Title: NSF/Tokyo Report: Control and Robotics Related Research Activities Date: December 2, 1997 The National Science Foundation's offices in Tokyo and in Paris periodically report on developments abroad that are related to the Foundation's mission. These documents present facts for the use of NSF program managers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy. Special Scientific Report #97-39 (November 19, 1997) CONTROL AND ROBOTICS RELATED RESEARCH ACTIVITIES The following report was prepared by Dr. Devendra P. Garg, Program Director for the Dynamics Systems and Control Program at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Garg visited Japan from October 4 - November 7, 1997 as a Visiting Research Fellow (short-term) under the sponsorship of the Science and Technology Agency of Japan (STA). Professor Kazuo Tanie of the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan served as host scientist for Dr. Garg. Dr. Garg may be reached via email at: dgarg@nsf.gov. Abstract In this report, activities undertaken during the Science and Technology Agency (STA) Short-Term Invitational Fellowship from October 4 to November 7, 1997, are described. While the base was maintained at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL) in Tsukuba Science City, a number of universities, industries, and government institutions were visited, seminar presentations were made, and technical discussions were held with researchers in these organizations in order to describe the collaborative research opportunities available through the National Science Foundation's Division of International Programs (INT), and to identify specific research projects that held such possibilities. In addition to MEL, site visits were made to Gifu University, Kumamoto University, Nagoya University, Okayama University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Hitachi, and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Research and Development Center at Takasago. Details of these visits are provided below. ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS: Five academic institutions, namely, Gifu University, Kumamoto University, Nagoya University, Okayama University, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology were visited for discussions, seminar presentation, and information exchange. Details of activities undertaken at these institutions are described below. GIFU UNIVERSITY The visit to Gifu University was hosted by Professor Haruhisa Kawasaki (kawasaki@mech.gifu-u.ac.jp), Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Director of the Virtual Systems Laboratory. Gifu University is located in Gifu City, approximately in the middle of the island of Honshu, 400km from Tokyo, 140km from Osaka, and 30km from Nagoya. Professor Kawasaki's research interests include adaptive force-position control of constrained robotic manipulators; humanoid robot hand control; robot vision; intelligent mechatronics; and virtual reality. The Kawasaki Laboratory of Gifu University was started in 1994. I presented a seminar to the Faculty of Engineering describing the role NSF plays in bringing the universities and the industries together in research partnerships. In addition, I discussed the curricular innovations that are being introduced in the US engineering education system to meet the challenges of the next century. The Virtual Systems Laboratory of Gifu University was established in November 1996 as a center for national universities to facilitate creative graduate school led research and development in virtual reality. The participating units to conduct research are the Graduate Engineering School, the Graduate Schools of Medicine, Agriculture, and Education at Gifu University, and other institutions outside Gifu. The major goals of this laboratory are to energize the local industries, create new opportunities, analyze and fuse many phenomena in real and virtual spaces using the virtual reality technology, and to actively promote the basic and applied research in virtual reality. The laboratory emphasizes in its research projects the three-dimensional measurement of curved surfaces and high definition stereoscopic vision; analyses of feature extraction, recognition, and interpretation; dynamic simulation in virtual space; rapid prototype modeling; and telerobotic systems using virtual reality. The robotic system for heavy machinery-oriented construction available in the laboratory can be controlled bidirectionally from a remote location, thus is applicable for restoration work in hazardous environments and hard to reach settings such as deep underground, seabed, and the outer space. KUMAMOTO UNIVERSITY The visit to Kumamoto University was hosted by Professor Shigeyasu Kawaji (kawaji@eecs.kumamoto-u.ac.jp), Professor of Computer Science at Kumamoto University. The university is located in the city of Kumamoto in Kyushu island. It takes about 90 minutes from Tokyo, and about 60 minutes from Osaka to reach Kumamoto by air. This institution is one of the prominent national universities supported by the central Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture (Monbusho). It has the faculties of Engineering, Education, Science, Law, Letters, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Medicine. Professor Kawaji's research interests are in the areas of information-integrated control systems -- both intelligent control and