Multimodal sensing and active continuous closed‐loop feedback for achieving reliable manipulation in the outdoor physical world

The use of field robots can greatly decrease the amount of time, effort, and associated risk compared to if human workers were to carryout certain tasks such as disaster response. However, transportability and reliability remain two main issues for most current robot systems. To address the issue of transportability, we have developed a lightweight modularizable platform named AeroArm. To address the issue of reliability, we utilize a multimodal sensing approach, combining the use of multiple sensors and sensor types, and the use of different detection algorithms, as well as active continuous closed‐loop feedback to accurately estimate the state of the robot with respect to the environment. We used Challenge 2 of the 2017 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition as an example outdoor manipulation task, demonstrating the capabilities of our robot system and approach in achieving reliable performance in the fields, and ranked fifth place internationally in the competition.     

The World robot summit disaster robotics category – achievements of the 2018 preliminary competition

The World Robot Summit is a robot Olympics and aims to be held in a different country every four years from 2020. The concept of the Plant Disaster Prevention challenge is daily inspections, checks, and emergency response in industrial plants, and in this competition, robots must carry out these types of missions in a mock-up plant. The concept of the Tunnel Disaster Response and Recovery challenge is emergency response to tunnel disasters, and is a simulation competition whereby teams compete to show their ability to deal with disasters, by collecting information and removing debris. The Standard Disaster Robotics challenge assesses, in the form of a contest, the standard performance levels of a robot that are necessary for disaster prevention and emergency response. The World Robot Summit Preliminary Competition was held at Tokyo Big Sight in October 2018, and 36 teams participated in the Disaster Robotics Category. UGVs and UAVs contended the merits of new technology for solving complex problems, using core technologies such as mobility, sensing, recognition, performing operations, human interface, autonomous intelligence etc., as well as system integration and implementation of strategies for completing missions, gaining high-level results.     

Anomalies of the tracheobronchial tree in patients with esophageal atresia

Bone marrow examination revealed a lipid-laden histiocytosis in seven patients undergoing long-term total parenteral nutrition necessitated by extensive short-bowel surgical resection. Clinical abnormalities occurred during this treatment which required bone marrow examination. These included hepatosplenomegaly and peripheral blood cytopenia; the median time to the detection of these abnormalities was 64 months. The most striking change within the bone marrow was the presence of many pigment-laden histiocytes which had the typical morphology of sea-blue histiocytes seen in the so-called idiopathic sea-blue histiocyte syndrome. The occurrence of sea-blue histiocytosis in the bone marrow in association with long-term parenteral nutrition for short-bowel syndrome has not, to our knowledge, been reported previously and should now be considered in the differential diagnosis of bone marrow sea-blue histiocytosis.     

Dynamics and biogeochemical significance of the physical environment in Lake Biwa

We have examined two aspects of the dynamics and biogeochemical significance of the physical environment in Lake Biwa. One is the horizontal distribution of cyanobacteria as it relates to the ‘first gyre’ in the north basin of Lake Biwa. We could easily measure the first gyre using a vessel‐mounted acoustic doppler currents profiler. We were able to quantify the dynamics of the horizontal and vertical structure of currents and water temperature of this gyre. The first gyre did not remain at a fixed position; it moved north and south according to the growth of the gyre. This may play a role in the redistribution of cyanobacteria from place to place in the north basin. The second important environmental dynamic we measured was oxygen consumption rates from 1994 to 2000. We found that the minimum oxygen concentration in the hypolimnion has a clear inverse relationship with the apparent oxygen consumption rates in the 80–85 m depth layer. As a reduction in oxygen concentration in the hypolimnion can have a serious impact on benthic organisms, we concluded that the Lake Biwa environment should be monitored carefully and systematically.     

Breakdown characteristics of oil and paper insulation for a very fast transient voltage

This paper describes the dielectric breakdown characteristics of oil and oil‐impregnated paper for very fast transient (VFT) voltages. Blumlein circuits generate VFT voltages of 60 and 300 ns in a pulse width that simulates disconnecting switching surges in gas‐insulated switch gears. We measured the breakdown voltages of needle‐to‐plane, plane‐to‐plane oil gaps and several pieces of paper between plane electrodes for VFT and lightning impulse voltages. The measured data were formulated in V‐t characteristics and Weibull probability distributions. The inclination n of V‐t characteristics of insulating paper is 150, which is less than n = 13.7 of the plane‐to‐plane oil gap in the VFT time range. The shape parameters of Weibull distribution obtained in this study show that the scattering of breakdown voltages of paper is much less than that of oil. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 141(4): 16–24, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10043     

Preparation of gold nanoparticles (GNP) aqueous suspensions by a new method involving Tiron

A new method is proposed to produce gold nanoparticles (GNP) by in situ reduction of a gold salt dissolved in water. The reducing agent used is Tiron instead of the citrate anion most often mentioned in literature. The influence of various parameters has been investigated, such as the content of Tiron with respect to that of the precursor of gold HAuCl₄, or the initial pH of the solution after mixing of reactants. It is shown that Tiron also exerts a positive influence as a dispersant, which impedes agglomeration of gold nanoparticles. The typical average size of GNP synthesized in the present work is close to 7 nm.     

Development of a geographical information system and its application to Escherichia coli O-157 patient distribution

The so called Geographical Information System (GIS) is one of the basic tools for wide range of public health applications. We had developed a general purpose GIS and applied it to represent geographical distribution of patients of the bacterium E. coli O-157 which bursted out in Japan last early summer particularly at Sakai City in Osaka Prefecture. The patient record have been supplied from the Food Safety Office of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. These records were handled by EXCEL. The basic geographical data was constructed from the map data provided by Japan Geographical Survey Institute, and ArcView 2 was used as the map system. The maps were converted to Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) files and put on our Web server.     

Tunable laser for sensing atmospheric transmission in the infrared region of 11 ∼ 16 µm

We succeeded in observing the continuously tunable, pulsed InSb SFR (Spin-Flip Raman) laser emission in the infrared region of 11～16µm (11.4～16.3µm) from only one InSb device, merely by adjusting the pumping wavelength (11 lines from the infrared NH₃ laser) and the applied magnetic field (0～80 kGauss).