Distributed System for Support of Assistive Robot Control by the use of Object-Oriented Language

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The goal of this research is to develop a supporting environment for control of assistive robots which may be used by handicapped or aged people, or by those who take care of them. To control robots, Smalltalk, an object - oriented language, has been chosen because of its flexibility of programing, and the ease of programming environment.By the use of characteristics of Smalltalk, the programming becomes much easier than ever, and some modifications of program on site by the end users become possible. The use of voice recognition system to control the robot has been evaluated : by combining the advantage of Smalltalk, the recognition rate of voice command become higher as there is less ambiguity. The use of glove-type input device has also been tested : it is suitable to command the movement, rather than quantitative input parameters. With glove-type input device, the trajectories of robot movements become more smooth.Finally the command of robots has been evaluated on computer network supporting a remote maintenance of software, which become more realistic when the Internet enters in the daily life. The performance of robot control has been compared in three cases : control of the robot by local computer, command of the robot by remote computer by step by step command, and control of the robot by remote computer by a batch command. Some useful results on the use of remote computer by a batch command. Some useful results on the use of remote software maintenance have been obtained.