Personal Mobility Robot Operated by Wii Controller

The Personal Mobility Robot or PMR, is an agile robotic wheelchair, self-balancing on two wheels like a Segway. The machine is based on a platform developed by Toyota has been, has a manual control that the pilot uses the speed and direction of change [see photo] poster.
Now two researchers at the University of Tokyo have decided to upgrade the machine that makes a Wii remote. Why the thing go with a Wii-mote? Well, why not?
Last year, when I showed the JSK Robotics Laboratory, part of the department of the University of mechano-computer science and directed by Professor Masayuki Inaba, researchers Naotaka Hata and Ryo Hanai visited my PMR under the control of the Wii. Allow me not to drive, while driving the car, but it was fun to watch.
Watch:
Watch in HD here.
The PMR project is part of the Information and Robot Technology (IRT), a research initiative at the University of Tokyo. Researchers have developed the car for older people and people with disabilities who remain to help independent and mobile. The machine is designed to be reliable and easy to use, ie they can both indoors and outdoors to negotiate - even ski slopes and uneven surfaces. Weighs 150 kilograms and can move up to six miles an hour.
The PRM is a kind of robots known as "two-wheeled inverted pendulum mobile robot" - like the Segway and many others. The advantage of a self-balancing two-wheeled machine is its small footprint (compared to, say, a four-wheel) and its ability to rotate on its axis, which is very handy in tight spaces.
The machine takes a smaller pilot project configuration to a climb on the seat. Then he stands up, so that the two wheels to dynamically balance the vehicle. (The two small wheels you see on the front and back, for safety reasons, if the machine tips over.)
In addition to controllability Wii-mote have JSK researchers are working on an advanced navigation system to plan in a position to even look for and trains, with the pilot with a computer screen to tell the robot where [the photo] you go to the right.
The navigation system works on two laptops in real time, one place and another for planning trajectory. Range of laser sensors and algorithms SLAM identify people and objects nearby, and between static and moving obstacles can be distinguished. He does this with the next scan its environment and the comparison of the scans, the identification of elements, the closed areas, which are only in motion "visible" as the robot moves.
The system can quickly the pedestrian zone, start suddenly as the people who seem to move the blind spots. In these cases, the robot can do two things: avoiding recalculation of the flight path to the image [collision below, left], or stop for a few seconds to wait for the pedestrians, and then start moving again [bottom right].
The navigation system uses a deterministic approach to plan the flight path. Basically, you have all the top clubs of static objects and then attempt a continuous line is drawn, the tangent to the circles, from origin to destination. Sure, maybe there is a set of possible paths, so that the system uses an algorithm A * to determine the path to take. You can see a visual representation of this approach at:
And even if I do not see it, I said that researchers are also developing a specific model for internal use PMR. And 'light (45 kg) and compact, and the pilot can by moving his body to control how the Segway.
This means, researchers say that they say hands-free drive: just where to and enjoy the ride, a drink or read a book.
Photo: Information Technology and Robot / University of Tokyo, JSK Robotics Lab