Research and Development for Life Support Robots that Coexist in Harmony with People

Abstract

The ongoing development of life support robots is presented by introducing the newly developed sharp ear robot ApriAlphaTM V3 and the person-following robot ApriAttendaTM from the viewpoint of human interfaces and mobile intelligence. In the future, by making full use of advanced network technology, home-use robots are expected to be at the core of home network systems and the widespread adoption of robots in everyday life is expected to be greatly facilitated by improvements in their working environment. Showing the concept of UDRobTM, the environmental design including objects should be considered from the perspectives of both robots and humans. To realize life support robots, it is important to demonstrate what the robot can do in terms of actual tasks. The authors believe intelligent robots are the next technology whose development will decisively change the way people live. Other important issues are standardization of the robot's interface and safety problem. The activities of RSi (Robot Service Initiative) contribute to the common interface of information service such as weather forecast or news for service providers (Narita, 2005). In the OMG (Object Management Group) meeting, such an interface is also discussed (Kotoku, 2005), (Mizukawa, 2005). On the safety problem, the discussion on safety is an ongoing topic from the Aichi Expo. These activities will be fruitful in near future.