Recently, we feel something more familiar to robots due to developing products of cleaning robot and security robot.

Current home electric appliances such as television, cleaner and digital camera have many functions, and become a sort of robots in home environments.

Intelligent robotic system is composed not of a single technique but of many types of techniques such as image processing, acoustical signal processing, control, machine engineering, and network system.

Therefore, it is considered that robots are good examples and platforms to find research issue and feedback the solution to other general products such as home electric appliances.

Mitsuharu Matsumoto Laboratory has some humanoid robots such as Robovie-II and Nuvo, and some autonomous mobile robots. We aim to apply our developed technologies in acoustical signal processing, image processing and tactile/haptic technologies to them.

We also aim to understand human throughout human-machine interaction, and feedback the results to general public.

Mitsuharu Matsumoto Laboratory progresses our research to understand human from the relation between human and machine such as:

- Self-calibration of humanoid robot
- Huma-machine interaction throughout the objects
-Balance control of humanoid robot by using tactile information
- Nonverbal human-machine interaction using light interface

Balance control of humanoid robot using simple tactile sensor

We are studying balance control of humanoid robot using a simple tactile sensor. We attempt to balance the robot only using tactile information from the sole of feet. The humanoid robot could sense the inclined slopes and balance with two legs and one leg. We are also studying humanoid robot walking in more unstable environments.

A study on robot behavior model to build causality after events

In this study, we pay attention to causality illusion, and aim to analyze it and to apply it to engineering fields. We are currently investigating causality illusion by using some mobile robots in the smart environment.

Human-robot interaction throughout the object

We are developing a simple tactile sensor with three pressure sensors, and apply it to an industrial robot. We progress the research on surface normal sensing, shape measurement and object edge detection by using our tactile sensor system.

Application of tactile sensor to welding system

We apply our tactile system to welding machines and attempt to develop automatic welding systems.

Nonverbal interaction based on virtual field model

We are studying a unified interaction model to handle contact interaction and non-contact interaction. In our approach, we set a virtual field like gravity field around the robot, and aim to control the robot throughout the virtual field.