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Towards the Enhancement of Competitiveness -- China HT Program in Advanced Manufacturing

Dr. Songde Ma
Vice Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology, China

Abstract: This talk will present the latest development of advanced manufacturing in China under the support of the Chinese High-Tech Development (863) Program.

I. Strongpoint and Weakness of China's Manufacturing
II. Introduction of China's HT Program
III. Focus of China's HT Program in Advanced Manufacturing
IV. IT and Advanced Manufacturing
V. Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Manufacturing
VI. Summary
.

Biography: Dr. Songde Ma received the B.S. degree in automatic control from Tsinghua University, P.R.China in 1968. He received the Ph.D degree in 1983 and the "Doctorat d'Etat es Science" degree in 1986 from University of Paris 6 in image processing and Computer Vision. He was an invited researcher in the computer vision laboratory of University of Maryland, College Park, USA in 1983. He was a researcher in the robot vision laboratory in INRIA, France in 1984-1986. From 1986 to 2000, he was a research professor in the National Pattern Recognition Laboratory of the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was the president of the Institute of Automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1996-2000. He is the author or co-author of over 200 papers in the International Journals or Conferences. He is the chief editor of the "Chinese Journal on Automation", associate editor of the "International Journal on Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition" and the journal of "Pattern Recognition". He obtained the Best Paper Award and Best Technique Award in Eurographic'85 and the Outstanding Young Scientist Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1989. In 2000, he was awarded the ¡°Officier de l¡¯ordre National du Merite¡± by the President of France for his contribution to the Sino-French Science and Technology cooperation.

Dr. MA has been the vice-minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology(MOST) of China since April 2000. He is now in charge of the National High Technology Program and International Cooperation in MOST.

Special Invited Talk I

Humanoid Robot and its Application Possibility

Dr. Kazuo Tanie
Director, Intelligent Systems Institute, AIST, Japan

Abstract: Humanoid is a robot which has the shape of human body, that is, two leggs, two arms, a trunk and a head. It has been researched by a few research groups in the world since 1970 as a kind of dreamy research target for robotics researchers. However, after HondaMotor Co., Ltd. developed "Honda P3", a well-designed humanoid robot which can stably and realiably walk, at the middle of 1990s, it has been recognized as a robot which may be able to be used practically near future and many research groups began to develop the practical humanoid robot. In Japan, as such a group, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) launched a 5-year national project, "Humanoid Robot Project (HRP)" in 1998, with Prof. H. Inoue as the project leader and AIST and several companies as the participating organizations. The objectives of the project were to develop a humanoid which can be used as a research platform to develop its new applications and also show how "the human shape robot" is useful practically with several application examples. As the results, the project developed a new humanoid platform, "HRP-2" which has open software architecture (Open HRP) and several fundamental functions. Also, several application examples have been developed and demonstrated using real humanoid platforms developed in the project. This talk will introduce some important results obtained by the project.

Biography: Kazuo Tanie was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. He received B.S., M.S. and Dr. Eng. from Waseda University in 1969, 1971 and 1980, respectively. In 1971, soon after graduating M.S., he entered Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, AIST-MITI. He served there Director of Cybernetics Division and Biorobotics Division at Robotics Department, and also Director of Robotics Department. Since April 1, 2001, when all MITI's laboratories were reformed, he has been the Director of Intelligent Systems Institute, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Also, he has been an adjunctive professor of Cooperative Graduate School at University of Tsukuba since 1992 and a visiting professor at The Advanced Research Center of Science and Technology at Waseda University since 1996. From August, 1981 to August, 1982, he was a visiting scholar of University of California at Los Angeles, and in September, 1995, a visiting professor at Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Italy. He served as the General Chair and Program Chair for several international conferences. He is Japanese contact person of International Advanced Robotics Program (IARP) and President-Elect of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). He was a founding chairman of Robotics and Mechatronics Division in Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) in 1988 and 1989, and a vice president of Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) in 1999 and 2000. He is a Fellow of JSME, and a Senior Member of IEEE where he is belonging to RAS, Industrial Electronics Society and System, Man & Cybernetics Society, RSJ, Japan Society of Instrument and Control Engineers and so on. He received Joseph Engerburger Technical Award in 2001 and also several best paper awards from Japanese academic societies. His research interests include compliant robotic arm control, multifinger hand control with tactile sensors, virtual reality and its application to telerobotic systems, human friendly robotics and humanoid. He has published more than 300 papers in Japanese and international journals and international conference proceedings.

