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Fuzzy Robotics and Fuzzy Image Understanding

K a o r u Hirota

Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science

Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering
Tokyo Institute of Technology
4259 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226, Japan
e-mail hirot a@hrt.dis.titech.ac.jp

A b s t r a c t . Two topics, i.e., fuzzy robotics and fuzzy image understand-

ing, are introduced in this order. The author's group developed vari-
ous types of fuzzy robots from early 1980s. Several typical examples are
shown in this talk. The first one realizes a grasping and putting operation
in industrial line based on fuzzy if then rule based control and fuzzy image
decision tree techniques. Then a flower arrangement robot is introduced.
It realizes the human artistic skill in the robot task based on fuzzy rules.
The third one is 2D Ping-Pong robot that demonstrates the realtime
control with image process- ing using a simple 16-bit personal computer.
The forth is con- cerned with an irregular moving object shooting based
on fuzzy chaos prediction method. Finally a group of autonomous mobile
robots is presented. It realizes various group movements such as line for-
mation and triangular shaped movement, where fuzzy neuro techniques
are introduced. There exist several advantages in these approaches to
robotics. Fuzzy technologies made it possible to introduce humans' skill
in a human friendly manner and to design the system easily. In most
application examples presented here it took for a few weeks for a few
graduate students to implement the fundamental part of the system in-
cluding the knowl- edge acquisition process. The costeffectiveness of these
technol- ogies is another noteworthy point. Even a very small personal
computer realized the real time control or the real time image under-
standing for these robotics examples. Some of the techniques presented
have been applied to Japanese robotics applications in real industrial
lines. Then various image understanding techniques based on fuzzy tech-
nology developed by the authors group have been surveyed. First fuzzy
clustering is applied to the remote sensing images. It is a modified version
of the well known FCM. Then a shape recognition algorithm is presented
for a robotics assembling line. It is a fuzzy discriminant tree method for
a real time use. Finally a fuzzy dynamic image understanding system
is presented. It can understand the dynamic images on general roads in
Japan, where a fuzzy frame based knowledge representation and a spe-
cial kind of fuzzy inference engine are introduced. Experimental results
are shown by an OHP and a slide projector.