Tetsuo Kotoku

Safety is important to a robot that is used in a way that can impact on the wellbeing of people. However, understanding and managing the safety information of a robot is not a trivial task. The quantity of this information is large, and it is usually stored in text-based formats. These factors mean that maintaining safety information when it changes is error prone, and understanding it requires manually searching through lengthy reports. In this paper, we demonstrate that a robot's safety information can be stored in a model-based format. We use the SafeML modelling language to model the results of a safety analysis performed on a semi-autonomous wheelchair. We then illustrate and discuss the benefits of storing and managing safety information using a model, both to maintainability of the information and to understanding the safety of the robot.

This paper reports the results of a survey on introducing robots and other new technologies to care services, such as care for older adults. Demographic data show that the ratio of older adults in Japan has already exceeded 23.3%. Japan also is facing a severe shortage of the working-age population, which could lead to a reduction in the quality of care services for older adults; therefore, robots and the provision of new forms of information technologies are expected to be utilized in such care services. The purpose of this study is to help facilitate the introduction of novel technologies in care services, such as in long-term care facilities. We focus on information-related costs that are incurred prior to the purchase of technologies such as attending exhibitions and conducting Internet searches. This report shows the results of an investigation into such information-related costs for three different products, and discusses the importance of the appropriate management of information costs from the development phase through to the introduction phase of such products.

RT-Middleware is a framework for developing component-based software. A set of command-line tools, known previously as rtcshell and rtsshell, are provided for managing RT-Components and RT-Systems from a command line, in order to allow low-resource use and scriptability. We report on new commands recently added to this toolkit that facilitate the debugging of RT-Components, visualisation and verification of RT-Systems, and managing documentation.

The decreasing availability of skilled labor has led to the desire for supplementing workers with robot assistants that can reduce their workload. The Japanese government has undertaken a project to reduce the time and effort required to demolish a building interior by developing robot assistants that can perform the more physically demanding tasks. These include a robot to assist in removing ceiling-mounted equipment and a robot that uses a novel water-jet approach to cut down suspended ceiling tiles. Within this project, a missing component is the removal of the screws from the suspended ceiling beams. This is a physically demanding task, but also repetitive and so suitable for automation. This paper describes a robot to perform the task of removing the screws from the suspended ceiling beams. The robot uses a specially designed tool mounted at the end of an arm. This tool removes screws by turning them between two rollers. The tool is moved down the beam in a single motion, allowing it to remove many screws fast with little operator interaction. RT-Middleware is used as the implementation architecture.