A robot control system includes a control device for controlling a robot and a portable operating panel connected to the control device. The portable operating panel and at least one other device include contact points connected in series. The control device includes a reception circuit that can detect the opening of at least one of the contact points. The portable operating panel includes a smart device having a sensor. The contact point included in the portable operating panel is opened and closed in conjunction with a physical movement of a switch member attached to an exterior of the smart device. The sensor can detect a physical quantity that changes in conjunction with the physical movement of the switch member. The portable operating panel transmits, to the control device, a detection signal indicating the physical quantity detected by the sensor or information about the physical quantity.

Disclosed herein are an apparatus and method for generating robot interaction behavior. The method for generating robot interaction behavior includes generating co-speech gesture of a robot corresponding to utterance input of a user, generating a nonverbal behavior of the robot, that is a sequence of next joint positions of the robot, which are estimated from joint positions of the user and current joint positions of the robot based on a pre-trained neural network model for robot pose estimation, and generating a final behavior using at least one of the co-speech gesture and the nonverbal behavior.

A method for controlling a robot (1) for handling a part to be handled (14), the handling robot (1) being linked to a control interface comprising a glove (40) comprising a first finger (41) provided with a first contact sensor (42) and a second finger (43) provided with a second contact sensor (44), the method comprising the following steps; a) associating, in a signal library (25), a first and a second recorded combination of signals (26, 21); b) acquiring a combination of signals originating from the sensors (26, 27) of the glove (40); c) comparing the acquired combination of signals with the recorded combinations (27, 28, 29) in the library (25); d) controlling the handling robot (1) in such a way as to perform a movement according to the velocity vector associated with the acquired combination of signals. A handling glove (40) and handling device implementing the method.

A vacuum operated object lifting system is disclosed that can use air pressure differentials to anchor the lifting system to the floor or other structure. The vacuum lifting system includes a main structure having a space defined in the bottom thereof and a lifting arm system extending from the main structure for grasping and moving a load. The vacuum lifting system includes a vacuum pumping system including an air pump and a conduit system extending from the air pump to the space in the bottom of the main structure. Use of the air pump to draw air out of the conduit system creates pressure differential between ambient air pressure and air pressure in the space of the main structure to anchor the vacuum lifting system to the ground. The vacuum pumping system may also grasp the load by suction.

A vacuum operated object lifting system is disclosed that can use air pressure differentials to anchor the lifting system to the floor or other structure. The vacuum lifting system includes a main structure having a space defined in the bottom thereof and a lifting arm system extending from the main structure for grasping and moving a load. The vacuum lifting system includes a vacuum pumping system including an air pump and a conduit system extending from the air pump to the space in the bottom of the main structure. Use of the air pump to draw air out of the conduit system creates pressure differential between ambient air pressure and air pressure in the space of the main structure to anchor the vacuum lifting system to the ground. The vacuum pumping system may also grasp the load by suction.

A management system is a management system which includes a remote work system having at least one master unit and a plurality of slave units which can be remotely operated and a management server, in which each of the plurality of slave units includes a gripping unit that is configured to grip a target, grip the target by means of autonomous control, and, when being connected to the master unit by the management server, grip the target by means of a remote operation by the master unit, the master unit is configured to perform the remote operation on the plurality of slave units, and the management server includes an operation management unit that is configured to connect the master unit and the plurality of slave units when a remote operation is required.

A building monitoring system includes a first sensor configured to detect a first condition in the space, a second sensor configured to detect a second condition in the space, and a robotic sentinel. The robotic sentinel includes a memory for storing one or more rules each configured to identify an alert condition for the space based on the first and/or second conditions in the space, a communications module configured to communicate with a remote device over a network, and a controller operatively coupled to the sensors, the memory, and the communications module. The controller is configured to apply the one or more rules to the first and second detected conditions in the space to identify one or more alert conditions and determine what action is required by the robotic sentinel, and if action is required, command the robotic sentinel to travel to a location of the alert condition.

A mobile robot is configured for operation in a commercial or industrial setting, such as an office building or retail store. The mobile robot may include cameras for capturing images and videos and include microphones for capturing audio of its surroundings. To improve privacy by preventing confidential information from being transmitted, the mobile robot may detect text in images and modify the images to make the text illegible before transmitting the images. The mobile robot may also detect human voice in audio and modify audio to make the human voice unintelligible before transmitting the audio.

A wheelchair comprising a mechanical arm for assisting a user is disclosed. The mechanical arm includes a first arm mounted to a first armrest of the wheelchair. The mechanical arm includes a second arm mounted to the first arm via a first swivel rod. The second arm is made to swivel with respect to the first arm. The mechanical arm includes a third arm mounted to the second arm. The third arm is made to swivel with respect to the second arm. The mechanical arm includes claws. The wheelchair includes a controller provided at a second armrest of the wheelchair. The controller is used to operate the first arm, the second arm and the third arm to align the mechanical arm with an object. The controller is also used to operate the claws for gripping and releasing an object.

A technique for analyzing Quality of Experience, QoE, of a delay critical robotic application in a cloud robotics system is disclosed, the robotic application involving use of a cloud based service by a robot, the service being provided to the robot from a cloud using a connection over a mobile communication network. A method implementation of the technique comprises triggering (S202) determining whether a QoE measure associated with the robotic application exceeds a threshold to assess whether QoE degradation is present, and, when it is determined that QoE degradation is present, triggering (S204) identifying a root cause for the QoE degradation based on one or more performance indicators observed within the mobile communication network and associated with the connection.