conventional control -- and their application to mechanical control systems. I gave a seminar presentation at Kumamoto University outlining the innovative programs at NSF such as GOALI and CAREER that are designed to encourage university-industry partnerships, and to nurture relatively young faculty members as excellent total educators. In addition to laboratory visits and discussion of specific research projects, I visited Kumamoto Technopolis -- which acts as a base for research and development activities, and has 15 companies engaged in advanced technology research and software development, and is located in close proximity of the Applied Electronics Research Institute, and the Cooperative Research Center of the Kumamoto University. Professor Kawaji is the President of Research for Intelligent System Technology (RIST) in Kumamoto. This organization consists of 46 companies, 3 universities, 3 technical colleges, and 6 government organizations. The RIST group brings together the cooperation of the industrial, academic, and the government administrative sectors for conducting research in significant areas related to the advancement of intelligent systems such as fuzzy control, neuro-computers, voice recognition, intelligent robotics, expert systems, pattern recognition systems, factory automation, computer-aided design and flexible manufacturing systems, and intelligent computer-aided instructional systems. The Cooperative Research Center of Kumamoto University provides research facility and laboratory space for university-industry cooperative research projects or contract research; offers technical advice and consulting services to private companies and other external organizations; and implements technical training programs targeted at technicians and engineers employed in the private sector. NAGOYA UNIVERSITY The visit to Nagoya University was hosted by Professor Toshio Fukuda (Fukuda@mein.nagoya-u.ac.jp), Professor of Micro-Systems Engineering, and Professor of Mechano-Informatics and Systems at Nagoya University. Nagoya is located about 2 hours away from Tokyo via the Shinkansen HIKARI Super Express. Dr. Fukuda is Vice-President of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, General Chairman of the 2nd Conference on Virtual Reality Society of Japan held in September 1997, General Chairman of the 1998 International Symposium on Mechatronics and Human Science to be held in Nagoya in November 1998, and General Chairman of the International Micro Robot Maze Contest also to be held in Nagoya in November 1998. In addition, Professor Fukuda will begin his term in 1998 as President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. His research interests are primarily in the areas of intelligent robotic systems, self-organizing systems, robotic systems working under hostile environments, bio-robo! tic systems, fuzzy control, micro-robotics, and automatic diagnosis and control of complex mechanical systems. In Professor Fukuda's Laboratory of Micro Systems Control, there is a strong collaboration on research projects with industries and other research organizations. These projects, among others, include cellular robotic system research and development; analysis, design and control of microactuators, mobile robotic systems, and micro-manipulator systems; multi-media telemedicine systems; intelligent human-machine interface considering interactive adaptation; biped and 6-leg omnidirectional walking robots with manipulator; optimization of intelligent systems using genetic algorithms; coordinated motion control of dual manipulators; hybrid force-impact control of robotic manipulators; self-organizing manipulator systems; neural networks using incremental learning based upon radial basis functions; emotional robotic systems where emotion causes the explosion or reduction of motion, and controls the performance of the robot. The laboratory is well-equipped with Yasukawa Motoman and ! Mitsubishi Move Master robots and a ROBOTEC R2360 Dual Direct Drive Manipulator, several micro-machining and micro-measurement systems, video tracking systems, SUN and SGI workstations, and a variety of other specialized equipment such as a brachiation robot, self-organizing end effector, a micro autonomous robotic system, man-machine cooperative type robot, and a prototype cellular robotic system. OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY The visit to Okayama University was hosted by Professor Toshiro Noritsugu (toshiro@sys.okayama-u.ac.jp) of the Department of Systems Engineering, Okayama University. This is a relatively new department at the university, formed as a result of recent reorganization. Okayama is located about 3 hours from Tokyo and about 1 hour from Shin-Osaka by Super Express (Shinkansen) train. Okayama University has the faculties of Engineering, Law, Medicine and Dentistry, Economics, Education, Science, Agriculture, Letters, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Environmental Science and Technology. Professor Noritsugu is the General Chairman of ICAM - 98, the 3rd International Conference on Advanced Mechatronics: Innovative Mechatronics for the 21st Century, to be held in Okayama from August 3 to 6, 1998. The main topics to be covered at this conference include opto-mechatronics, vibration and control, magnetic technology, flexible automation, innovative actuation and sensing systems, haptic int! erfaces and