Special Invited Talk II

Blind Source De-convolution and Recovery: A State-Space Formulation & Applications in Communication Systems

Professor Fathi M. Salem
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan State University

Abstract: Blind Source Recovery (BSR) is informally described as follows: several unknown but stochastically independent temporal signals propagate through a natural or synthetic, dynamic mixing and filtering environment. By observing only the outputs of this environment, a system (e.g., a filter bank, a neural network, or a device) is constructed to counteract, to the extent possible, the effects of the environment and adaptively recover the best estimate of the original signals. The adaptive approach is a form of unsupervised or autonomous learning. It is noted that here one uses the observations to estimate the unknown driving (source) signals while the mixing (system) model is also unknown. It is in contrast to the formulation of the Kalman filtering where, from observations and known driving source signals, and known mixing (system) models, one estimates the state of the model. In the context of source recovery, our primary interest is to obtain the best possible estimate of the actual source signals (up to a possible scaling and a permuted sequence), which may be achieved independent of, and even in the absence of, precise environment identifiability. For example, consider the case of nonlinear mixing; there may be several possible demixing networks, which can estimate mutually independent outputs. However, any one of such possible outputs will be the estimated (recovered) solution. Similarly, even in the linear case, various possible (equivalent) demixing structures may be constructed in the state space to recover the sources, where the scaling and permutations is the same for different recovering structures. For the overcomplete case, where there are less observations than actual sources, there may not even exist an explicit recovering network. The focus of blind source recovery, therefore, is to address the issue of recovery of the desired sources rather than to focus on the issue of accurate (mixing environment or channel) identification.

Biography: Fathi M. Salem received the B.S. (1976), University of California (UC) Berkeley, the M.S. (1979), UC Davis, and the Ph.D. (1983), UC Berkeley, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He also received the M.A. in Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1983. He was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley (1983), CalTech (1992), and the University of Minnesota (1993). He has been a Professor at Michigan State University since 1991, and has worked and consulted for several companies including General Motors, Ford, Smith's Industries, Intersignal, IC Tech, Inc., and Clarity LLC. He was an Associate Editor and Guest Editor for numerous IEEE and other transactions including the IEEE Circuits And Systems, IEEE Neural Networks, the Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers, and the Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering. He served in several capacities in several conferences including the General Chair of the IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2000. He was the chairman of the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-time Control Computing and Signal Processing 1994-1996, the past chairman of the CAS Technical Committee on Neural Systems and Their Applications (97-98), the first Vice President of IEEE Neural Network Council for Technical activities (1999-2001). Dr. Salem has published more than 200 technical papers and co-edited the Book, Dynamical Systems Approaches to Nonlinear Problems in Circuits and Systems, (SIAM, 1988). He was the Guest Co-Editor of several the IEEE-CAS special issues. He is a co-inventor of over 10 patents on adaptive nonlinear signal processing, neural architectures, learning, and low-power CMOS VLSI implementations. His current research interests include: Blind Equalization, Separation, and Recovery; Supervised adaptive neural processing chips; RF-microelectronic circuits and systems. Dr. Salem is a Fellow of the IEEE (1996-) and a recipient of the IEEE CAS Golden Jubilee Award (1999), the IEEE Third Millennium award (2000), The CAS Darlington Best Paper Award (2001). With a Team of students, he also received the U.S. Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Phase II Finalist award (2000), and he was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE CAS society for 2000-2001.

Special Invited Talk III

Intelligent Control of Multi-fingered Hands

Professor Suguru Arimoto
Department of Robotics
Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Abstract: The talk is concerned with intelligent control for grasping and manipulation of an object by multi-fingered robot hands with rigid or soft hemispheric finger ends that induce rolling contacts with the object. Even in the case of 2D motion like pinching by means of a pair of multi-degrees of freedom robot fingers, there arises an interesting family of Lagrange's equations of motion with many geometric constraints, which are under-actuated, redundant, and non-holonomic in some sense. Regardless of underactuation of dynamics, it is possible to find a class of sensory feedback signals that realize secure grasp of an object together with control of object orientation. In regard to the secure grasping, a problem of force/torque closure for 2D objects in a dynamic sense plays a crucial role. It is shown that discovered sensory feedback signals sendering the dynamic force/torque closure can be constructed without knowing object kinematic parameters and location of the mass center. To prove the convergence of motion of the overall fingers-object system under the circumstance of redundancy of joints, new concepts called "stability on a manifold" and ``asymptotic stability on a manifold" are introduced. The arguments developed in the case of 2D motions are extended to a problem of secure grasping of a 3D object with two flat surfaces by means of a pair of 3D fingers with hemispheric finger ends or a set of three fingers (one finger is planar and the other two are of 3D). A final part of the talk is dedicated to the discussion on dexterity of motions of human multi-fingered hands from both the viewpoints of "sensory-motor coordination" in physiology and "intelligent connection of perception to action" in robotics.

