Development of Intelligent Robot System for Industrial Applications

The future of intelligent robot systems for industrial applications combined with computer networks is discussed. The speed of information flow in production systems, enterprises, and society has been accelerated by the rapid progress of information technology. However, there are still barriers in production sites where production machinery and robots are used. To overcome these barriers, we propose open and intelligent robot system applications for various industrial fields where uncertainties are inherent, from the viewpoint of real-world computing. The proposed system takes into account (1) a structured task description, (2) a hierarchical computational platform, and (3) a seamless teaching and operating environment. Sensor-based robot systems designed by these principles are discussed in the papers in this special issue. The concept of "Cyber Robotics", in which multimedia and network technologies are combined with an open robot system, is then proposed. Cyber robotics helps us to extract human tacit knowledge about a task and enables us to handle and re-utilize it. These features accelerate the information flow between various systems and locations, and should create benefits for both users and vendors by drastically reducing costs for start-up, operation, and maintenance.