Yoshihiko Nakamura's Blog

避難所のこころのケアにパロも出動　http://ow.ly/4FBej

roboticsnakamura — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:04:45 +0000

避難所のこころのケアにパロも出動　http://ow.ly/4FBej

Post-Doctoral Position

roboticsnakamura — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:49:33 +0000

Two Postdoctoral Positions Open at University of Tokyo

Motivated researchers are invited to apply according to the following information.

(term:)
Immediate after April 1 2011 to March 31 2012
(Renewable upon continuation of project and evaluation)

(application due:)
February 18 2011, JST

(to work at:)
Laboratory of Professor Yoshihiko Nakamura
Department of Mechano-Informatics
University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

(for the study of:)
(1) Large-Scale Parallel Computation of Volumetric Muscular Model for Wholebody Musculo-Skeletal Sysytem
(2) Large-Scale Parallel Computation of Human Behavioral Model

(under the project of:)
MEXT Next Generation Supercomputer Strategic Program
Field1: Predictive Life-Science, Medicine and Pharmaceutical Foundation
Strategic Study3: Predictive Medicine

(apply with:)
(1) a complete CV
(2) list of publication
(3) PDF of main publications (not more than three)
(4) summary of previous research experience (1 or 2 pages including figures)
(5) two names (with affiliation and e-mail address) for possible reference

(contact to:)
Professor Yoshihiko Nakamura
Department of Mechano-Informatics
University of Tokyo
nakamura@ynl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Joint Junior Undergraduate Seminar of UT and TUA with NAOs

roboticsnakamura — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 20:07:54 +0000

The joint junior undergraduate seminar between the University of Tokyo (UT) and Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) started in the Winter semester 2010. The junior students in Departments of Mechanical Engineering/ Mechano-Informatics, UT, and Department of Sculpture, TUA, discuss and work on the Beauty of Posture and Motion of Humanoid Robots. The seminar is co-organized by Tatoru Kitago, Professor and Vice President of TUA, Wataru Takano, Lecturer of UT, and myself. Humanoid robots, NAO, are used in the seminar. Each of three groups consists of students from both of TUA and UT and uses each NAO. On December 1st, 2010, each of the groups choreographed a short motion of NAO synchronized with music. After a few weeks of programing training, the students are getting used to it and starting to think about the beauty of posture and motion. (video)

Meeting at Lake Yamanaka and Mt. Fuji

roboticsnakamura — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:18:12 +0000

The meeting at Yamanaka-Ryo was for 2-days brainstorming (November 27,28th) among the board members and the stuff members to the president. I am among the stuff members. Discussions include the strength and weakness of UT, which was an opportunity for me to think about the international relationship and the English-speaking environments. Our laboratory currently welcomes nine international students and three post-doctoral researchers from abroad as well as twenty Japanese students. It has been an open question to myself how the creative laboratory is supposed to be in terms of communication for both our Japanese students and international members. On the way back, I visited Beni-Fuji-no-yu for the second time after the summer lab tour in August, 2010. One can see the Fuji mountain being in the hot-spring. The Fuji mountain observed is like a painting at the walls of typical Japanese public bathes. It was a perfect shape unobstructed. The photo is Mt. Fuji from a bus on the way from Beni-Fuji-no-yu to Fuji-Yoshida.

On the Way to a Symposium in Kyoto

roboticsnakamura — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 15:18:53 +0000

There was the Informal Meeting on High Technology on November 20th at Uji Campus of Kyoto University. Resear chers and engineers who studied at Automation Research Lab under the guidance of Professor Hideo Hanafusa gathered there. The speaker of the day was Hirotoshi Yamamoto, a ph.d student of Kyoto University. His talk was on “Towards Assistive Technology for Quality of Life of Dementia Patients.” It was an impressive talk. The challenge of his research is how technology can monitor and improve the quality of (mind) life of dementia patients. The monitoring is called as “Dementia Care Mapping” and currently done only by the professionally trained counselors by checking Behavioral Category Codes.

