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Posts Tagged ‘humanoid robots’

Few robots can run period, but only Mabel can run with such human-like qualities, according to Michigan researchers. Its weight is distributed like a human’s, with a heavy torso and light, flexible legs. Springs in the legs serve as tendons, allowing Mabel to bound like a real runner — it spends 40 percent of each stride in the air, while other running robots are more like speedwalkers, lifting off the ground for only 10 percent of each step.

The robot started off walking quickly over flat surfaces, and its programmers started improving the feedback algorithms that help it maintain its posture, according to a Michigan news release. Mabel does not quite run free, only moving attached to a metal bar like a horse at longeing.

Mabel’s programmers believe the robot’s realistic gait could be helpful for several applications, from powered prosthetic limbs to robotic exoskeletons. Or imagine a legion of robot runners that a human could ride, ostrich-style.

Home robots and rescue robots with a human stride could also be more effective than the cautious, two-step gait of other humanoids, according to Jessy W. Grizzle, who leads the lab where Mabel was built.

“If you would like to send in robots to search for people when a house is on fire, it probably needs to be able to go up and down stairs, step over the baby's toys on the floor, and maneuver in an environment where wheels and tracks may not be appropriate,” he said.

Mabel was built back in 2008 and researchers have been tweaking its design and programming. In the most recent tests, Mabel reached a top speed of 6.8 miles per hour, a pretty good clip. Watch it run below.

[University of Michigan via IEEE Spectrum]

A couple camera-toting robots have been tooling around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation levels are still making it unsafe for human workers. Now Japanese media are reporting the crews are getting their first humanoid counterpart.

Honda is aiming to redesign Asimo, its 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, so it can join workers at Fukushima Daiichi, according to Japanese media. Asimo would need tires or caterpillar tracks instead of its delicate legs, and the robot would also need updates to its arms so they can move as smoothly as a human’s, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun (reported by AFP).

Since it was introduced a little more than 10 years ago, Asimo has been a robot ambassador of sorts, used mostly to spur robotics research and development. The robot greets children at science museums and has even met heads of state. But it has not been tapped for such difficult labor before.

Asimo can easily shake hands, carry a tray and push small objects, but it would need motorized shoulders, elbows and wrists to get more human-like moves, the paper says. It’s not clear what Asimo would be doing inside the Fukushima plant, but it would likely go into radiation hotspots where it remains dangerous for humans to enter.

Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors have been leaking radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling systems. Workers are being exposed to high levels of radiation while trying to make repairs. Japanese elderly have even offered to do the job, to spare the younger workers from harmful radiation. But a human-like robot would clearly be a better alternative.

[AFP ]

Robot shows signs of intelligence

In the video below, programmers at Trossen Robotics have some fun with the Astroboy-looking open-source robot, trying to get him to choose between two cans of beer. He marches toward the Tecate can with dogged determination, stopping when he reaches the can and kicking it over with gusto. Perhaps he’s still programmed to play robo-soccer?


Responding to blue versus red probably has something to do with it. But there’s something adorable/creepy about his wide-eyed pursuit of the precious can. Now I want to see him choose between Tecate and a small-batch craft beer.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

USA! USA!

Soccer fans, rejoice: America has won the World Cup. Well, the robot World Cup.

In the finale of RoboCup 2011, two Virginia Tech robots took top honors in the adult-size and child-size categories. The full-size humanoid CHARLI-2, making its public debut at RoboCup, won the adult-size robot soccer match with a penalty kick, beating Robo Erectus of Singapore 1-0.

Dennis Hong’s RoMeLa team from Virginia Tech (which is located in America, so feel free to chant) suffered a few setbacks early on, including an accidental decapitation that required a trip to the robot ER and some super glue. But CHARLI quickly rebounded to beat Dutch Robotics 3-0, and tied with team JoiTech, 0-0. The RoMeLa team kept a blog of the weekend’s events here.

Punctuating its victory in the competition, CHARLI also won the coveted Best Humanoid Award, a.k.a Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup, Hong said in an email. He said the award, considered the most prestigious honor for humanoid robots, will make its debut on U.S. soil. The crystal trophy was in Japan for seven years before going to Germany for two years. Now Team CHARLI has captured the honors for the US.

Apparently CHARLI did not play so well at first, kicking the ball out of bounds and ambling awkwardly, but ultimately it performed better than expected — in a match against Team Hephestus, CHARLI won 4-1, the highest-scoring humanoid robot ever.

