Abstract-In this paper, we describe a planner for a humanoid robot that is capable of finding a path in an environment with movable objects, whereas previous motion planner only deal with an environment with fixed objects. We address an environment manipulation problem for a humanoid robot that finds a walking path from the given start location to the goal location while displacing obstructing objects on the walking path. This problem requires more complex configuration space than previous researches using a mobile robot especially in a manipulation phase, since a humanoid robot has many degree of freedoms in its arm than a forklift type robot. Our approach is to build environment manipulation task graph that decompose the given task into subtasks which are solved using navigation path planner or whole body motion planner. We also propose a standing location search and a displacing obstacle location search for connecting subtasks. Efficient method to solve manipulation planning that rely on whole body inverse kinematics and motion planning technology is also shown. Finally, we show experimental results in an environment with movable objects such as chairs and trash boxes. The planner finds an action sequence consists of walking paths and manipulating obstructing objects to walk from the start position to the goal position.

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Ninety Chinese rice landraces were examined with special reference to the indica-japonica differentiation in terms of traditional criteria, isozyme analysis and PCR analysis of the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA). Cultivars were separated into indica and japonica defined by a discriminant function (Z) based on key characters, as well as by isozyme genotypes. Most indica landraces had chloroplast DNAs with a deletion at the Pst-12 fragment, while most japonica landraces had cpDNAs without the deletion. Two traditionally recognized varietal groups in China, keng and hsien, corresponded largely to the respective japonica and indica revealed in our study. The results obtained in this study showed good agreement for classification of indica and japonica types by the three methods: discriminant analysis by Z value, isozyme analysis, and PCR analysis for cpDNA.

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) variations were investigated in the Japanese barnyard millet, Echinochloa esculenta, its wild relative, E. crus-galli var. crus-galli and the rice-mimicking weed E. crus-galli var. formosensis. E. esculenta showed less average gene diversity (H) based on observed SSR allele frequency (0.37) than either E. crus-galli var. crus-galli (0.56) or E. crus-galli var. formosensis (0.55). Accessions of the three Echinochloa taxa were categorized into 13 phenotypes from the combinations of SSR alleles. Only two phenotypes, phenotypes 1 and 4, were detected in 49 accessions of E. esculenta, whereas 12 phenotypes were observed in 94 accessions of E. crus-galli var. crus-galli, and six phenotypes in 12 accessions of E. crus-galli var. formosensis. The H′ value (Shannon's information index) for SSR phenotypes was 0.69 in E. esculenta, 1.47 in E. crus-galli var. formosensis and 1.90 in E. crus-galli var. crus-galli respectively. In cultivated barnyard millet, two phenotypes aggregated in particular areas of Japan; phenotype 4 was found in the central and northeastern part of Japan, while phenotype 1 in the northern and southern parts of Japan.

Abstract-This paper describes design and development of system software for humanoid robots that researchers who specialized in not only biped walking but also various field are able to use humanoid robots as a research tool. For this purpose, the system for humanoid must integrate and organize each subsystems such as control, recognition, dialogue, planning and so on, and it must provide efficient full-body motion control method by specifying fewer degrees of freedoms than all joints. Our system design provides common interface among subsystems by implementing each function as a method call of tree-dimensional model of a robot for well integration, and it also provides motion planning technique based full-body posture sequence and walking pattern generation. Finally, we show integrated behavior experiments with vision, planning and motion control using developed system software for lifesized humanoid robot HRP2.