On the way to the meeting I spent a few hours walking in the Higashi-Yama area in Kyoto. The Japanese maple trees beautifully turned red and yellow, thanks to the weather in this year and rain in November. Photos: (top) the three-storied pagoda at Shin’nyo-d o Temple, (bottom) Nandaimon Gate o f Nanzen-ji Temple, which is known by Goemon Ishikawa in Kabuki.

43rd IFToMM Executive Council Meeting

roboticsnakamura — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 10:58:00 +0000

The 43rd IFToMM Executive Council was in Sousse in Tunisia on November 12 and 13th. I attended it as the vise president. IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Theory) is the international society involving 44 countries. The members are not individual researchers, but the countries (member organizations). All the researchers and students of the member organization are eligible for the benefits of IFToMM membership. The Executive Council is the annual meeting of IFToMM officers. The managements of IFToMM is like those of the United Nations. The highest decisions are made at the General Assembly at the World Congress opened every 4 years by voting. Each country has only one vote. Tunisia is one of the newest members of IFToMM and kindly hosted the EC meeting at University of Sousse. One in robotics might remember IFToMM by “ROMANSY” (CISM-IFToMM Symposium on Robot Design, Dynamics, and Control), that has the longest history in robotics and is the flagship symposium sponsored by IFToMM Technical Committee of Robotics and Mechatronics.

The left photo was the officers and their families at a hotel in the Berbera’s area in Tunisia. The Hotel Sidi Driss is a traditional Berber underground building at Metmata village. The hotel was use shooting a film of Star Wars as the home of Luke Skywalker in planet Tatooine. Visit here for more information. The Berbera house consists of caves made on the foot of rocky mountains. Temperature inside the rooms is naturally kept 25 degree Celsius all the year round.

NAO Programing Seminar at YNL: DAY2

roboticsnakamura — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:24:25 +0000

The DAY2 has been just completed. The second day started from 9:30 am and ended at 18:00 pm. It was the advanced program that Aldebaran Robotics can offer. It is my fault if the contents were too difficult for students. The nearly 30 students participated, among whom 6 were junior students, the majority were master and ph.d students. A few faculty members also participated. As it goes into the advanced programing, it became clear that the whole system is very well structured as a research tool. The most updated research results are integrated in the system such as motion control with quadratic programing under constraints, voice recognition/generation, vision system and so on. The seminar was a very good experience for not only for students, but also for me to feel how the technology today transforms the high-tech product today.

USTREAM archives are as follows:

DAY2-Part1 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10249414
DAY2-Part2 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10249494
DAY2-Part3 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10250657
DAY2-Part4 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10250830
DAY2-Part5 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10251325
DAY2-Part6 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10251643
DAY2-Part7 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10252261
DAY2-Part8 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10252597
DAY2-Part9 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10252727
DAY2-Part10 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10254361
DAY2-Part11 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10254561
DAY2-Part12 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10256345

===================================
October 17th, morning 9:30-12:00
====================================
 ＋Text to Speech/Speech recognition in Japanese
  ->Text to Speech in Japanese
  ->Speech recognition in Japanese
  ->Practice
 ＋Vision
  ->Image processing
  ->Record and replay video sequences (with timestamper)
    to reproduce a test with the same data
  ->Practice
========================================
October 17th, afternoon 13:00-17:00
========================================
 +Interface your software with NaoQi
  ->Template to interface an external algorithm with SDK
  ->Practice
Extra
 +Cross-compilation
 +Real time and syncrhonization
   - .NET
   - NaoSim
===========================================================

NAO Programing Seminar at YNL

roboticsnakamura — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:08:52 +0000

The DAY1 of two-day course “NAO Programing Seminar at YNL” started with a speech of Bruno Maisonnier, CEO, Aldebaran Robotics. It is intended for students of YNL and those of Department of Mechano-Informatics. It is the first initiative under the Educational Program between our lab at University of Tokyo and Aldebaran Robotics. I would like to express my special thanks to the four engineers of Aldebaran who spent the whole day with the rich contents.

