Location:

AIST Tokyo Headquarter

address: 1-3-1 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8921 Japan
tel: +81 3 5501 0900
web: http://www.aist.go.jp

AIST/CNRS Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory JRL (LIA CNRS)

address: Central 2, Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan
tel: +81 29 861 3443
web: http://www.is.aist.go.jp/jrl

Description of participant

On April 1, 2001, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (the new AIST) began operations. AIST is a newly formed research organization that is the result of an amalgamation of the 15 research institutes previously under the former Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (the former AIST) in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and the Weights and Measures Training Institute. The new AIST is Japan's largest public research organization with many research facilities and around 3,200 employees in all. Three mission of AIST are:

• Advanced Research by exploring broad spectra of research fields and integrating multidisciplinary subjects to promote innovation in versatile fields that strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese industries in the world market and create new industries.
• Interdisciplinary and Cross-Disciplinary Research that enables planning long-range governmental policies by exploiting the current and future needs of society.
• Basic Research that maintains and strengthens competitiveness of national science and technology by developing and maintaining high standards of scientific and engineering research under the sole responsibility of AIST.

The Intelligent Systems Research Institute (ISRI) is one of the research units of AIST. The objective of the Intelligent Systems Research Institute is to conduct researches on fundamental and component technologies, system integration technologies for the computer-oriented intelligent systems, and also physical systems which support human activities in the real world. In the 21st century, "IT" i.e. information and computer network technology is one of the key technologies to improve human life. Also the IT driven systems that provide physical services to human will be important.

The ISRI of the AIST and the département des Sciences et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (STIC) have set up a joint research laboratory named Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL). The JRL is operated in all aspects on the basis of bipolar management. The research base in Japan (JRL Japan) is located at ISRI, Open Space Laboratory (OSL) within the AIST, and the France side (JRL France) is located in CNRS-LAAS in Toulouse (see CNRS part for more details).

Key researchers

Kazuhito YOKOI (*1961) is currently the scientific group leader of Autonomous Behaviour Control Research Group, Intelligent Systems Research Institute and is the co-Director of the AIST/CNRS joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in Japan. He is also an adjunctive professor of Graduate School at University of Tsukuba. He received his B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Nagoya Institute of Technology in 1984, and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering Science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1986 and 1994, respectively. In 1986, he joined the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Ministry of International Trade and Industry. From November 1994 to October 1995, he was a Visiting Scholar at Robotics Laboratory, Computer Science Department, and Stanford University. His research interests include humanoids, human-centered robotics, and teleoperation. He organized a workshop on "Explorations towards Humanoid Robot Application" at IEEE/RSJ IROS'01 in USA. He is an organizing committee member of several international conferences including IEEE Humanoids'05 and served as referee in many robotics journal and conferences, delivered many invited talks.

Eiichi YOSHIDA (*1967) is currently senior research scientist, in Intelligent Systems Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. He received Master and Doctor of Engineering Degree from Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1993 and 1996 respectively. From 1990 to 1991, he was visiting research associate at Department of Micro-engineering at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL). In 1996 he joined Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, now National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), in Tsukuba, Japan. In 2004 he served as Program Co-Chair of International Symposium on International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-8) held in Amsterdam and was leading Japan New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) Leading Research Program for International Joint Investigation about Survey and Preliminary Experiments on Improving Robot Autonomy. Currently he serves as co-director of CNRS/AIST Joint French-Japanese Robotics Laboratory (JRL) situated in LAAS-CNRS, France. His research interests include task and motion planning, modular robotic systems, and humanoid robots.

Ee Sian NEO (*1975) is currently a research scientist in the Intelligent Systems Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. He received the Associate's degree in engineering from Suzuka National College of Technology in 1998, the Bachelor's degree in engineering, the Master of Engineering degree and the Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering degree all from the University of Tsukuba in 2001, 2003 and 2006 respectively. He was a recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society RAS) Japan Chapter Young Award in 2003. His research interests include constructing on-line motion generation, task teaching and human-machine interaction systems for humanoid robots serving in human environments.

Role of partner

AIST will setup the prototype with its Humanoids platform and try to link ROBOT@CWE with other Asian programmes.