Tele-operation of service robots by non-Japanese interactive teaching

本研究试图为遥操作机器人建立一个人性化的人机界面。这里考虑的情况如下。非日本人从海外控制位于日本的机器人，为日本老年人提供护理。在这种情况下，运营商有完全不同的文化背景，从日本，因此相当用户友好的界面是绝对必要的，以实现这种远程护理。本研究采取了两种方法：1）言语交际：简单的动词句子可能没有问题的解释。因此，我们尝试通过简单的日常语言交流来控制远程机器人。2）物理运动：物理运动本身具有一定的意义，因此我们尝试从操作者的运动中提取一些意义。代替日常会话，操作员通过计算机鼠标指示屏幕中的对象（名词），操作员计划在他/她的会话中说。开发的接口重建几个合适的候选人，可能是机器人操作命令的操作员的意图。通过选择其中一个，将执行所需的任务。本研究还开发了一种实用的方法来操纵远程操作员指示的对象。机器视觉技术和数据库技术解决了这一问题。在第二种方法中，我们成功地确定了操作员移动手臂时的基本意图。也就是说，我们可以区分三个不同的意图包括在手臂运动：触摸，打或推。这种方法对于通信信道中的延迟是相当鲁棒的。

This study tried to build a human friendly interface for tele-robots. The situation considered here is as follows. Non-Japanese control robots located in Japan from overseas for giving cares to Japanese elderly. In such case, the operators have complete different cultural background from Japanese, thus quite user-friendly interfaces are absolutely necessary to realize such tele-caring. This study took two approaches :1) Verbal Communication : Simple verbal sentences may have no problems to interpret. Thus, we tried to control the remote robot by simple daily verbal communication.2) Physical Motion : Physical motion itself has some meanings, thus we tried to retrieve some meaning from the operators' motion.In the first approach, we treat nouns in the sentence as the most important items. In place of saying daily conversation, operators indicate the objects(nouns) in the screen by computer mouse, which the operator planned to say in his/her conversation. The developed interface rebuilds several appropriate candidates that might be robot-operation commands of operators' intention. By choosing one of them, the desired task will be executed. This study also developed a practical way to manipulate the object indicated by the remote operators. The crucial points are to know the real location of the object and the way to handle it. A machine vision technique and data-base technique resolved these problems. In the second approach, we succeeded to identify the basic intention of operators when they move their arms. Namely we could distinguish three different intention included in the arm motion : touch, hit or push. This approach is quite robust against delays in communication channels.