Traveling Control of Autonomous Mobile Robots DREAM

The author was requested by the committee of Reports of the Faculty of Engineering, Tottori university to summarize the major researches during the life in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. With many thanks, the author will describe the research activities on the Autonomous Mobile Robots DREAM as follows: In the recent aging society, the burden of the nurses has increased. To reduce the burden even a little, we are developing the wheelchair type autonomous mobile robot, called DREAM-3, which will be used in indoor environments of the hospitals and/or welfare facilities. The DREAM-3 aims at carrying the passenger from its present place to the destination safely and comfortably. Along this line of the safety traveling, we have installed an environmental map to digitalize the information in the corresponding traveling environmental. Using the environmental map, suitable traveling route is estimated and a safety autonomous traveling is realized. This was proved on the traveling in a general welfare facility near our campus. Besides, based on the traveling approach of DREAM-3, a semi-automatic wheelchair robot, called DREAM-4, with a learning function has been proposed. A driver operates DREAM-4 by a joystick. And when the wheelchair meets with obstacles and senses danger, it travels slowly and avoids obstacles automatically. And DREAM-4 is to learn according to the operational feature of the driver, so that to make the steering easy

Cluster Analysis using Spherical SOM

A cluster analysis method is proposed in this paper. As benchmark data, the Fisher's iris and the Wine recognition data sets are used. As a result of the numerical experiment, a clustering method using the dendrogram yielded 97 % in accuracy. It is difficult to display a multi-dimensional data by the dendrogram in one dimension. The ultimate visualization is by means of 3 dimensional rendition. We conclude that the best way that a multi-dimensional data set is visualized is by a sphere, since the phase relationship of it is smooth everywhere

Application of SOM in a health evaluation system

A health evaluation system was constructed which visualizes the living habits and health state from a person's checkup list by using the feature of SOM that multi-dimensional data can be mapped onto a two-dimensional surface. Here, three examples cases are reported. A change to the health region of the map by taking medication was visualized by the SOM from the conventional numerical expression. Also, the specific sick record converges towards the sick region of the map when the disease progresses. However, it was shown and visualized for the sick record not to converge in the case of the metastasis of a cancer even if for the same examinee, the cancer has progressed. Finally, for the display of the health point mark, and the display of the sick record, the spherical surface SOM, is demonstrated to be suited in the visualization

Cluster Analysis using Spherical SOM

A cluster analysis method is proposed in this paper. As benchmark data, the Fisher's iris and the Wine recognition data sets are used. As a result of the numerical experiment, a clustering method using the dendrogram yielded 97 % in accuracy. It is difficult to display a multi-dimensional data by the dendrogram in one dimension. The ultimate visualization is by means of 3 dimensional rendition. We conclude that the best way that a multi-dimensional data set is visualized is by a sphere, since the phase relationship of it is smooth everywhere