Human-robot Interaction and Coordination - Robot Helpers, Robotic Assistive Systems, and Dance Partner Robots

More than 45 years have passed, since robots have been introduced for industrial applications as industrial robots. Robotics technology, which has been matured enough to be applied to several systems in our daily life, is expected to be one of the key technologies for the aging society. In this presentation, we consider how the robotics technology has been and will be utilized in human environments. The word "robotics" means both the robot science and the robot engineering, although emphasis has been put on the scientific part in academia. Actually, the engineering part has also contributed a lot to produce many systems in our daily life. Recent home appliances, automobile technologies, power assisted devices, etc. will be introduced as examples of systems with robotics technology inside. These examples show how the robotics technology has brought us new attractive but relatively simple applications. The human-robot interaction is one of the key issues to bring the robotics technology into human environments further. We introduce a mobile robot helper and distributed robot helpers as examples of human-robot interaction and coordination for handling an object. A walking helper and a wearable walking helper are introduced as robotic assistive devices. RT walker introduced as an example of a passive realization of robotic walking assist systems. Finally, a dance partner robot, which plays a role of a female dancer, is introduced as research platform for advanced human-robot interaction and coordination. The ballroom dance includes a lot of challenging problems.