About the reporter:

Dr. Kazuhiro Kosuge is a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Robotics at Tohoku University, Japan. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Control Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in 1978, 1980, and 1988 respectively. From 1980 through 1982, he was a Research Staff in the Production Engineering Department, Nippon Denso Co., Ltd. (DENSO Co., Ltd. at present). From 1982 through 1990, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Control Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1990 to 1995, he was an Associate Professor at Nagoya University. From 1995, he has been at Tohoku University. He received the JSME Awards for the best papers from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2002 and 2005, the RSJ Award for the best papers from the Robotics Society of Japan in 2005. He is an IEEE Fellow, a JSME Fellow, a SICE Fellow, and a RSJ Fellow. He served as President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for 2010-2011 and is currently serving as Senior Past-president of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He is an IEEE Division X Director-Elect for 2014.

Title: A Co-worker Robot “PaDY”

Time: 10:00AM to 11:00AM, March 24th 2014

Venue: Report Hall, Building R, Shenyang Institute of Automation, CAS

Abstract:

In 2005, a dance partner robot, PBDR (Partner Ballroom Dance Robot), which dances a waltz as a female dance partner together with a male dancer, was developed in our laboratory. One of the key issues for the dance partner robot was how to read the male dancer’s lead. PaDY (in-time Parts/tools Delivery to You robot) has been developed as a co-worker robot in an automobile factory based on the technology developed for the dance partner robot. As a good co-worker could help its partner by reading its partner’s lead, the co-worker robot needs to read its partner’s lead. Without knowing the task being carried out, what its partner is doing for the task, what its partner is going to do next in the task process, and how its partner wants to be assisted, the co-worker robot could not help its partner. PaDY delivers necessary parts and tools to a worker, when he/she needs them for the assembly tasks of a vehicle by estimating what its partner is doing and what its partner is going to do. Several results of experiments carried out in an automobile assembly line show how effective the robot co-worker could be.

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