Development Of Humanoid Robot Research Articles

2P1-S-052 自然環境で行動可能なヒューマノイドロボットの開発 : 第1報 システムの概要(ヒューマノイド4,生活を支援するロボメカ技術のメガインテグレーション)

2P1-S-052 自然環境で行動可能なヒューマノイドロボットの開発 : 第1報 システムの概要(ヒューマノイド4,生活を支援するロボメカ技術のメガインテグレーション)

Development of humanoid robot reproducing tongue movements at swallowing

Development of humanoid robot reproducing tongue movements at swallowing

Development and evaluation of interactive humanoid robots

We report the development and evaluation of a new interactive humanoid robot that communicates with humans and is designed to participate in human society as a partner. A human-like body will provide an abundance of nonverbal information and enable us to smoothly communicate with the robot. To achieve this, we developed a humanoid robot that autonomously interacts with humans by speaking and gesturing. Interaction achieved through a large number of interactive behaviors, which are developed by using a visualizing tool for understanding the developed complex system. Each interactive behavior is designed by using knowledge obtained through cognitive experiments and implemented by using situated recognition. The robot is used as a testbed for studying embodied communication. Our strategy is to analyze human-robot interaction in terms of body movements using a motion-capturing system that allows us to measure the body movements in detail. We performed experiments to compare the body movements with subjective evaluation based on a psychological method. The results reveal the importance of well-coordinated behaviors as well as the performance of the developed interactive behaviors and suggest a new analytical approach to human-robot interaction.

A new artificial life body: biologically inspired dynamic bipedal humanoid robots

Recently, a biologically inspired, bipedal, dynamic, humanoid robot was developed at the Artificial Life and Robotics Laboratory of Oita University. This bipedal humanoid robot is able to walk dynamically and to go up and down stairs. The central pattern generator developed produces various types of walking pattern. This robot has a pair of small CMOS color CCD cameras, a speaker, and a microphone in the head part, and will have a GPS, a portable telephone, and other sensors in the body part, so that the integration of locomotion and behavior to achieve specific demonstrations will be realized. This project develops dynamic mobility and the ability for autonomous recognition and navigation using the biological central nervous system, the brain system, and the real-time control system. Also, the design principles that demonstrate the dynamic interaction between neural and mechanical controls will be clarified. In Phase I, the platform of a small, bipedal, humanoid robot is used to develop autonomous locomotion and autonomous sensing and navigation. In Phase II of the project, an iteration on the platform design for human-size, bipedal, humanoid robots will be performed for operational testing. The development of bipedal humanoid robots that capture biological systems with unique principles and practices could dramatically increase their performance in tasks for national security needs.

Autonomous mental development in high dimensional context and action spaces

Autonomous Mental Development (AMD) of robots opened a new paradigm for developing machine intelligence, using neural network type of techniques and it fundamentally changed the way an intelligent machine is developed from manual to autonomous. The work presented here is a part of SAIL (Self-Organizing Autonomous Incremental Learner) project which deals with autonomous development of humanoid robot with vision, audition, manipulation and locomotion. The major issue addressed here is the challenge of high dimensional action space (5–10) in addition to the high dimensional context space (hundreds to thousands and beyond), typically required by an AMD machine. This is the first work that studies a high dimensional (numeric) action space in conjunction with a high dimensional perception (context state) space, under the AMD mode. Two new learning algorithms, Direct Update on Direction Cosines (DUDC) and High-Dimensional Conjugate Gradient Search (HCGS), are developed, implemented and tested. The convergence properties of both the algorithms and their targeted applications are discussed. Autonomous learning of speech production under reinforcement learning is studied as an example.

8B23 ヒトの歩行を模擬できる股関節・骨盤メカニズムを有する 2 足歩行ロボットの開発

筆者らは2足ヒューマノイドロボットを人間のハードウエアシミュレータとして用いることを提案する。これを実現するためには, ロボットが人間と同等の運動を行うメカニズムを持つことが必要である。とりわけ, 人間の歩行運動に重要な要素として, 骨盤の旋回運動が考えられる。そこで筆者らは, 腰2自由度・片足7自由度を有する2足歩行ロボットの下肢機構を開発した。同時に, ロボットが人間と同等の運動を行うための第一段階として, 膝伸展を可能にする歩行パターン生成方法を開発したのでここに報告する。

Robot fostering techniques for sensory-motor development of humanoid robots

The research efforts addressing the control of robot behavior have been polarized; most robots are either fully guided through “strong” programming, or given a few learning algorithms and left alone to explore the world. This paper explores the area in-between, looking at robot fostering, referring to techniques by which skills can be transferred to robots through a close interaction with humans. While robot fostering can be the basis of interaction with a variety of robotic shapes, it is most natural and human-friendly when the robot apprentices are anthropomorphic/humanoid. Fostering techniques discussed here include teaching/learning by imitation, teaching by description/explanation, reinforcement, aid and collaboration. The paper illustrates an experiment in teaching/learning by imitation. The human fosters the robot by first imitating its uncoordinated arm movements, thus helping the robot develop its sensory-motor associative system. The human then shows arm movements and the robot visually tracks them; consecutively, the robot is able to learn arm movements by imitation. Fostering techniques, in addition to robot learning/acquisition techniques and more efficient man–machine interaction are considered key elements contributing to the nascence of a new research field, developmental robotics, which would focus on the robotics counterpart of human cognitive and motor development.

Development of a Leg Part of a Humanoid Robot—Development of aBiped Walking Robot Adapting to the Humans‘ Normal LivingFloor

The authors are engaged in studies of biped walking robots from the following two viewpoints. One is a viewpoint as a human science. The other is a viewpoint towards the development of humanoid robots. In this paper, the authors introduce an anthropomorphic dynamic biped walking robot adapting to the humans‘ living floor. The robot has two remarkable systems: (1) a special foot system to obtain the position relative to the landing surface and the gradient of the surface during its dynamic walking; (2) an adaptive walking control system to adapt to the path surfaces with unknown shapes by utilizing the information of the landing surface, obtained by the foot system. Two units of the foot system WAF-3 were produced, a biped walking robot WL-12RVII that had the foot system and the adaptive walking control system installed inside it was developed, and a walking experiment with WL-12RVII was performed. As a result, dynamic biped walking adapting to humans‘ floors with unknown shapes was realized. The maximum walking speed was 1.28 s/step with a 0.3 m step length, and the adaptable deviation range was from -16 to +16 mm/step in the vertical direction, and from -3 to +3° in the tilt angle.