Japanese professor developing tele-existent cockpit

Citation

(2002), "Japanese professor developing tele-existent cockpit", Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2002.04929cab.008

Japanese professor developing tele-existent cockpit

Japanese professor developing tele-existent cockpit

Keywords: Robots, Tele presence

A well-known Japanese professor and a leading robotic scientist as well, Susumu Tachi at the prestigious University of Tokyo is reportedly putting the finishing touches to his work on "the concept of tele-existence such as will permit an individual to control a robot remotely, and be given the feeling that" he or she is inside the robot itself, "acting", says the scientist, "as if a kind of virtual existence has been created".

Professor Tachi's work – "developing a tele-existence cockpit to control a humanoid robot" – is part of an ongoing governmental Humanoid Robotics Project dating back to Japan's fiscal 1998/1999, and shortly after.

To Professor Tachi the robot "is a tool to expand ability. One might wish to travel as far as to the Swiss Alps or to insert one's self into small places like vessels in a human body. Robots can make such possible, for if one can share visual, auditory, tactical and kinesthetic senses with a robot, you can control it as if you were inside it, soon able to do what the robot does".

Actually, he pointed out, a tele-existent robot was developed in the late 1980s, but it could only handle simple tasks like stacking boxes and opening valves by tracing an operator's motions. "Operator," he explained, "was at the master control system, seeing the same images as the robot, moving hands and arms as if doing the tasks, so we began further work, aware of the potential of tele-existence".

Work advanced to a first prototype system stage, in fiscal 2000/2002, with a robot with ability to walk, not run, with two legs; moving both head and arms.

"The cockpit operator", Tachi continued, "feels the robot touches or holds something and will also hear and see what the robot does, cockpit also functioning as an Internet service, thus allowing the person to control the robot via Internet, at least partly. At the present time, cockpit and robot are connected exclusively to each other, but we seek to develop a faster information network, one like an optical fibre being essential. Ideally, a robot should be accessible for everybody from anywhere".

To the robotics scientist, artificial intelligence to ensure safety is "another must".

"In a world where tele-existence robots work among human beings, they must be intelligent enough to control their behaviour so as not to harm or endanger humans. There is still much research on this artificial intelligence, and to date, only a few have been pursuing that direction.

"To be practical, too, is important. We might also need a licensing system for particular types of robots' work, such as rescuing people from under rubble, as evokes the tragic work still being done in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, or no less important, a system for caring for the elderly or the sick."