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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>It looks like we’ll schedule the regular lab meetings for Tuesdays at 3:00pm this quarter. So no regular meeting this week. However, I have a visitor on Friday who will give an informal lab talk on his research in human-robot interaction, and I hope many of you can make it. The info is below.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Thanks,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> Matthew<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>2:30pm Friday<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>MAT conference room<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Mohd Razali<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>PhD student, Saitama University, Japan<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>(Advisor: Yoshinori Kuno)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Title: Towards Smart and Autonomous Wheelchair Systems in Human-Shared Environments<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Wheelchairs are normally used in an environment occupied with humans such as care center, hospital, convenient store, etc. For an autonomous wheelchair to co-exist and be socially acceptable in such atmosphere, it must be capable to sense humans and subsequently plan actions that comply to both parties by respecting certain social rules of encounters; such stay away from human’s frontal space, prevent violating human’s personal space and maintaining path if human give a way. In other word, rather than focusing on conventional obstacle avoidance and goal seeking behavior, wheelchair should consider whether motion it takes (even though collision free) is a socially acceptable and does not bringing an awkward situation to the humans. Researches in this field are normally known as social navigation planning, which is part of Human Robot Interaction (HRI) area in non-verbal and non-cognitive case. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>In this research, the focus is on developing autonomous wheelchair system that capable to navigate smoothly among multiple humans by considering human’s state for generating motion commands. The research objectives are divided into three main components which are identifying and simulating rules that should be obeyed by the wheelchair, developing sensing system for detecting, tracking and acquiring human's information (head pose and body orientation), and developing navigation schemes that safe, natural and socially acceptable for handling multiple persons in real world environments.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>