Many serious accidents are reported about the manual window cleaning task, and it is needed to automate the task for the majority of windows having no special guide frames for window cleaning machines. This paper proposes a novel tethered window cleaning robot named a "SkyScraper-I" and discusses its design. The SkyScraper-I has the functions to approach all the windows located on one side of a building by controlling the lengths of a pair of suspending tethers from the top of the building and to clean the whole surface of the windows. The robot consists of the vertically suspended sliding rod, a pair of clamping arms with clamping suction rollers on both ends, and a squeegee sliding mechanism to wipe the window. The clamping suction rollers have three functions: to fix the Sky-Scraper between the upper and lower frames of the window, to produce a suction force without touching the window, and to drive sideways for wiping all the window. From the several preliminary experiments, the SkyScraper-I demonstrated good mobility to move from window to window and to clean the surface of each window.

Owing to manpower shortages, robots are expected to be increasingly integrated into society in the future. Moreover, robots will be required to navigate through crowded environments. Thus, we proposed a new method of autonomous movement compatible with physical contact signaling used by humans. The method of contact was investigated before using an arm with six degrees of freedom (DoF), which increases the cost of the robot. In this paper, we propose a novel method of navigating through a human crowd by using a conventional driving system for autonomous mobile robots and an involute-shaped hand with an one-DoF arm. Finally, the effectiveness of the method was confirmed experimentally.

This paper proposes a locomotion approach of leg-wheel robot utilizing passive wheel attached to the foot of bipedal robot. The key feature of this approach is bipedal mobility without swing leg. This mobility contributes the stability based on expansion of support polygon during locomotion, the robustness for obstacles and stopping to prevent fall, and the adaptability by prevention of body swing sideways. To achieve these, we propose the stability margin maximization to optimize center of gravity projection for support polygon and the fall prevention functions for real environment that is a difficult situation to prevent unexpected fall by the only planning. Finally, we apply the proposed methods to leg-wheel phases through locomotion and verify the contribution by experiments using real bipedal robot.

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