like to join the phd
course as well as the master course
okay and our university started to
support that i mean some students came
in and
he or she couldn't speak japanese
so we need some english course
so our departments are prepare the
english course for those students
and so now
many students coming all over the world
in some sense but
mainly from asian countries as well as
this year some students are coming from
south america and uh
i don't remember the name of the
countries exactly okay
and yes uh
for sure to stay some people are yeah
uh we have an exchange student from
european countries and
in the past we accepted students from
australia and
it's in some sense many countries but
unfortunately
our laboratory capacity is not so large
we couldn't accept all of the students
i mean so that is my current headache
how many are you miss two how many
students
uh okay in you know university uh
students join uh select their own
laboratory
in our department students select their
own
laboratory when their third year
of the undergraduate course so including
the undergraduate students
i think we have almost 40 students
and uh a turbo 12 of them
the 12 students are phd students and i
think got 12
phd students and at this moment
uh i don't know exactly
how many master students yeah and
uh i think that
i think the twelve master students
probably masturbate students
and uh undergraduate students
yeah what's your recommendation for
young people who
want to get interested or involved in
robotics as a career
advocate career okay
uh robotics i i think that suppose that
i mean
a first okay
robot has just started okay robotics
industry
has just started uh first
industrial robot uh was produced i mean
was put into the market
around 1960 uh some some literature said
it in 1961
okay and it's very very young uh because
in case of automobiles for the model t
was started to be produced
i think in 1907 or something
and uh a airplane light bulb brothers
through the air the their their first
flight
was carried out in 1903
so compared to the automobiles as well
as
airplanes we have a very short history
so i mean now the robotics field is i
mean try
expanding okay and uh
it's okay and this is one one one fact
and suppose that you'd like to develop
some
new type of robots like for example
agriculture robots for example
then that in order to robot is a kind of
artificially
created object okay it have to be useful
for for the society for our field okay
so
suppose that you'd like to develop some
robot in a different
in a new field like elderly care for
example
in order to develop a robot you you need
a lot of
fundamental you need technologies okay
you have to design mechanical system you
need uh
you have to design sensor system you
have to design a
controller and
but unfortunately of course you need uh
maybe you have you need a slam
technology
but unfortunately by building these
technologies
we couldn't develop a new robot
uh the the rest there are two two types
okay the rest of the
uh uh it's just like a kind of a putting
a block together
to to achieve the final function uh
something
missing we have several missing blocks
okay
this is a research topic in that
specific
area or could be a research topic
which has if it is unknown research
topic
unknown i mean basic robotics
technologies
or which we have to develop for this
purpose and
then it could be feedback feedback to
the
fundamental of the fundamentals
and some technology which is a kind of
well-known
in technology may not be enough okay
and now that in order to build a new new
field
robot you sometimes you have to enhance
this unique technology so the kind of a
it it's a it's a systems integration as
well as we need
interaction with the uh fundamental
robot fundamentals as well as this
application field
and so it is very very interesting
and suppose that the young guys are but
it's not easy
to start everything from the beginning
so my recommendation
is to involve in some there are two
types
some fundamental unique technologies or
some development of some robot then uh
based on based on the experience uh
you can broaden uh uh let's say your
area
and finally i think that you'll be a
good robotics engineer
that is what i'm expecting it's very
interesting
and uh we have a
center for research and development
strategies at the jst japan science and
technology agency
we had a lot of discussions concerned
with the structure of robots
the conclusion is the robot is a
is a really huge area
which could almost cover all of the
engineering field
so i mean to be a future robotics
researcher
you have to in some sense you have to
know everything you need a kind of a
basic knowledge
concern a broad broad knowledge of
engineering
and based on the knowledge you can
create your own robot
so it's very interesting and
just started as i mentioned so it has a
bright future
and i really would like to encourage
young people to be
involved in this field
thank you is there anything that we
missed
or no i don't know you're happy
okay i know i don't know i have no idea
i mean we've asked the things that we
usually yeah already
there's any other big projects you
worked on or
uh sorry you said secrets yeah
[Music]
maybe i think that we are planning to uh
do some of the demonstration uh during
the
the next year's irex uh
probably international robotic
exhibition uh which will be held in
tokyo
together with iris international i2p
rsg international conference on
intelligent robots and systems
so next year we can say something
different
yeah i think it should be very
interesting
it's a largest project which i
i have involved so far and is it mostly
in your lab or well you'll tell us later
yeah yeah no yes yes it's uh it's a kind
of um
yeah i i asked uh several professors
to join the project it's very exciting
well we're looking forward to hearing
about it oh yeah thank you
[Laughter]
great sorry i couldn't bear everything
no no it's perfect
thank you very much thank you