virtual reality, micro-mechatronics, medical robotics, human friendly and intelligent robotics, neural network and fuzzy logic controlled robots, space structure and control, and recycle and reuse oriented mechatronics. Professor Noritsugu's own research interests are in areas such as pneumatic actuation and control of rehabilitation robots, cooperative control of human-robot systems using fuzzy reasoning, hybrid force-position control of robotic manipulators using artificial rubber muscles, and motion control of parallel link manipulators using disturbance observers. I presented a seminar talk at Okayama University describing the current NSF emphasis on research topics such as Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence, and NSF's recent Learning and Intelligent System (LIS) Initiative. Other faculty members with whom technical discussions were held were Professor Koichi Hashimoto (koichi@sys.okayama-u.ac.jp) and Professor Yutaka Tanaka (field@apollo2.mech. okayama-u.ac.jp) of the Department of Systems Engineering. The research interests of Professor Hashimoto are close to those of Professor Noritsugu. Currently, they both have several joint projects and student advisees in the department. Professor Tanaka is heavily involved in vision-related robotic research. Because of the close proximity of Okayama with several industrial plants located in the Kansai area, the faculty interacts routinely with companies such as Sumitomo Electric Industries in Osaka, Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Kobe, and theBridgestone Corporation in Kodaira. TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Visit to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama campus located near Tokyo was to hold discussions with Professor Katsuhisa Furuta. Dr. Furuta is a professor in the Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It was almost one year ago, during my JSPS Short-Term Invitational Fellowship at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, that Dr. Ed Murdy, Director of the NSF Tokyo Office, I, and Professor Furuta met and discussed the possibility of planning and organizing a trilateral Japan - USA - Vietnam Workshop in areas of interest that will be of mutual benefit to the three countries. Subsequent discussions with Ms. Alice Hogan, Program Director for the Vietnam region, and with Dr. Larry Weber, Program Director for the Japan Korea region at NSF confirmed the need and the existence of a strong desire to move forward with this activity. Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka, a Chaired Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at ! the University of California at Berkeley, in collaboration with Professor Furuta and Professor Phat of Hanoi developed a proposal for a workshop to be held in May 1998 in Hanoi on the integration of research and education in the areas of computation, communication, and control. During his stay at the University of California at Berkeley, Professors Furuta and Tomizuka further refined the scope and format of the workshop, and identified a list of participants who would provide the needed expertise that would optimally benefit the workshop attendees. In addition, they developed a fund-raising strategy in Japan to provide travel support to the Japanese delegates for participating in the workshop, and to generate sufficient funds to meet the workshop expenses on location in Hanoi. Omron Corporation has agreed to provide such support. The emphasis of the workshop -- integration of research and education -- is in tune with one of the four core strategies being pursued by the National Science Foundation in order to accomplish the three goals formulated in the Foundation's strategic plan entitled " NSF in a Changing World. " The thematic areas of the workshop -- computation, communication, and control -- are essential for implementing Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) related activities. This theme has enlisted the attention and support of Dr. Kishan Baheti of the Electrical and Communications Systems Division in jointly funding this activity with my program. The other participants are Dr. Bert Marsh, Acting Assistant Director for the Engineering Directorate, and Dr. Larry Weber and Ms. Alice Hogan of the Division of International Programs at NSF. In addition to meeting with Dr. Furuta, I met with Mr. Yasushi Hiroshige, Director of the Research Cooperation Division, and Mr. S. Inoue, Manager of the Research Cooperation Division at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Both were very interested in learning about the funding mode at NSF, and about the upcoming Japan-US-Vietnam Workshop and Professor Furuta's significant role as a TIT faculty member in planning the workshop. PRIVATE INDUSTRIES Two private industries were visited and discussions on subjects of mutual interests were held with researchers at these organizations. One was the Hitachi Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, located at Tsuchiura, and the other was the Takasago Research & Development Center of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Limited. These visits are described below. HITACHI, LTD. The visit to the Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory of Hitachi, Ltd., was hosted by Mr. Masakatsu Fujie (mgfujie@merl.hitachi.co.jp), Chief Researcher and Leader of the Human-Care Systems Development Project, and