In an e-mail to friends and supporters, Hong said CHARLI was “the super star at the venue, with hundreds of spectators gathering at its games to watch its impressive performance.”

CHARLI-2 is an update to the first CHARLI, to whom we introduced you last year.

In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, the RoMeLa team also built the pint-sized open-source DARWIn-OP, “Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence,” which won first place in the Humanoid Kid Size competition. The Astro-Boy robot was particularly skilled at the throw-in competition, wherein a robot must pick up a soccer ball and throw it back onto the pitch.

Despite CHARLI’s dour, adolescent I-hate-everything pose up above, the RoMeLa team did not win the teenage robot category — those honors went to the University of Bonn, maker of the Dynaped and Bodo robots. (RoMeLa did not enter that category.)

The annual RoboCup tournament highlights robotics research around the globe, pitting respected research teams against each other in a sporting event. The project aims to build a team of robots that can play soccer against humans by 2050. Judging by the winners’ awkward, jaunty movements, we may have a long way to go.

But Hong points out that the "kid size" competition is exciting already. "When the kid size first started, it was as slow and boring as the adult size of today, so expect great things coming for the adult size too in the next few years," he wrote in an email to PopSci.

No matter their size, it’s still pretty fun to watch:

The robot is designed to help dental students practice, so researchers at Showa University made it as realistic as possible. That means it chokes, coughs, sneezes, moves its tongue and even gets a sore jaw. The builders worked with Japan’s leading maker of "love dolls" for adults, Orient Industry, to make the skin, tongue and mouth.

The tongue and arms have two degrees of freedom, so the robot can mimic a patient who starts to fidget while a dentist tries to perform prophylaxis. The skin is made of silicone and the tongue and cheek linings are made of one piece, so it feels more real — no obvious rubber seams, and no way for water to leak through and harm the machinery.

Koutaro Maki, a professor at Showa University School of Dentistry, explains somewhat bashfully that Orient Industry “had the technology” to produce such realistic mouths.

In seriousness, he says students get a sense that they’re working on a real patient, with all the extra tension that comes with that responsibility.

“If you don’t try to make a robot’s face look realistic, it doesn’t have the same effect on users psychologically,” he explains to DigInfo TV.

Why yes, professor, that's true. Check it out.

[via New Scientist]

The Elfoid, a pocket-sized version of the Telenoid R1 Larvabot, is the latest bizarre creation of roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who also brought us a doppelganger version of himself and a fembot version of a Japanese model. It was unveiled Thursday at a Japanese press conference.

Talk into its belly and use a motion-capture system to transmit your face and head movements to the Elfoid, which will act them out, conveying your presence in a way that voices just can’t. And probably shouldn’t. It apparently has a “soft, pleasant-to-the-touch exterior,” according to IEEE’s Automaton blog.

Elfoid and Telenoid are meant to be minimalist humanoids, with just enough human-like features to evoke a person’s presence. Users are supposed to let their imaginations fill in the details. Its eyes and face are creepily realistic, but the body is limited to flipper-like arms and a mermaid-like tapered torso, making it look like a tadpole, Casper the Friendly Ghost or a male reproductive cell, depending on your frame of mind. Check out the 360-degree view in the video below. Yes, it has a derriere.

The Elfoid apparently can’t move its limbs or face as much as its larger kin, according to IEEE, but Ishiguro and colleagues plan to use microactuators to give it more movement.

Please don't, guys.

[via Automaton, Advanced Telecommunications Research International]

The research firm Vstone is putting together the world’s first robot marathon, involving 422 laps around a 100-meter track. Imagine this little robo-scurry on a 42-kilometer scale.

The video shows Vstone's Robovie-PC robot autonomously following a line. Marathon competitors will either “run” autonomously like this bot, or they may be operated by humans using remote controls, according to Vstone. The event’s time, date and place are still to be determined.

As Singularity Hub points out, it’s more like a robot NASCAR, because the rules allow competitors to replace worn parts and count the entire time, including stops, in the robot’s official score.

The total distance is 26.2 miles, so odds are some robot feet, gears and motors may be wearing out.

The Robovie will be a tough competitor, with its 20 degrees of freedom and 1.3 megapixel headcam, which helps it navigate. The robot’s 1.6 GHz processor gives it the computing power of a standard PC, and it can connect to the Internet.

It might not be as fun as a ballet or a robo soccer game, but endurance trials can help test robots’ durability, which will probably be more important than a single trick once we welcome them into our lives.

[Singularity Hub]