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This paper describes the developement of a microrobot running based on the principle of screw, and the running characteristics in a small bent pipe. To realize running in the bent pipe, a new small wheel preloading unit, which can keep the posture of the microrobot stable in the pipe, and a head guidance unit, which can prevent interference arising between the microrobot and the inner pipe wall, were developed. With these improvements the microrobot runned succesfully in a small bent pipe of 2 7 " in inner diameter and of 200" in the radius of curvature.

Flash LIDAR is needed in order to take 3D images for obstacle avoidance and to measure relative distances and attitudes during lunar and planetary landings, surface exploration, and orbital rendezvous docking with spacecraft. Meanwhile, commercial Flash LIDAR is being developed for capturing 3D images required by autonomous cars and drones. We have developed a prototype 1K pixel 3D image sensor using Silicon-MPPC, which is capable of photon counting, as the light-receiving sensor [1]. In this paper, we describe the basic structure, circuit configuration, functions, and evaluation results of the basic performance of the sensor.

In this paper, we propose a view planning method that plans view points for efficient 3D map building by a mobile robot equipped with two LRFs (laser range finders). The robot searches for effective view points by predicting new measurement domains in the next view points, and then measures distances to obstacles around the robot with LRFs. The 3D map is generated by integrating range information obtained from multiple measurements. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.