Mr. Norihisa Miyake (nmiyake@merl.hitachi.co.jp), Senior Researcher and a Member of the Planning Office. The Laboratory is actively engaged in research and development of a wide range of products to provide assistance to the industry, and for daily life. These include nuclear power plants, turbo-machinery, computers, automated teller machines, printers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines. In addition to the Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., has several other research laboratories, such as the Central Research Laboratory located near Tokyo; Hitachi Research Laboratory located in Hitachi City; Production Engineering Research Laboratory located near Yokohama; and the System Development Laboratory located near Kawasaki. Each laboratory has its own emphasis to serve the needs of the company. The Design Center located in Tokyo, and the Advanced Research Laboratory located near Saitama also assist in the mission of the organization and work on futuristic technologies. I visited a number of projects at Hitachi in the area of control and robotics. For example, a walking rehabilitation system is designed to help the elderly and is being marketed commercially. The system allows the user to adjust the force required to support and assist the walking independently. Another robotics related project is in medical-surgical area. Here a master-slave system has been designed to assist the surgeons in a variety of micro-surgery applications. In the area of computer disk drives, a high-density, large-capacity recording system has been developed which includes positioning the read/write head over the disk with submicron accuracy while maintaining a small gap between the head and the disk. The newly developed Automated Teller Machine (ATM) features a bill cleaning function which, in addition to commonly found characteristics in such machines, returns pressed and sterilized bills to the ATM users. These machines are user-friendly and highly reliable. In another project, a real-time hybrid vibration simulation system has been developed. This system combines an actuator-excited vibration experiment of a small part of the structure and response analysis of the rest of the structure using a high-performance digital computer. An integration of vibration experiments and computer simulation provides the capability of economically and precisely predicting the vibration response of large-scale structures. MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES, LTD. My visit to the Takasago Research and Development Center of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Limited was hosted by Mr. Yutaka Ozawa (ozawa.wv@trdc.mhi.co.jp), Manager, Machinery Laboratory, and Mr. Takeo Oomichi (oomichi@trdc.mhi.co.jp), Assistant Chief Engineer, Machinery Laboratory. The Center is located at Takasago between Himeji and Kobe, has approximately 480 employees, and is one of the largest R & D Centers of MHI. The other R & D Centers are located at Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Nagoya. At this Center, basic research is conducted in the areas of materials, structures, vibration and noise control, fluid dynamics, combustion and heat transfer, electric applications, machinery, and control systems. Work on production development takes place in nuclear systems, turbo machinery, space utilization promotion, and applied physics. Typical projects in progress at the Center include PWR power plants and fast breeder reactors under nuclear energy systems division; tunneli! ng machinery, and power shovels under construction machinery division; ocean structures, and submersibles under shipbuilding and ocean development division; mechatronics, supercconductor systems, and laser/microwave applications under new product development division; and toll collection systems and electronic logistic systems under machinery division. I visited the Machinery Laboratory, the Electronic Application Laboratory, and the Construction Machinery Laboratory at the Takasago R & D Center. There were several ongoing projects in the areas of teleoperation, sensing and information processing, motion planning and control, high reliability and miniaturization related to intelligent machines and advanced robotic machinery research and development. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS The primary AIST laboratory included in the visit was the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL), located in the Tsukuba Science City. MEL was established in 1937 as the Government Mechanical Laboratory, and was moved to Tsukuba in 1980. The principal areas of research activities at MEL include Materials Science and Technology, Bioengineering, Information and Systems Science, Advanced Machine Technology, Energy Technology, Manufacturing Technology, and Robotics. In addition, the Laboratory has a significant involvement in Japanese national projects such as Micromachine Technology, and World Energy Network. I presented a seminar during my Fellowship stay at MEL entitled " Meeting the Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century. " Following are the highlights of a few projects related to the areas of robotics and control systems. Current research at MEL in the area of robotics emphasizes the integration and fusion of fundamental functions of robots such as manipulation and locomotion, autonomous distributed systems for higher