Professor Kazuhiro Kosuge

Department of Bioengineering and Robotics

Tohoku University, Japan

iCART: Intelligent Cooperative Autonomous Robot Transporters

Abstract

Mechanical parking systems, such as elevator/tower parking systems, convey parking systems, shuttle parking systems, etc., are very popular in Japan especially inside of a crowded city. These systems are used to park automobiles efficiently in narrow space available for parking in department stores, hotels, etc., although users are required to maneuver their cars skillfully and guide their cars into a specified narrow place. iCART (Intelligent Cooperative Autonomous Robot Transporters) is a robot system which assists the users to maneuver their cars in a narrow space.

The current robot system consists of two mobile robots and each robot consists of three parts; a mobile base module, which is nonholonomic but having omni-directional mobility, a lifter module, which lifts up automobile without touching its body, and a connecting module, which connects the mobile base module and the lifter module and plays both roles of a suspension for the system and a three degrees of freedom force/torque sensor. The use of two mobile robots enables the robot system to handle a variety of cars having different dimensions.

Coordination of multiple mobile robots handling an automobile together is challenging. The slippage between the mobile base and the ground is unavoidable and odometry could not be used for the coordination of multiple robots having physical interaction. The estimation error of robot pose caused by the slippage could damage the automobile. A new coordinated motion control scheme has been designed inspired by a “caster” mechanism and implemented in the robots to overcome the problem. Several laser range finder systems have been also installed for localization of robots and the automobile and for robot motion planning. Through the development of iCART, we will discuss issues relating to robotics as systems integration.
 

Biography

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 RSJ Fellow. He is IEEE RAS President Elect for 2008-2009.