Date of Presentation
(December 13 (Day 1), 12:30-13:20)

Manager of Mobility Services Laboratory, NISSAN MOTOR CO.,LTD.

Title

New Era of Intelligent and Electrical Vehicles

Abstract

Vehicles have greatly supported the development of modern society; however, at the same time, they have had an effect on various social issues, such as energy security, global warming, urban congestion and traffic accidents. In order to address such issues, Nissan has been working on two major challenges: Electrification and Vehicle Intelligence. With Electrification and Vehicle Intelligence, vehicles will become safer, more environmentally friendly, more convenient, more comfortable and more pleasurable. It is the time to unite our power to transform the vehicles into a new form of transportation for the next generation.

Speaker Bio

Yoshitaka Deguchi received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1990 and 1992, respectively. Since he joined Nissan in 1992, he has been researching on automotive electronic control for over 20 years. He had been engaged in the development of internal combustion engine control and hybrid electric vehicle control and also researched on driving assisting control and vehicle dynamics control using by-wire actuators and independent motor drive. Recently, he has been researching on autonomous driving technology for years in Japan and in the US. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford university in 2011 and 2012. He was a senior manager and principal researcher at Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley, Nissan North America Inc, from 2012 to March in 2014. Now he is a manager of Mobility Services Laboratory, NISSAN MOTOR CO.,LTD.

Date of Presentation
(December 13 (Day 1), 17:20-18:10)

Project leader of Humanoid Robots "Pepper", SoftBank Mobile Corp.

Title

A new future with the personal robot "Pepper"

Abstract

SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran unveil “Pepper” on Jun 2014 which is the World's First Personal Robot that Reads Emotions. It is Humanoid type robot but there are a few difference from existing humanoid. In this talk, concept and the design of platform to achieve the concept are presented. Concept is build based of latest evolution of artificial Intelligence (AI). Thanks to machine learning, AI is evolving very quickly for these decade years. One of good example is Computational “Shogi”, latest outstanding Shogi software is not simple problem solver to simulate all possible next step, but it is more likely clustering machine for records of a past games of Shogi, with evaluation function of next step candidate. In this case, one of most important structural element of AI is the records of games. Intelligence of AI is very depends on volume and quality of past data. It means there are big potential to apply the AI for other use if enough accurate data is prepared for the use. Pepper is designed to utilize such a AI system in daily life. Pepper will be Interface of communication between people and AI, and Pepper has potential to do sensing big communication data with people for making evolution of AI. Humanoid has some advantage to get good quality and large volume of communication data with people compare to other existing interface machines like smart phones. People tend to estimate what Pepper thinks during conversation. It means People is communicating to Pepper as one of new creatures, and speaking differently than toward Machines like SmartPhones, but more likely toward human. To emphasize these effect, Pepper is designed all structure and mechanism. Additionally Platform of pepper is designed to get involvement of creators or developers who are not even working for robot until today. There are big potential for creators and developers to invent new communicate method with people through Pepper, then Software development kit (SDK) and application store will be prepared to offer easy trial envelopment for support the challenge of developers and creators.

Speaker Bio

Kaname Hayashi is member of ‘SOFTBANK Academia’ which aims to discover and train a successor of Masayoshi Son, a founder of SOFTBANK Co. Experience of Aerodynamicist of Formula 1 racing car, Project management of Commercial car in previous work at Automotive industry. No experience in Robotics before starting Pepper project in SoftBank at 2012, but he has been leading development of pepper until now together with Aldebaran Robotics in France.

Date of Presentation
(December 14 (Day 2), 9:00-10:00)

Director, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany
Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

Title

Small-Scale Mobile Robotics

Abstract

Small-scale mobile robots have the unique capability of accessing to small spaces and scales directly. Due to their small size and small-scale physics and dynamics, they could be agile and portable, and could be inexpensive and in large numbers if they are mass-produced. Miniature robots would have potential applications in health-care, bioengineering, mobile sensor networks, desktop micro-manufacturing, and inspection. In this talk, design, fabrication, and control of different size scale miniature mobile robots leveraging advanced and soft materials are presented. First, as milli/centimeter scale mobile robots, novel climbing, flying, jumping-gliding, and water-walking robots inspired by insects, bats, and lizards are presented. Advanced soft gecko-inspired micro-fiber adhesives are shown to enable many new miniature robot and robotic manipulation applications. Pill-size untethered soft capsule robots are proposed to enable minimally invasive medical diagnosis and therapeutic operations inside stomach. Next, going down to sub-millimeter size mobile robots, the grand challenge is the limitation on scaling down on-board actuators and power sources. Two alternative approaches are proposed to solve this challenge. First, biological cells, e.g. bacteria, attached to the surface of a micro-robot are used as on-board micro-actuators and micro-sensors using the chemical energy. Bacteria-propelled randomly swimming micro-robots are steered using chemical and pH gradients in the environment and remote magnetic fields. As the second approach, external actuation of untethered magnetic micro-robots using remote magnetic fields in enclosed spaces is demonstrated. New magnetic micro-robot locomotion principles based on rotational stick-slip and rolling dynamics are proposed. Novel magnetic composite materials are used to address and control teams of micro-robots. Such untethered micro-robot teams are demonstrated to control microfluidic flow locally, trap live cells and transport them, and manipulate micro-gels with embedded cells with or without contact inside microfluidic channels for tissue engineering applications.

Speaker Bio

Metin Sitti received the BSc and MSc degrees in electrical and electronics engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. He was a research scientist at UC Berkeley during 1999-2002. He is currently a director in Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and a professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include physical intelligence, mobile micro-robots, novel micro/nano-materials, bio-inspired milli-robots, soft robotics, and micro/nano-manipulation. He is an IEEE Fellow. He received the IBM Smarter Planet Award in 2012, the SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award in 2011, and NSF CAREER Award in 2005. He received the IEEE/ASME Best Mechatronics Paper Award in 2014, the Best Poster Award in the Adhesion Conference in 2014, the Best Paper Award in the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in 2009 and 1998, the first prize in the World RoboCup Micro-Robotics Competition in 2012 and 2013, the Best Biomimetics Paper Award in the IEEE Robotics and Biomimetics Conference in 2004, and the Best Video Award in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Conference in 2002. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics.