The presentation on SIGMA robot for assembly by A. d'Auria at the 7th International Symposium on Industrial Robots (ISIR) held in Tokyo in October 1977 made an immense impact on engineers studying assembly automation in Japan. The 1970s witnessed the shift fromthemass production of a few types to limited production of a wide variety of products in Japan, and research started for a production system with a quick response to a given type of products and change in a quantity of production. Professor Hiroshi Makino of Yamanashi University was stimulated by SIGMA and got an idea for a robot with Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arms (SCARA) and started working on the design for prototype 1 two months after the presentation. Further, he organized the SCARA Robot Consortium with Yamanashi University and thirteen domestic companies for three years, from April 1978 to March 1981, and had success in the development and spread of the SCARA robot in the assembly work. After the 1980s, the SCARA robot became one of the de facto standards of industrial robots in the world. In 2019, it is estimated that the SCARA robots will compromise 30% or more of industrial robots working all over the world. The author was one member of a research group as an associate professor, in Yamanashi University, and believes that it is extremely effective to discuss the needs for research and development of the SCARA robot and technological solutions thirty years after the establishment of JRM.

The Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics (JRM) is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary since its establishment in June 1989. As the founding Editorin-Chief, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the people and organizations that have helped in making JRM a success. Although founded in Japan, our primary objective was to provide a global platform for facilitating the publication of research work comprising outstanding results and novel information regarding robotics and mechatronics. Encouraged by the emphatic support received from several prominent researchers and engineers in numerous countries, including the United States of America and European countries, our team decided to launch JRM. It is now our aim to develop JRM into a highly ranked international journal. I sincerely hope that more academicians and engineers will participate in JRM’s development process by contributing their valuable feedback, research results, and technical information. Kazuo Yamafuji

The ShinMaywa Industries, Ltd., predecessor, Kawanishi Aircraft Ltd., was famed for its high-performance World War II planes, including the Type II Flying Boat, codenamed “Emily” by the Allied Forces, and the Interceptor Siden-Kai, codenamed “George.” Following defeat, Kawanishi Aircraft Ltd. was renamed ShinMaywa Industries, Ltd., founded officially in 1949. The new company, which started out producing dump trucks, but resumed aircraft manufacture in 1960. ShinMaywa now holds a high market share among Special Purpose Trucks such as dump trucks and in aircraft business exemplified by the STOL (Short Take Off Landing) Amphibian. It also manufactures Automatic Wire Terminating Machines, Thin Film Coating System, Aircraft Passenger Boarding Bridges, Car Parking System, and Water Treatment Equipment. In fiscal 2008 business, industrial machinery accounted for 37%, special purpose truck 35%, aircraft 19%, and others 9% in the company’s ¥127.7 billion sales (US$1.277 billion). Current employees based on consolidated accounts number 3,883. The enterprise philosophy is “contributing to society through outstanding technology and service.” Concretely, harmonization with society should be achieved in daily activities of an enterprise, and enterprise value should be raised by management taking stake holders into account.

Unmanned production using intelligent robots is proposed in this paper. At present even if all direct works in a production environment can be automated, there are needs for supporting personnel who deal with and restore a trouble when it occurs. In order to eliminate such "a human island," the recent results on research and development of intelligent robots can be applied. One of the most serious and frequent troubles is minor stoppage of an automatic assembly line due to parts feeding trouble. Visiting 7 plants at 7 companies, we investigated troubles in parts feeding. Simulation and experiments for unmanned production were conducted on a pilot plant. Then we are confident that the intelligent robots can be substituted for supporting personnel for unmanned production.

1. Introduction of Nidec Sankyo and INA Facility Sankyo was established by three engineers in 1946 immediately after the Second World War as in the cases of Sony and Honda which were founded as venture enterprise and have developed to world leading companies. To begin with orgel, the company has produced high tech products such as machine tool, magnetic application machinery, optical instrument, card reader, and robot, appreciated by users. In 2003 the company became a member of Nidec group. The recent world market share of the company's product accounts for 80% in card reader for financial terminal, 70% in large LCD panel handling robot, 70% in COMBO type light pickup, and 40% in stepping motor for video camera. The company has sales of 112.6 billion yen and about 1,300 employees in 2007. The production and R&D facilities of Sankyo in Japan are located in Shimosuwa, Ina and Komagane. INA Facility we toured this time produces mainly industrial robot with the sales of 21 billion yen. The employees number about 180, 80 of them are engaged in design and development of machinery and electricity, 50 in manufacturing, and the rest, 50 in support business like purchase, production control and quality control.

The Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics is celebrating its 20th volume since its launch in 1989. As the JRM’s founding Editor-in-Chief, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of those persons and organizations that have helped make the JRM so successful. This is also a time for celebrating the development of three epoch-making robots in Japan between 1978 and 1997. Scara Robot: The Scara robot was developed in 1978 by Professor Hiroshi Makino of Yamanashi University and four Japanese companies – Fujitsu, Telmec, Ultrasonic Ind. Co., and Sankyo. As John Hartley wrote in ""The Industrial Robot"" (March 1982, UK), ""More startling, perhaps, was the announcement that IBM was to sell Sankyo Skilam robot in the USA as the IBM 7535. Most of Japanese robots were based on overseas designs. The exception, of course, is the Scara robot.” The Scara was honored as the first Japanese robot dedicated at the Robotic Pavillion at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. Parallel Bicycle Robot: The parallel bicycle (PB) robot developed in 1986 by Professor Kazuo Yamafuji of the University of Electro-Communications was driven by a parallel bicycle consistting of a pair of parallel wheels and an inverted pendulum body supported on the wheel axis. The PB robot has been applied both to locomotion for mobile robots and to personal vehicles. It was first successfully commercialized as the Segway Personal Transporter developed by Dean Kamen in 2001 in the US. Applications to a humanoid drive were realized by Toyota in 2004 and by Hitachi in 2007. Biped Walking Robot: Honda introduced its epoch-making humanoid P2 with biped and double hand in 1997. Driven by an on-board battery, the biped robot walked smoothly for over 30 minutes at 4 km/h similar to a human being. Honda P2 movie surprised and delighted people worldwide, and its release of ASIMO in 2002 was an advanced type of P2. ASIMO has became the de facto standard of the biped humanoid and is expected to have many applications in social and industrial environments.

Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd., founded in 1955, is representative of global Japanese companies with factories worldwide that deliver a wide variety of products meeting customer needs. It employs 51,000 working on product lines including motorcycles, scooters, hybrid (power-assisted) bicycles, snowmobiles, boats, outboard motors, yachts, water vehicles, diesel engines, automobile engines, surface mounters for electronic parts, industrial robots, industrial unmanned helicopters, and electric wheelchairs. The December accounting term for fiscal 2007 showed unconsolidated sales of 799.2 billion yen and consolidated sales of 1,756.7 billion yen. The percentage of sales by product was 60.1% for motorcycles, 16.4% for marine use, 15.2% for special equipment, and 8.3% for others in the same fiscal year. The percentage of sales by region was 35.2% for the United States, 23.9% for Europe, 17.6% for Japan, 9.3% for Asia, and 14.0% for others. In the 21st century, Yamaha holds the basic philosophy of creating values and profits for sustainable growth and offering new excitement and a more fulfilling life for people worldwide.

The Japanese Diet passed the Technology Transfer Act from university to industry in 1998. Cooperative R&D between university and industry is expected to accelerate High-Technology and create new business. However the authors point out the importance of the legal protection of rights to intellectual property on R&D conducted at university, showing their infringing examples.

In order to measure inclination angle of a rope-hopping robot when it jumps, we have developed a photo-sensor composed of double solar cells. Firstly, the principle of measuring an inclination angle using the sensor was discussed. Next, the characteristics of the sensors were investigated about output voltage, influence of noise and initial angle of cells, influence of lighting intensity and frequency response. It is confirmed experimentally that solar cell sensors developed in this study are very useful for measuring inclination angle and can be applicable to a rope-hopping robot.

We conducted R&D on wearable nursing robots as powered suits doubling as man-machine systems. In order to develop such a system, we studied physical static and dynamic considerations in designing assistance systems. We propose self-impedance matching (SIM) to evaluate system maneuverability based on energy flowing between the user and robot. The proposed SIM proved very effective in improving single-arm assistance maneuverability.

