humanoids

Pint-size humanoid robots have started an endurance race in Osaka, Japan, in what organizers are calling the world's first bipedal-robot marathon.

In the Robomarafull event, hobby and custom-built robots will attempt to complete a full 26-mile marathon by "running" around an indoor track 423 times. The foot-high robots aren't exactly speedy, so the contest will be decided by which robots are toughest.

Robots that topple over have to stand back up unaided, but their human handlers must recharge the bots' batteries and servomotors. The athletes can either run autonomously, following the colored course, or be controlled … Read more

In the not-too-distant future, your aging parents may be reciting "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" in times of need.

Aldebaran Robotics, a Parisian company known for creating the pint-sized Nao robot, is working with major French research organizations on a new assisted-living humanoid bot named Romeo.

Set to debut in prototype form late next year, Romeo is a 4.5 foot, 88-pound autonomous companion that aims to assist the elderly and disabled with daily activities. The robot with the romantic-hero moniker could do things like keep tabs on owners' health and summon medical assistance if something appears to go wrong; keep track of small objects such as eyeglasses and remote controls; and help with tasks like taking out the trash, opening and closing doors, or fetching a snack from the fridge.

Romeo has an intuitive computer-human interface based on gesture and voice control. As far as we can tell, though, it does not recite lovestruck Shakespearean sonnets. … Read more

We've seen running bipedal robots before, but they tend to move like, well, robots. Ryuma Niiyama of MIT's Robot Locomotion Group wants to build a bot that runs as much like a human as possible, right down to the black nylon running shorts.

The robot, aptly named Athlete, sports an artificial musculoskeletal system that mirrors human muscles in the leg, hip, lower abdomen, and booty and has a springy elastic blade foot like those seen on prosthetic running legs. Niiyama's goal is a flexible, agile robot with less of a mechanical gait and more of a Usain Bolt-type stride.

Athlete has seven sets of actuator-driven artificial muscles in each leg, plus touch sensors on each foot and an inertial measurement unit on the torso for detecting the body's orientation. It does not, as far as we know, take steroids.

Niiyama--who also worked on Mowgli the bipedal jumping robot--developed Athlete as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tokyo's Department of Mechano-Informatics along with with colleagues Satoshi Nishikawa and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. They presented their research last week at the IEEE Humanoids 2010 conference in Nashville, Tenn.

But the champion sprinters of the world shouldn't worry just yet. With the aid of a harness hung from the ceiling, Athlete can currently take up to five steps at about 3.9 feet per second, but then it falls down. Hey, robots get muscle cramps too. … Read more

A humanoid robot baby has taught itself to shoot a bow and arrow, and all we can say is: Hide the kids and the pets. Assault rifles can't be too far off.

Petar Kormushev and his colleagues at the Italian Institute of Technology's Advanced Robotics department taught the little guy how to hold a bow and release the arrow. Then, using two algorithms and visual feedback from a camera, the bot learned to aim and shoot arrows, hitting the center of a target 11.5 feet away in only eight tries.

The robot behind the bow is iCub, … Read more

Japan has added another soldier to its humanoid robot army following last year's fembot supermodel. The HRP-4 is the latest edition in the state-backed humanoid project. It's leaner, lighter, and can balance itself with yogic ease.

Developed by bridge builder Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the HRP-4 can stand on one leg, track faces and objects, and respond to voice commands.

HRP-4 sports a RoboCop look, but it's more C-3PO. Designed under the theme of a "slim athlete," it weighs a mere 86 pounds including battery. That's about 9 pounds less than its sister bot HRP-4C, which made waves last year modeling a dress at a bridal fashion show in Osaka, as well as Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo.

HRP-4 stands nearly 5 feet tall and has 34 moving joints, with seven in each arm, as well as fingers than can move more precisely than earlier HRP models. Each arm has a load capacity of about 1 pound.

All joint motors are less than 80 watts for design safety. A compact notebook computer can be installed in HRP-4's back to increase onboard data processing.

Kawada and AIST have previously shown off how HRP bots can be useful around the house, wielding power tools and pouring drinks. The HRP-2 Promet has been shown walking on uneven terrain and even helping install wall paneling.

The video below shows HRP-4 introducing itself, showing off some moves and tracking a man's face (it stands on one leg at around 4:25). … Read more

A playful child-size humanoid robot with a face inspired by comics and Japanese Noh theater is being used to help teach autistic children social skills.

Kaspar (Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robots), developed at the U.K's University of Hertfordshire, has a minimally expressive face so it doesn't "overwhelm" its play partners with social cues, thus allowing them to individually interpret the expressions as "happy," "neutral," "surprised," and so on, as they interact with the robot toy.

Makers of the bot--which has been in development for a few years now but is currently on display to the public through Friday at London's Science Museum--deliberately took a low-cost approach to Kaspar so future research or commercial versions would be simple to make and easy to transport with on-board processing and battery power.

They built the robot for $2,500 using a child-shaped mannequin for the body's base, off-the-shelf parts, and silicone-rubber RoboSkin with embedded tactile sensors that detect different kinds of touch.

Kaspar has minimal motors, only enough to simulate the most salient gestures involved in human communication. It has eight degrees of freedom in the head and neck and six in the arms and hands. Its blinking eyes have two axes of movement (and video cameras), and its mouth can open and smile in varying degrees.

Kaspar is part of the Aurora Project, which is aimed at investigating the possible use of robotic systems as therapeutic or educational tools for autistic children. The University of Hertfordshire researchers went out of their way to make Kaspar look like an approachable, non-threatening playmate. Since Kaspar has mainly been tested with boys in autism therapy, for example, the scientists gave the robot a playful boyish appearance complete with a baseball cap that kids can remove and replace. … Read more

Can robots tell us about our distant past? German researchers think they can help us understand how we evolved language skills. Engineers at the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory at Humboldt University in Berlin are creating humanoids that will be able to form their own language to communicate.

Crafted by industrial design firm Frackenpohl Poulheim and manufactured with the help of plastics company Bayer MaterialScience, Myon is part of a European project called Artificial Language Evolution on Autonomous Robots, or ALEAR.

The project aims to get robots to "self-organize rich conceptual frameworks and communication systems with similar features as those found … Read more

The line has been drawn and the goal set.

The RoboCup Federation, a nonprofit organization based in Japan, aims to develop autonomous humanoid robots that are advanced enough to pit themselves against human World Cup champions by 2050.

While we're probably still some way off from the military drones in "Iron Man 2," the organizers of the yearly RoboCup competition, which will take place in Singapore between June 21 and 24, hope the event will fuel interest among students of robotics and artificial intelligence.

At the press conference Thursday morning, we learned from Jonathan Kua that the … Read more

You could be responsibly green and take your old TV to Best Buy to be recycled. Or, like Sam Todo, you could be responsibly geeky, taking the telly apart and turning it into a walking humanoid robot!

Todo, a student from Africa's Togolese Republic, constructed "Sam10" almost entirely from old television sets, as you'll note from the antenna popping up behind the little guy's head. Todo aims to make the robot fully automatic, so it can greet people, avoid objects, and calculate the distance in front of it.

The robophile also says he also wants … Read more