I came back to the class room late in the afternoon, I found some students flustrated being left behind. After talking to the engineers after the seminar, I recognized that the classroom culture in Japan made the situation. The engineers were also embarrassed with almost zero reaction of students in the classroom, while they used to have more expressive interaction with students in France. I hope it is a useful experience that they learned the most difficult skill for Japanese professors.

The USTREAM archives are as follows.

DAY1-Part1 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10226237

DAY1-Part2 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10230526

DAY1-Part3 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10233766

The contents of DAY1 are:

=========================================================
October 16th, morning: 9:30-12:00
===================================
Introduction of NAO
How to use Choregraphe /Telepathe
　+Introducation of Choregraphe
　+Behavior manager
 　->How to make motion
 　->Accessing sensor information
 　->Introduction to NaoQi framework using Python scripts in　
     Choregraphe
 　->Introduction of Proxy
 　->Synchronous and Asynchronous programming
 　->Hardware descriptions and best practices
  +How to use Telepathe: visualizing sensor data
=====================================
October 16th, afternoon 13:00-17:00
=====================================
 +Developing with the SDK
   ->Presentation of the SDK
   ->Going further with  NaoQi architecture (concept of modules)
   ->Installation of SDK and extra tools cmake, Python
   ->Creating and using a remote behavior
   ->Create a behavior using a Python script without Choregraphe
     (Get an image from the video extractor))
  +Create and compile a remote C++ module using ALMemory,
   Reactive programming --Checking an event/Reacting to an event--)
  +Motion
   ->Joint control
   ->Dynamic Walk
   ->Practice

We use NAO for education and research

roboticsnakamura — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 21:30:04 +0000

NAOs

We start to use 30 humanoids robots, NAO, for education and research in some laboratories at the Department of Mechano-Informatics, the University of Tokyo. It is based on the educational program of Aldebaran Robotics, France. NAO is a fine educational robot with many input/output peripherals and open software platform. In 2010 winter semester, Prof. Wataru Takano and I open a seminar for junior students on “About Beauty of Posture and Motion Programmed in Humanoid Robots.” We plan to organize it with Prof. Satoru Kitago and his students in Tokyo University of the Arts. It’s going to be a big fun.

I had a chance to visit Aldebaran Robotics in Paris in December 2009. Mr. Bruno Maisonnier, the president, explained that it had about 100 employees among which about 50 were development engineers. I met many of engineers in an open wide floor of the building in Paris, who were working at CAD systems, programming robots, doing hardware experiments and enjoying discussions. The engineers were from several countries including the US and some of them had Ph.D degrees. Just like a typical example of growing IT enterprises, the floor was active, cheerful, and noisy. To be honest, it was my first impression that the hardware would need further developments before the technology reached the level of SONY QRIO. Although Japan is still the leading country of robotics in particular with hardware technology and industrial applications, we could grow neither SONY AIBO nor QRIO in spite of their technical excellence and commercial success as robots. They are gone and we miss them a lot! I am among those who would like to see a hungry robotics venture enterprise spurt out from the robotics of Japan. I hope that the adventure of Aldebaran Robotics sets seeds of hungry robotics ventures, not only in this country.

My comments to the Report of National Moon Exploration

roboticsnakamura — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:46:40 +0000

The report of the Informal Meeting on Moon Exploration (of Japan) was published on July 29th 2010 at its 9th meeting. The information is available from (here) in Japanese. The list of public comments (invited for the draft of the report publicized at the 8th meeting) and the replies to them are also found in the information, among which the discussions on robots are interesting to read. This is an important report for robotics as one of its future orbits. I am among those who claim that robotics could commit more challenging contributions in the range of 10 years. I would like to share my comments to the report which was submitted to the public comments (one can find the reply to it in the information) in what follows:

