Introduction of Laboratory ( Robotics / Nanomechanics )
TOYAMA Lab.
http://www.tuat.ac.jp/~toyama/
Research Field: Mechanical system engineering
Wearable agricultural robot /Spherical ultrasonic motor /TR motor
Aiming at easing the farmer’s fatigue with the Wearable agricultural robot
Farm work always means a hard labor because people need keep some specific working posture during those procedures. For example, farmers have to bow themselves all the time when they harvest radishes or hold out their hands to prune branches of grape. It would not be difficult to do this kind of things for a few strokes or only for a short times. Doing that again and again would be very exhaustible. To reduce the fatigue of farming, we are developing the “Wearable agricultural robot”. It would be expected to become a useful assistance farm-tool by the future.
Furthermore, we are researching some small motors which have more than one movement dimension. One example of that is “Spherical ultrasonic motor” which rotates to 3 movement dimensions. Also a “TR motor” which can achieve both translation(straight displacement) and rotation movement. The movement of these motors are based upon the principal of ultrasonic vibration.
Professor
TOYAMA Shigeki
Assistant Professor: JIANG Zhiheng
ISHIDA Lab.
http://www.tuat.ac.jp/~h-ishida/
Research Field: Mechatronics
Trajectory of terrestrial robot tracking an aerial plume of ethanol in an indoor environment.
Mobile Robot Olfaction
Male moths follow sexual pheromone over long distances to find their mates. Aquatic animals, e.g., crabs and crayfish, can track smell of food to survive in the dark ocean or at the bottom of lakes. The current research efforts in our group are focused on the development of robotic olfactory sensing systems that can detect odor plumes and track them down to their sources. The potential applications include searches for gas leaks, fire origins and hazardous chemicals. Our terrestrial robot can autonomously find a gas source placed in an indoor environment. Our crayfish robot mimics olfactory search behavior of crayfish, and searches for chemical sources underwater. Olfactory display devices are also being developed in our group to present “movies with scents” in virtual reality systems.
Associate Professor
ISHIDA Hiroshi
School affairs staff
NISHIZAWA Uichi
UMEDA Lab.
http://www.tuat.ac.jp/~umedalab/
Research Field: Mechanical Information Engineering
(left)Birefringence scanning near-field optical microscope (Bi-SNOM). (See Qing et. al., Appl. Phys. Exp., 1 (2008) 111501)
(right)Theoretical contrast with respect to particle size (solid curve) and experimental contrasts of the scattered light for various sizes and materials. (Reprinted from Yu et. al., Opt. Lett., 33 (2008) 2794.)
Explore nanoworld by light!
We are studying and exploring the great frontier of nanoworld by using light.
However, due to the nature of light so-called diffraction limit, conventional optical systems are useless to study nanoscale objects smaller than the wavelength of light. We have broken down this limit by using optical near-field, which is the strongly confined light field in the vicinity of a probing nanostructure.
Professor
UMEDA Norihiro
IWAMI Lab.
http://nmems.lab.tuat.ac.jp/en/
Research Field: Mechanical Information Engineering
(Left) Measurement setup for plasmon-assisted field emission (Right) Scanning Electron Microscopy image of filed emitter array
Development of nano-optical systems
Based on recent advancements of nanofabrication technologies, plasmon resonance has attracted much interest. This phenomenon has been applied to biosensors, highly efficient solar power converters, nanooptical components and so on. Recently, this research field is called as "Plasmonics", and has been broadened among the world.
We have been focused on the relationship between plasmon resonance and electron field emission. We found so-called "Plasmon assisted field emission", which is expected as a novel photocathode. We are pursuing this principle in depth and applying it to the novel massively-parallel optically-controlled filed emitter arrays.
Associate Professor
IWAMI Kentaro
