7 accepted papers
A large-scale dump truck that automatically transports earth and sand in cooperation with a human-operated backhoe is of interest to the construction industry. A human-operated dump truck generally drives slightly past the desired loading position and then backs up to it for loading the sediment. Th…
Semantic maps are an important tool to provide robots with high-level knowledge about the environment, enabling them to better react to and interact with their surroundings. However, as a single measurement of the environment is solely a snapshot of a specific time, it does not necessarily reflect t
Backhoe loads sediment onto the bed of dump trucks during earthmoving work. The prediction of backhoe loading time is essential for ensuring safe cooperation between the backhoe and dump trucks. However, it is difficult to predict the instant at which the backhoe is ready to load sediment, because o…
In this letter, an autonomous spiral stair climbing method for tracked vehicles using the reaction force from side walls has been proposed. Spiral stairs are one of the most difficult terrains for tracked vehicles because of their asymmetrical ground shape and small turning radius. Tracked vehicles
This letter describes a wall deadlock evasion method for tracked vehicles. Wall deadlock is a phenomenon where the robot cannot rotate to the commanded direction when it collides with a wall, because the motion is restricted by the wall. The key idea behind solving this problem involves an adjustmen
In large industrial plants, the inspection of production lines is a heavy and costly task that puts human inspectors at high risk. In order to overcome these challenges, we have developed an autonomous plant inspection system using a mobile tracked vehicle. In this paper, we propose an autonomous na…
We have developed a method to visualize search and rescue (SAR) dogs' activities from sensor data recorded by the SAR dogs' sensor vests. This paper proposes two methods for detecting continuous barking actions of SAR dogs, which locate victims by smell and then bark continuously to tell handlers wh…