宇宙プログラムは国家プロジェクトである。人類の未知への挑戦や未来の生存のために絶対的に位置づけら
れるものであるからこそ、広く国民の応援をうけている。これが平成２２年４月３日の「月探査ナショナル
ミーティング」の参加して一番深く印象に残ったことである。私は一人のロボット研究者であるが、単純な
コストや生産性の比較であらわされるような相対的な技術論が入る余地のない、歴史の漂白に耐える長期的
な展望を与える計画をもつことが宇宙プログラムの戦略には何よりも重要であると考える。

宇宙プログラムは上述のような科学的な挑戦である他に、社会的な挑戦の側面があることも、アポロ・ソユ
ーズの競争の時代からの事実である。国家の誇りをかかげ、同胞との一体感を与え、軍事・防衛技術となり、
極限技術の民生展開は成長産業をつくるなどの、社会的な広がりを持っていることも忘れてはならない。
回り巡って国民の関心を集めることで、科学や技術を持続可能な位置にとどめるためにも、宇宙プログラム
の決定にあたってはこの効果を軽んじてはならない。

極めて長期的には、われわれの子孫は宇宙に出てゆくか、消え去るかを選択する時期が来る。その選択の
機会を手にするためにも着実に科学の挑戦をすすめ、技術の蓄積をはからなければならない。この観点から
見えてくるのは惑星探査や有人探査技術であることはだれにも明らかである。わが国だけの開発で達成でき
るものではないとしても、これに向けて貢献することが、長期的な目標として掲げることができるもので
ある。月探査がそのような科学や技術の揺りかごになることを祈っている。

「月探査に関する懇談会」の「わが国の月探査戦略」～世界をリードするロボット月探査と有人宇宙活動へ
の技術基盤構築～（案）を読んで感じたことは、月の内部構造調査やサンプルリターンというミッションに
特化して、閉じてしまったかのような問題設定の議論の方向性への失望である。

冒頭の「月探査の目的」の①にあげた「太陽系探査のための宇宙技術を自ら確立する」との長期的な目的の
表明にもかかわらず、具体的な目標は、ローバによるサンプルリターンや地震計の設置による内部構造の
調査という分かりやすい地質学的な「科学」にすり替えられてしまっている。ここで得られる知識の発見
が世界初かどうかではなく、果たしてこの科学と技術の取り組みが長期的な宇宙プロジェクトの方向に
ベクトルをそろえたものかどうかという点について懸念と疑問を感じている。

有人惑星探査につながるような基地建設や、人間の宇宙活動支援技術、それを周辺から支援するさまざまな
技術の開発こそが重要で、月面は地質学の科学が目的ではなく、これらの長期的な有人宇宙技術の揺り籠と
しての位置づけを明確にすることが必要である。

これは限られた科学予算の中で失敗を許されない計画を立てる戦略として苦慮した末の結論ではないかと
好意的にみることも可能である。しかしミッションを成功確率だけから計算することは、人類の長期の
ミッションを歴史のなかで考えることを放棄してしまっているともいえる。日本の中の文部科学省の一部局
としてのＪＡＸＡ中心の組織から、わが国全体の政策としてより高い視点から宇宙プロジェクトを見る組織
を考える時期ではないだろうか。

Yoshihiko Nakamura's Blog

避難所のこころのケアにパロも出動 http://ow.ly/4FBej

Post-Doctoral Position

Two Postdoctoral Positions Open at University of Tokyo

Motivated researchers are invited to apply according to the following information.

Joint Junior Undergraduate Seminar of UT and TUA with NAOs

Meeting at Lake Yamanaka and Mt. Fuji

On the Way to a Symposium in Kyoto

43rd IFToMM Executive Council Meeting

NAO Programing Seminar at YNL: DAY2

NAO Programing Seminar at YNL

We use NAO for education and research

My comments to the Report of National Moon Exploration

避難所のこころのケアにパロも出動　http://ow.ly/4FBej