Biography: Suguru Arimoto was born on 3 August 1936 in Hiroshima, Japan. He received B.S. degree in Mathematics from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1959 and Dr. Eng. Degree in control engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1967. From 1959 to 1961 he was with Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Tokyo, as an engineer in Electric Computer Department. From 1962 to 1967 he was Research Assistant, and from 1967 to 1968 Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics, the University of Tokyo. In 1968 he joined the Faculty of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, as Associate Professor, and in 1973 he was promoted to Professor of Systems Engineering. In 1988 he was invited to join the University of Tokyo as Professor of the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics. In 1997 he retired from the University of Tokyo and moved to Ritsumeikan University, where he contributed to establishment of a new department. Since 1997 he has been Professor in the Department of Robotics. His research interests are in information theory, control theory, cybernetics, robotics, and machine intelligence. He is IEEE Fellow (1983) and IEICE Fellow (2000), and was awarded the national medal with a purple ribbon from the Japanese government in 2000 and the IEEE third Millennium Medal from the IEEE in 2000.

Special Invited Talk IV

Nanorobotic Technology

Professor Toshio Fukuda and F. Arai,
Nagoya University

Biography: Toshio Fukuda (M'83-SM'93-F'95) graduated from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 1971 and received the Master of Engineering degree and the Doctor of Engineering degree both from the University of Tokyo, in 1973 and 1977, respectively. Meanwhile, he studied at the graduate school of Yale University from 1973 to 1975. In 1977, he joined the National Mechanical Engineering Laboratory in Japan. From 1979 to 1980, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Stuttgart, West Germany. He joined the Science University of Tokyo in 1981, and then joined Department of Mechanical Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan in 1989.
At present, he is Professor of Center for Cooperative Research in Advanced Science and Technology, Nagoya University, Japan. He is mainly engaging in the research fields of intelligent robotic system, self-organizing system, micro-nano robotics, robotic system under hostile environment, bio-robotic system, neuromorphic intelligent control, fuzzy control, control of mechanical systems and technical diagnosis.
He was the Vice President of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (1990- ). He is the member of the administrative committees in IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. He was the Publication chairman (1991-1992) and the Secretary of IEEE Neural Network Council (1992-1993). He was chairman of Division of Robotics and Mechatronics of Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering (JSME), chairman of Committee of Technical Committee of Robotics in Society of Instrument and Control Engineer (SICE) and chairman of many other technical committees. He was the President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (1998-1999). He is elected as Director of the IEEE Division X, Systems and Control. He was the Founding General Chairman of IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) held in Tokyo (1988) and Program Chairman of IJCNN '91-Singapore (Nov., 1991). He was the Steering Chairman of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN'93-NAGOYA, 1993). He was the General Chairman of the IEEE Int'l Conference on Robotics and Automation (May, 1995), the Program Co-chairman of the Fuzz-IEEE Conference (Mar., 1995) and the General Chairman of the IEEE Int'l Conference on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC'96, May, 1996) and the steering member of many other international conferences. He was the General Chairman of Second Conference of Virtual Reality Society of Japan, September 1997. He was the General Chairman of Int'l Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation-2000 (IECON-2000, October 2000). Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (2000-2002), Journal of Micromechatronics (2000- ), Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence (JACI) and IEEE Nanotechnology Council President (2002-2003). He is also President of Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics (2003-).
He has received many awards such as Contribution Award from the Robotics and Mechatornics Division of JSME (1995), Best Paper Award of ICEC'96 and Best Paper Award of IECON'96, City of Grenoble Medal (1997), IEEE Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award (1997), Banki Donat Medal from Polytechnic University of Budapest, Hungary (1997), and Medal from City of Sartillo, Mexico (1998), IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000). IEEE Fellow (1995). SICE Fellow (1995).

Special Invited Talk V

A Small Biped Entertainment Robot

Mr. Tatsuzo Ishida
Entertainment Robot Company
Sony Corporation, Japan

Abstract: We propose a small biped entertainment robot proto-type, Sony Dream Robot (SDR) that realizes the Motion Entertainment and the Communication Entertainment. SDR-4X is the latest proto-type model which remains a small humanoid type robot and is expanding its capabilities of adaptability in home environment. New technologies are as follows. The first is newly developed small robot actuators named ISA-4, the second is Real-time Integrated Adaptive Motion Control. The third is a motion creating software system which enables to create SDR's attractive motion performance. Speech synthesis and singing voice production are also developed for communication entertainment applications.

