For more than 30 years a dedicated team of scientists and engineers at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, have been working on a project that will integrate robots into our everyday lives. One of the main functions for most of these robots is an ability to define its position and navigate.
The first step is to use different sensors, such as inertial sensors, satellite navigation system receivers, magnetic sensors, RFID tags, and others, which are operating in coordinate domain. These sensors provide robot with coordinates, and coordinate-related parameters such as azimuth and orientation. The navigation process using these sensors can be in general terms described as an artificial navigation.
The Waseda Humanoid Robot Project, headed by Professor Shuji Hashimoto, is researching the integration of robots into our social infrastructure, or human-robot symbiosis. The advanced adaptability of robots to humanity and environment is highly required in the aging society and in the symbiotic future with natural environment (see sidebar).
Waseda University established the Humanoid Robotics Institute in April 2000 to promote research that aims to construct a new relationship between humans and machines in an advanced information society. As researchers, we expect that in sometime in this century robots will provide housework assistance for the elderly, a well as entertainment and other functions to improve the quality of life for humans. To make possible this symbiosis between humankind, robot, and the environment, we need to build accommodations into a house's structure and functions
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