We studied stilt-like dynamic walking by a 1-legged robot with a skate-like shoe for a foot and an overhead rotor to stabilize posture. The robot remains upright by rocking the foot left and right and rotating the overhead rotor. This paper describes control for stilt-like dynamic walking combining rocking and yaw angle control.

To cope with labor shortages due to low birth rates in the 21st century, and create friendlier production systems, we propose a robot system assisting production in flexible manufacturing environments, where offline robots replace or reduce human labor on the shop floor. Offline robots conduct aid or service tasks for online robots operating on production lines or sites. We analyze conventional automatic production systems using robots, propose a robotic production concept using two types of robots, present ways to implement the proposed concept and technical results, and discuss fault recovery using offline robots and peripheral technology.

The posture stability and driving control of a human-riding-type unicycle have been realized. The robot unicycle is considered as a biomechanical system using an internal world representation with a description of emotion, instinct and intuition mechanisms. We introduced intelligent control methods based on soft computing and confirmed that such an intelligent control and biological instinct as well as intuition together with a fuzzy inference is very important for emulating human behaviors or actions. Intuition and instinct mechanisms are considered as global and local search mechanisms of the optimal solution domains for an intelligent behavior and can be realized by genetic algorithms (GA) and fuzzy neural networks (FNN) accordingly. For the fitness function of the GA, a new physical measure as the minimum entropy production for a description of the intelligent behavior in a biological model is introduced. The calculation of robustness and controllability of the robot unicycle is presented. This paper provides a general measure to estimate the mechanical controllability qualitatively and quantitatively, even if any control scheme is applied. The measure can be computed using a Lyapunov function coupled with the thermodynamic entropy change. Interrelation between Lyapunov function (stability condition) and entropy production of motion (controllability condition) in an internal biomechanical model is a mathematical background for the design of soft computing algorithms for the intelligent control of the robotic unicycle. Fuzzy simulation and experimental results of a robust intelligent control motion for the robot unicycle are discussed. Robotic unicycle is a new Benchmark of non-linear mechatronics and intelligent smart control.

A direct human-robot communication system based on natural language (NL) and cognitive graphics (CG) as a part of a new hierarchical structure of an AI control system of a mobile robot for service use (MRSU) is developed. The software of the simulation system for direct human-robot communication and MRSU behavior based on NL and CG is described. The NL and CG are used for description and representation of possible external worlds in the robot artificial life. This system allows us to evaluate the control algorithms of real time robot behavior and to reduce difficulties connected with such troubles as robot collisions with real objects and robot hardware damage. The mathematical background of direct NL human-robot communication and robot behavior simulation system is knowledge engineering based on spatio-temporal and action logics, default reasoning, cognitive graphics and soft computing. The main concepts, structure, conceptual model of the simulation system for description of the artificial life of the MRSU are discussed. A simulation example and real experimental results are described.

We have developed an intelligent mobile robot for service use, which can be utilized as a "secretary-or helper-robot" by daytime and "robot for security guard or maintenance including floor cleaning" by night in office buildings. An autonomous locomotion control system of this service robot is organized by four functions, i.e., path planning, recognition of absolute position, locomotion control and learning navigation controller. In this paper, in order to move more appropriately and smoothly in environments including human beings and obstacles, we have examined the learning function by means of fuzzy neural network which tunes up membership functions for fuzzy locomotion control. By this method, the intelligent robot can learn the moving area autonomously. Results obtained by computer simulation show that the proposed method is very useful for autonomous locomotion control of the intelligent robot.

We have developed an intelligent mobile robot for use as an office “secretary/ helper” by day and “security maintenance guard” by night. The robot’s autonomous locomotion control system (ALCS) plans its paths, recognizes absolute positions and learns navigation control. To aid the robot in moving more appropriately and smoothly among human beings and obstacles in an office environment, we studied learning by a fuzzy neural network that tunes membership functions for fuzzy locomotion control, i.e., the intelligent robot learns to move autonomously through its surroundings. Results obtained by computer simulation show the proposed method is useful in autonomous robot locomotion control.