How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species

A method and apparatus for messaging within a mobile virtual and augmented reality system is provided herein. During operation a user can create 'virtual graffiti' that will be left for a particular device to view as part of an augmented reality scene. The virtual graffiti will be assigned to a particular physical location or a part of an object that can be mobile. The virtual graffiti is then uploaded to a network server, along with the location and individuals who are able to view the graffiti as part of an augmented reality scene. When a device that is allowed to view the graffiti is near the location, the graffiti will be downloaded to the device and displayed as part of an augmented reality scene.

Mobile virtual and augmented reality system

A head-mounted display provides a user with an augmented view of an object being viewed; a tracking mechanism such as a camera repeatedly determine the position and orientation of the head-mounted display relative the object being viewed; and a computer system provides information for the augmented view and repeatedly updates the augmented view of the object being viewed based on the determined position and orientation of the display. The head-mounted display may be a see-through display; it may be video-based or optical-based, and it may be monoscopic and stereoscopic. The tracking mechanism determines its position using one or more markers or beacons on the object being viewed. The markers may be active or passive, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that emit invisible light.

System and method to display maintenance and operational instructions of an apparatus using augmented reality

Artificial skin and tactile sensing for socially interactive robots

Multifingered robot hands: Control for grasping and manipulation

The purpose of this paper is to establish a method of shape recognition and grasping of unknown objects using a robotic hand with two soft fingers and one omnidirectional camera. For shape recognition, we propose to use a simple 2D version of the visual volume intersection method which takes advantage of a special feature of the omnidiretional camera attached to the hand. For grasping we propose a simple grasp quality criterion to obtain the best grasping position for the two soft fingers based on a visual hull in a horizontal grasp plane. We conducted several experiments and the results show the validity of the proposed method.

Shape recognition and grasping by robotic hands with soft fingers and omnidirectional camera

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a remote operation system capable of easily and accurately operating a moving object even if an operator cannot directly see the moving object. SOLUTION: All directional images at a position of an unmanned helicopter 10 are taken by an all directional camera 11 and are sent by an image sender 12. The sent all directional images are received by a image receiver 21 in an operator side and an eye direction image in an eye direction of the operator detected by an angle sensor 22 from the received all directional images is cut out by an image cut out part 23. An image for operation created based on the cut out eye direction image is displayed on a head mount display 25 for the operator. COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Remote operation system

This paper proposes a novel shuffle-translating method that combines shuffle turns repeatedly for a humanoid robot. Conventionally, the walking motion of a humanoid robot is performed through a repeated foot stepping motion. However, this motion is inefficient and has low stability. Previously, we have studied the shuffle-turning method for a humanoid robot, which can perform a stepless and stable turning. In this paper, we present a precise shuffle turn with feedback control and a new shuffle translation method by repeating shuffle turns. Experiments using a humanoid robot were conducted and the results revealed that the proposed method was effective for shuffle translation.

Shuffle turn and translation of humanoid robots

Robotics can serve as a testbed for cognitive theories. One behavioral criterion for comparing theories is the extent to which their implementations can learn to exploit new environmental opportunities. Furthermore, a robotics testbed forces researchers to confront fundamental issues concerning how internal representations are grounded in activity. In our approach, a mobile robot takes the role of a creature that must survive in an unknown environment. The robot has no a priori knowledge about what constitutes a suitable goal, what is edible, inedible, or dangerous, or even its shape or how its body works. Nevertheless, the robot learns how to survive. The robot does this by tracking segmented regions of its camera image while moving. The robot projects these regions into a canonical wavelet domain that highlights color and intensity changes at various scales. This reveals sensory invariance that is readily extracted with Bayesian statistics. The robot simultaneously learns an adaptable sensorimotor mapping by recording how motor signals transform the locations of regions on its camera image. The robot learns about its own physical extension when it touches an object, but it also undergoes an internal state change analogous to the thirst quenching or nausea producing effects of intake in animals. This allows the robot to learn what an object affords: is it edible or poisonous, by relating these effects to learned clusters of invariance. In this way primitive symbols emerge. These proto-symbols provide the robot with goals that it can achieve by using its sensorimotor mapping to navigate, for example, toward food and away from danger.

Proto-symbol emergence

3rd CREST/ISWC Workshop on Advanced Computing and Communicating Techniques for Wearable Information Playing , Oct 31, 2004 , Arlington, VA, USA

Masanao Koeda

Papers

Shape recognition and grasping by robotic hands with soft fingers and omnidirectional camera

Remote operation system

Shuffle turn and translation of humanoid robots

Proto-symbol emergence

Nara Palace Site Navigator: A Wearable Tour Guide System Based on Augmented Reality