Biography: Mr. Ishida graduated from the graduate school of Waseda University in 1974 and joined the Sony Corporation after the graduation. From 1976 to 1977 he was a visiting researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. In 1973, he developed the world-first humanoid robot Wabot-1 at the Waseda Universtiy and from 1997 he started to develop the Sony small humanoid robot at the Digital Creatures Laboratory, Sony Corporation. Since 2001, he has been the general manager of the Entertainment Robots Company, Sony Corporation. Mr. Ishida is members of The Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ), The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers

Special Invited Talk VI

Wearable Interface: from Cap to Shoe

Professor Yangsheng Xu
Department of Automation and Computer Aided Engineering
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract: As we all know, the most significant change in our daily-life in the past few years is the introduction of mobile phones. The success of mobile phones lies in the fact that interpersonal communication and interaction are vital to the well-being of humans and the mobile phones helps people achieving this goal by extending the sense of hearing and power of speech to far away places conveniently. In a sense, a mobile phone can be viewed as an ¡°extended ears and mouth¡±(only for speech function of a mouth). However, apart from the ears¡±and mouth, we have also eyes, nose, hands, and other organs in our body to sense and interact with the world. It would be so desirable if these functions can also be extended, so that we can communicate and interact with people remotely. This talk will cover the development of such a novel class of devices which we called wearable interface. It is small, lightweight, wearable, portable, distributed, and intelligent. I will address the development of the intelligent cap, glasses, and shoes as mobile device for control, communication, and recognition. I will also discuss the technologies associated to these devices such as architecture, learning, and real-time tracking.

Biography: Yangsheng Xu received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Robotics. He is currently Professor and Chairman of Department of Automation and Computer-aided Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Before joining CUHK, he was a faculty member at the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University where, with his colleagues and students, he established the Space Robotics Laboratory which was considered as the world first laboratory equipped with a zero-gravity environment, space station model, and a ground-base real-time control station. Over the past 15 years, he designed and developed 16 robot systems including Self-Mobile Space Manipulator, Single-Wheel Gyroscopically Stabilized Robot, Detachable Mobile Manipulator, Free-Floating Underactuated Robot, Medical Simulation Robot, and Wearable Robot. He has also made contributions to abstracting human control strategy and implementing it in various autonomous systems for outdoor and indoor navigation. Two research topics that he has been recently focusing on are (1) wearable interfaces such as shoes that identifies human behaviors, caps that detects human eyes motion, and glasses that do real-time translation, and (2) micro engineering spacecrafts and formation flying technologies. He has published over 180 papers, and served on editorial boards of varrious journals including IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. He is a Fellow of HKIE, Fellow of IEEE, and Academician of Eurasian Academy of Science.

Special Invited Talk VII

Human-Centered Robotics and Interactive Simulation

Oussama Khatib
Department of Computer Science
Stanford University

Abstract: A new field of robotics is emerging. Robots are today moving towards applications beyond the structured environment of a manufacturing plant. They are making their way into the everyday world that people inhabit. The successful introduction of robotics into human environments will rely on the development of competent and practical systems that are dependable, safe, and easy to use. The discussion focuses on models, strategies, and algorithms associated with the autonomous behaviors needed for robots to work, assist, and cooperate with humans. In addition to the new capabilities they bring to the physical robot, these models and algorithms and more generally the body of developments in robotics is having a significant impact on the virtual world. Haptic interaction with an accurate dynamic simulation provides unique insights into the real-world behaviors of physical systems. The potential applications of this emerging technology include virtual prototyping, animation, surgery, robotics, cooperative design, and education among many others. Haptics is one area where the computational requirement associated with the resolution in real-time of the dynamics and contact forces of the virtual environment is particularly challenging. The presentation describes various methodologies and algorithms that address the computational challenges associated with interactive simulations involving multiple contacts with complex human-like robotic structures.

Biography: Oussama Khatib received his Ph.D. in 1980 from Sup'Aero, Toulouse, France. He is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His current research is in human-centered robotics, human-friendly robot design, dynamic simulations, and haptic interactions. His exploration in this research ranges from the autonomous ability of a robot to cooperate with a human to the haptic interaction of a user with an animated character or a surgical instrument. Professor Khatib was the Program Chair of ICRA2000 (San Francisco) and Co-Editor of "The Robotics Review.'' He is the President of the International Foundation of Robotics Research, IFRR, and Co-Editor of STAR, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics. Professor Khatib is a "Distinguished Lecturer" of IEEE and a recipient of the JARA Award.