Nobuyuki SUGIMOTO

Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare, The University of Kitakyushu

Papers

Total Citations

161

H-Index

About

Nobuyuki Sugimoto is a pioneering researcher in the field of safe human-robot coexistence, with a career spanning from foundational industrial safety to advanced rescue robotics. His most influential contribution is the concept of "Kyozon"—a Japanese term for coexistence—which he operationalized through a failure-to-safety system designed for autonomous robots working alongside humans. In his landmark 2002 paper (138 citations), Sugimoto established that robots operating near humans must be covered in soft materials to respect human pain tolerance, proposing a novel design method for contact detection and automatic stop capabilities. This work laid critical groundwork for modern collaborative robotics and safety standards. Earlier, in 1983, he addressed fundamental issues in industrial safety and robotics (14 citations), while his later work on 3D-free rescue robot systems (2006, 9 citations) demonstrated the practical application of his safety principles. This rescue system, featuring a moving vehicle with automatic outriggers and a spring balancer, was designed to lighten the physical burden on firefighters while supporting their rescue activities. Sugimoto’s research uniquely bridges theoretical safety frameworks with tangible, life-saving applications, making him a key figure in the evolution of safe human-robot interaction.