Papers
6
Total Citations
177
H-Index
5
About
Minoru Abe stands as a pioneering figure in assistive robotics and human-robot interaction, with a career spanning from the early 1980s to the 2000s. His most celebrated contribution is the development of MELDOG, a guide dog robot for the visually impaired, which introduced the concept of electrocutaneous communication as a mobility aid. This groundbreaking work, detailed in his 1985 paper with 129 citations, addressed fundamental questions about information transmission and display methods for human navigation. Abe’s research laid the foundation for understanding how robots can effectively communicate with humans through non-verbal channels, including joint attention mechanisms and gesture recognition. His later work explored computational intelligence for partner robots, focusing on extracting human facial direction and hand gestures to enable natural, human-friendly communication. By integrating steady-state genetic algorithms and interactive learning for cyclic gesture recognition, Abe advanced the field of socially assistive robotics. His contributions remain influential in the development of mobility aids and companion robots, demonstrating a sustained impact on how machines perceive and respond to human cues.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Electrocutaneous Communication in a Guide Dog Robot (MELDOG)129 citations · 1985
- 2Guide dog robot—its basic plan and some experiments with Meldog Mark I27 citations · 1981
- 3
- 4Human Hand Detection for Gestures Recognition of A Partner Robot6 citations · 2006
- 5Study on Walking Machines With Decoupled Freedoms5 citations · 1989
- 6