Hirokazu Sato

About

Hirokazu Sato is a Japanese robotics researcher whose work spans autonomous robot systems, human-robot interaction, and robot control architectures. He is perhaps best known for his pivotal role in developing the "ApriAttenda" person-following robot, a landmark achievement in service robotics that demonstrated practical vision-based target detection combined with obstacle avoidance — work that garnered over 100 citations and remains a significant reference in mobile robotics literature. Alongside this, Sato contributed extensively to the TAROS (Toshiba Advanced Robot System) project, a sophisticated model-based remote maintenance robot system designed for hazardous nuclear environments, where his team tackled challenges in task planning, environmental sensing, and stiffness control for redundant robot arms. His development of the Open Robot Controller Architecture (ORCA) further demonstrates his commitment to building flexible, reusable software frameworks for robotic systems. Spanning infrastructure automation — including autonomous construction of overhead distribution lines — to multimedia signal processing for home robots, Sato's research reflects a remarkably diverse yet cohesive career dedicated to making robots more capable, adaptable, and useful in both industrial and everyday human settings.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Development of a Person Following Robot with Vision Based Target Detection

   106 citations · 2006
2. 2
   Person Following Robot ApriAttenda

   13 citations · 2006
3. 3
   Open Robot Controller Architecture (ORCA)

   12 citations · 2003
4. 4
   Development of model-based remote maintenance robot system. IV. A practical stiffness control method for redundant robot arm

   11 citations · 2002
5. 5
   Development of model-based remote maintenance robot system. I. Outline of the robot system

   9 citations · 2002
6. 6
   Development of a model-based remote maintenance robot system. II. Environment measuring methods

   9 citations · 2002
7. 7
   Development of a model-based remote maintenance robot system. III. Task planner

   6 citations · 2002
8. 8
   Task planning experiment toward an autonomous robot system for the construction of overhead distribution lines

   4 citations · 2002
9. 9
   2P1-N-053 A Versatile Multimedia Front-end Processing Board for Handling Visual and Acoustic Signals Concurrently(Home Robot and Mechatronics 2,Mega-Integration in Robotics and Mechatronics to Assist Our Daily Lives)

   2 citations · 2005

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links