We have presented safety issues such as deadlocks and dependency as well as their solutions in a dynamic updating method of running robot motion controller programs. Case studies of a mobile manipulator, a hexapod robot and a biped robot with wheeled legs illustrate discontinuity and overhead time in updating. We have also shown that the present method may significantly reduce work time of testing phase in system development.

This paper reports the development of a compact and light-weight personal vehicle called the"Personal riding-type wheeled Mobile Platform (PMP) "that consists of two wheels and a standing base for a human rider. The two wheels are driven independently, and forward and backward movement and steering are achieved by simply changing the relative position of the rider's center of gravity (COG) on the base. The vehicle has two distinct advantages: a reduction in total weight through its simple structure and a space-saving design that does not use a steering unit. In this paper, we introduce the first prototype (PMP-1) and the second (PMP-2) whose weight is smaller than 12 [kg], and propose its posture stabilizing and running control methods to realize the proper forward and backward movement by changing the position of the rider's COG. In order to achieve steering control according to the rider's intentions, we propose the structure for detecting the rider's COG on the base and the steering control method. We also investigated the steering control method to improve maneuverability in various estimated standing poses. Our experimental results demonstrate that natural steering control can be achieved using the rider's COG based on the rider's intentions.