Robot Frontier Academic Forum Commenced
Yu Haibin, director of SIA (center) with Professor Kazuhiro Kosuge (left) and Professor Ian D. Walker (right) (Image provided by SIA)
Kazuhiro Kosuge, professor from Tohoku University, Japan, and Ian D. Walker, professor from Clemson University, the United States, visited Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on March 24th, 2014. They were invited to make reports at the Robot Frontier Academic Forum held by the institute.
Yu Haibin, director of SIA awarded the certificate of “Robot Frontier Academic Forum” certificate to Professor Walker, and the certificate of “CAS Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientist” to Professor Kosuge.
After the ceremony, Professor Walker gave a report titled Invertebrate Robots: the Next Generation, in which he introduced the latest research progress of his team on soft and “invertebrate” robot, and also the current research status of soft robot. Unlike traditional rigid robot, soft robots demonstrate better adaptability to the environment and have more flexible structure. However, the complexity of modeling and control of soft robot has posed great challenges for researchers. Professor Walker elaborated his research in the aspects of modeling, structure and control, etc, and discussed with students on application of soft robot and how to conduct research.
Professor Kosuge presented a newly developed co-worker robot in his report titled A Co-worker Robot “PaDY”. He started with an introduction of PBDR (Partner Ballroom Dance Robot), who can dance a waltz as a female dance partner together with a male dancer, and was developed by his laboratory in 2005. Then, he specifically talked about PaDY (in-time Parts/tools Delivery to You robot), which has been developed as a co-worker robot in an automobile factory based on the technology developed for the dance partner robot. As a co-worker robot on the automobile assembly production line, PaDY can make precise judgments during the operation process, and forecast which tools or parts should be provided in the next stage.
Professor Walker works at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Senior Member of the AIAA. He served as Vice President for Financial Activities for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society from 2006-2009, and from 2006-2008 served as Chair of the AIAA Technical Committee on Space Automation and Robotics. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, the International Journal of Robotics and Automation, Soft Robotics, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, and the International Journal of Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing.
Professor Kosuge works at the Department of Bioengineering and Robotics 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.
Source: Center for Space Automation and Technology, Robotics Laboratory
