Alexis E. Block

Human-Centered Robotic Emotional Support

Hugs are one of the first forms of contact and affection humans experience. Receiving a hug is one of the best ways to feel socially supported, and the lack of social touch can have detrimental effects on an individual's well-being. However, hugs are complex affective interactions that are easy to get wrong because they need to adapt to the approach, height, body shape, and preferences of the hugging partner, and they often include intra-hug gestures like squeezes. We created HuggieBot, an interactive hugging robot, to better understand the intricacies of close social-physical human-robot interaction and as a stepping stone to providing emotional support. Through the iterative, human-centered design process of creating HuggieBot, we developed 11 tenets of robotic hugging, which ensure a robot can provide its partner with a high-quality embrace. These guidelines can be abstracted to guide designing other robots for emotional support. My new lab, the SaPHaRI (social and physical human-robot interaction) Lab, is looking to support humans through various robotic morphologies and interactions.

Biography:

Alexis E. Block is an Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, OH. She leads the Social and Physical Human-Robot Interaction (SaPHaRI) Lab, where they are working to advance robotics by fostering meaningful social and physical interactions by integrating emotional intelligence to address mental health challenges and provide emotional support. Her goal is to create innovative technologies that enhance human well-being through empathetic, responsive robots. Before joining CWRU, she supported her two-year post-doc at UCLA with a competitive Computing Innovations (CI) Fellowship. She obtained her Dr. sc. In Computer Science from ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Prior to her Dr. sc., she earned her Bachelor’s (Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics) and Master’s (Robotics) degrees in 2016 and 2017, respectively, both from the University of Pennsylvania. She was named an inaugural “Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI” (2023), a Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering (2020), and an HRI Pioneer (2018). She has served as the General Chair for the Gordon Research Seminar in Robotics (2022) and HRI Pioneers (2019). She won the Best Hands-On Demonstration at EuroHaptics (2022) and was awarded the Max Planck Society Otto Hahn Medal (2022) for outstanding scientific achievement by a junior scientist.

Kenzo Nonami

What is F-REI? The trends and prospects for swarm control with high levels of autonomy and intelligence

First of all, this presentation will introduce what F-REI is and what kind of organization it is. Also, I will introduce the field of robotics in F-REI. This talk will also discuss the aims of this session's focus on autonomy, intelligence, and swarm control. In particular, I will discuss the current state of research and near-future prospects for swarm control, which has a high degree of autonomy and intelligence.

This talk will introduce a distributed control, mutual communication, and self-organization, which are the main concept and components of swarm control. Finally, I will also introduce areas of application such as peacetime logistics, environmental monitoring, and disaster response in emergencies.

Biography:

In 1979, Dr. Kenzo Nonami got a Ph.D at Tokyo Metropolitan University. From 1985 to 1988, he was a researcher and senior researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1988, he was an associate professor at Chiba University, and he was promoted to professor at Chiba University in 1994. In 2008, he served as director and vice president (for research) at Chiba University. In 2013, he founded the university-based venture, Autonomous Control Systems Laboratory Co., Ltd. (ACSL) and became its CEO and representative director. In 2014, he became a distinguished professor at Chiba University (professor emeritus at Chiba University). In 2018, he became chairman of the board of directors at ACSL. In 2019, he founded the Advanced Robotics Foundation, a general incorporated foundation, 2022, he founded his second venture company, Autonomy Co., Ltd. (now Autonomy HD Co., Ltd.). Dr. Kenzo Nonami has been serving as director, field of robotics at the Fukushima International Research and Education Institute (F-REI) since 2023.

Jun Morimoto

A Hierarchical Learning Method for Modular Robot Control

Such as in a space environment where it is difficult to send or produce many robot components, it is necessary to combine a limited number of robot modules to accomplish multiple tasks with multiple body configurations. However, as the body configuration changes, a controller is needed to be designed for each body. In this study, we propose a component-wise learning approach to transfer the acquired policies of each component to a different robot configuration. To evaluate our proposed method, we used a manipulator model composed of multiple heterogeneous modules. In the first stage of our learning approach, each module acquired policies to cope with multiple tasks. Then, in the second stage, we hierarchically connect the trained modules by using an encoder-decoder network to transfer acquired skills in each component to control the combined robot model. We discuss the usefulness of transferred policies in reducing the number of samples required to accomplish the tasks with the combined robot system.

Biography:

Jun Morimoto is a professor at the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University. He received his Ph.D. in information science from Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Nara, Japan, in 2001. From 2001 to 2002, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He Jointed ATR in 2002. From 2019 to 2021, he was a team leader of the Man-Machine Collaboration Research Team, Robotics Project, RIKEN. He is also currently the Head of the Brain-Robot Interface Department at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories.

Shinichi Kimura

TRIAL FOR SPACE HABITATION: HOMEOSTATIC INFLATABLE DECENTRALIZED AUTONOMOUS STRUCTURE (HIDAS)

Recently, human space activities, such as lunar exploration and habitation, have attracted widespread interest. To enhance human space activities, especially for long-distance missions, improving the technologies needed to live in space environments for long periods is essential. Many of these technologies overlap with terrestrial habitation technologies. The Tokyo University of Science (TUS) has established the Research Center for Space System Innovation (SSI) to link technologies being studied for terrestrial applications with their potential utilization in space to achieve dual space–terrestrial development.
As for construction of habitation space, inflatable structure has merits to construct space system because of high compression ratio and light weight, but it still had problems in case that it is partially damaged. It is also difficult to control it deploying process and shape. HOMEOSTATIC INFLATABLE DECENTRALIZED AUTONOMOUS STRUCTURE (HIDAS) is a concept to overcome these problems using multiple autonomous inflatable cell. HIDAS can mitigate affects of partial damage controlling inflatable patterns of cell. Enhancing such decentralized autonomous intelligence, HIDAS can control its inflate sequence. In addition, HIDAS can emerge various functions by changing its shape dynamically, such as to adapt autonomously unevenness of the ground and dynamically changing environment, and locomoting changing its shape dynamically like a swam. We develop 5m diameter and 5m long concept model of HIDAS and demonstrated its functions. In this presentation, the trial of SSI, the concept of HIDAS and its functions are introduced.

Biography:

Shinichi Kimura received the B. S. degree in chemistry on drug manufacturing from Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1988 and M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in pharmacology from Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1990 and 1993 respectively. In 1993 he joined the Communications Research Laboratory (which was converted to the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology in 2004). In 2007, he moved to Tokyo University of Science. He has been engaged in the visual guidance and navigation system for the space debris removal. He made experiments on Manipulator Flight Demonstration on STS-87, Engineering Test Satellite VII which is the first tele-robotic satellite, visual monitoring system for the Hayabusa-2 and IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun). He is engaging various missions, developing on-orbit cameras and research on space habitation.