intelligence, human-machine interfaces and human-friendly machines for the symbiosis of humans and robots, and development of high performance elements to constitute advanced robots. For example, in the area of virtual reality, an advanced type of tele-operation system has been developed that enables a human operator to perform remote tasks, including manipulation, dexterously while experiencing the feeling that exists in the anthropomorphic robot operating in a remote environment. Another project involves a quadruped-walking robot that accomplishes a stable locomotion over rough terrain or slopes by controlling the leg motion using information obtained from a force sensor locat! ed in each foot. In yet another research project, a micro-gripper has been developed which can be utilized for assembling micromachines. The gripper consists of a force intensifying mechanism using multiple spring joints and links, and a piezo actuator. Similarly, in the area of control, a variety of multi-control-movement-gyro configurations have been investigated for attitude control of large space structures and space robots in terms of three-axis control performance and steering complexity. In another project, an intelligent machining system was developed such that, if an abnormal or a faulty condition was detected, the system could reason a strategy to avoid the potentially dangerous situation by issuing a corrective control command using its expert knowledge base. Intelligent sensing technologies such as in-process tool failure diagnosis based on Wavelet Transform have also been developed. In another project, a new design scheme is studied with a view to producing a self-repairing machine. The machine is made of identical unit cells that are intelligent, interconnected, and work in a cooperative fashion to generate different machine configurations by modifying their interconnections. If some cells become faulty, th! ey are automatically replaced under the control of combined intelligence of 'healthy' cells. Self-organizing software for the cells has also been developed and its operation verified over a wide range of machine configurations. ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES There were three additional activities during my stay as STA Fellow at the MEL in Tsukuba that are worth mentioning. One was participation in a reception on October 23 at the United States Embassy Residence in Tokyo that was held to honor Dr. Jack Gibbons, Science Advisor to the President, and the US delegates on the US-Japan High-Level Committee on Science and Technology, during their visit to Japan. I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Dr. Gibbons, and Dr. Neal Lane, Dr. William Blanpied, and Dr. Ed Murdy of NSF in addition to other invitees and NSF Post-Doctoral Fellows. The other activity was a reception in Tsukuba, organized by the Agency of International Science and Technology (AIST) International House of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI), to honor Mr. William Hall, Minister - Counselor for the Scientific and Technology Affairs at the US Embassy and other embassy staff. The third activity was to attend the 1997 International Robot Exhibition held in Tokyo in conjunction with the Asian Conference on Robotics and its Applications. The exhibition had approximately 250 booths of robot manufacturers, sensing and actuating equipment, flexible manufacturing accessories, conveying and material handling devices, and related equipment. Many of the world's leading robot manufacturers were represented at the exhibition. CONCLUSIONS My stay at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory in Tsukuba Science City under the STA Short-Term Invitational Fellowship from October 4 to November 7, 1997 provided me an excellent opportunity to interact with fellow researchers at the Laboratory, and to learn about their research projects. In addition, the visits to various universities and industries described in this report enabled me to hold discussions with many researchers on collaborative project opportunities, observe their current research projects in their own laboratory settings, and meet their colleagues and students. Collaboration already exists to a great extent between the universities, industries, and government laboratories, but this pattern is not uniform at all universities and varies a great deal from professor to professor. Much more can be accomplished by setting up all-inclusive groups such as RIST, which is currently in existence at Kumamoto University. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The extraordinary guidance and help received from Dr. Kazuo Tanie, Director of the Bio-robotics Division, MEL, and his colleagues and office staff during the tenure of the STA Fellowship is most deeply appreciated. In addition, the Fellowship support provided by the Department of International Affairs of the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) is gratefully acknowledged. I wish to also thank the National Science Foundation and my colleagues at NSF for providing me the time that enabled me to pursue the activities described in this report under the STA Fellowship. Finally, thanks are due to Japan International Science and Technology Exchange Center (JISTEC), the Technology Growth House (TGH), and the AIST International House in Tsukuba for making the necessary local accommodation and other arrangements.