The University of Aizu has worked on "The University of Aizu Robot Valley Promotion Project" starting from FY 2015 with subsidies from Fukushima prefecture. The purpose of this project is to provide technical support for robotics development utilizing the University's strength in ICT and to contribute to the realization of the Fukushima International Research-Industry City Initiative (Innovation Coast) Project through collaboration between the Aizu IT Valley and Hamadori Robotics Valley (*1).

As a part of the project, "OpenRTM Meeting (*2)" was held at the UBIC on Wednesday, June 24, 2015. A total of 23 people including students participated in the meeting.

The meeting provided the participants with an explanation of the concepts behind RT Middleware (RTM) and the RT component (*3) composed in RTM, as well as instructions on the creation of RT component and use of the various tools in RTM. The participants learned how to use RTM in practical style by creating RT components and operating the "KOBUKI" robot (*4) with the components.
The participants worked on learning technologies for robotics development while having proactive discussions with the lecturers and assistants. The participants were excited to see the robot moving with programs created by them.

2015OpenRTM01.jpg 2015OpenRTM02.jpg
Event venue (left), Participants operating "KOBUKI" (right)

*1 Click here for more information. ARC-Robot
*2 OpenRTM: Robotics middleware (software between operating systems and applications) developed based on the RTM standard.
*3 RT component: Software and module are called RT component in RTM. Robots are operated by combining various RT components.
*4 A robot developed for moving base units. Users can add functions to the robot as required. For example, if KOBUKI is equipped with a floor cleaning function, it will become a cleaning robot.

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