Types Of Humanoid Robots Research Articles

Positive Emotional Responses to Socially Assistive Robots in People With Dementia: Pilot Study.

Interventions and care that can evoke positive emotions and reduce apathy or agitation are important for people with dementia. In recent years, socially assistive robots used for better dementia care have been found to be feasible. However, the immediate responses of people with dementia when they are given multiple sensory modalities from socially assistive robots have not yet been sufficiently elucidated. This study aimed to quantitatively examine the immediate emotional responses of people with dementia to stimuli presented by socially assistive robots using facial expression analysis in order to determine whether they elicited positive emotions. This pilot study adopted a single-arm interventional design. Socially assistive robots were presented to nursing home residents in a three-step procedure: (1) the robot was placed in front of participants (visual stimulus), (2) the robot was manipulated to produce sound (visual and auditory stimuli), and (3) participants held the robot in their hands (visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli). Expression intensity values for "happy," "sad," "angry," "surprised," "scared," and "disgusted" were calculated continuously using facial expression analysis with FaceReader. Additionally, self-reported feelings were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale. In addition to the comparison between the subjective and objective emotional assessments, expression intensity values were compared across the aforementioned 3 stimuli patterns within each session. Finally, the expression intensity value for "happy" was compared between the different types of robots. A total of 29 participants (mean age 88.7, SD 6.2 years; n=27 female; Japanese version of Mini-Mental State Examination mean score 18.2, SD 5.1) were recruited. The expression intensity value for "happy" was the largest in both the subjective and objective assessments and increased significantly when all sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and tactile) were presented (median expression intensity 0.21, IQR 0.09-0.35) compared to the other 2 patterns (visual alone: median expression intensity 0.10, IQR 0.03-0.22; P<.001; visual and auditory: median expression intensity 0.10, IQR 0.04-0.23; P<.001). The comparison of different types of robots revealed a significant increase when all stimuli were presented by doll-type and animal-type robots, but not humanoid-type robots. By quantifying the emotional responses of people with dementia, this study highlighted that socially assistive robots may be more effective in eliciting positive emotions when multiple sensory stimuli, including tactile stimuli, are involved. More studies, including randomized controlled trials, are required to further explore the effectiveness of using socially assistive robots in dementia care.

Social cognition of humanoid robots on customer tolerance of service failure

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of the perceived warmth and competence of humanoid robots on customer tolerance of service failure through the affective response and the boundary condition of relationship norms.Design/methodology/approachTwo experimental studies were conducted to investigate the effects of perceived warmth and competence of humanoid robots’ physical appearances on tolerance of service failure and the mediating role of anger. The boundary influence of relationship norms is also explored.FindingsThe results reveal that the perception of warmth (vs. competence) robot leads to less (more) anger, which significantly results in tolerance of service failure. However, customer tolerance is insignificant under exchange norms, as the undelivered service violates the expectations of both warm and competent robots.Practical implicationsThis study provides practical guidance for hospitality managers to implement humanoid robots in a way that minimizes the negative outcomes of service failure. Managers should also think about the appropriate match of different types of humanoid robots and relationship norms in which robots will be deployed.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the tolerance literature by taking a social cognition perspective to investigate the effect of humanoid robots’ physical appearances on customers’ reactions to service failure. The findings also reveal that its affective mechanism lies in the effect of expectancy violations of service failure on tolerance. Furthermore, this study extends the literature on relationship norms to the influence of company factors on effective humanoid robot implementation.

RANCANG BANGUN MODUL UKUR TEKANAN PIJAK TELAPAK KAKI ROBOT HUMANOID

Maintaining balance for humanoid robots is one of the core problems to be solved. Krakatau FC as a humanoid type robot performs balancing based on error information obtained from the IMU sensor. Information from the IMU alone is considered inadequate because it ignores the contours of the robot's stepping area which greatly influences the actions that must be taken to maintain balance. The focus of this research is to create a foot pressure measurement module that is compatible with the Dynamixel communication protocol. The sensor used to measure pressure is a Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) sensor. The test results show the module's ability to measure the pressure exerted by the robot's legs and communicate with the robot's main controller using the Dynamixel protocol. From the test, it is also known that the modules made can help the robot's mechanical calibration process based on the comparison of the pressure between the right and left soles of the feet.

Coronavirus Pandemic and Future Possibilities in Robotics Research

With the Coronavirus pandemic, I have been thinking about the possibilities of using robots to help with the situation, and in what forms. The possibilities may include taking care of patients with humanoid-type robots and autonomous rovers to reduce the frontline healthcare personnel’s exposure to the virus, use of robots in manufacturing to speed up the production of the needed products from masks to vaccines, the application of robots in checking individuals’ temperature in public places, or preparing and delivering food at restaurants. The subject of autonomous delivery of food and packages by autonomous aerial devices is not new; it has been underway for some time anyway. These applications might be an extension or integration of shared concepts.

Data-Efficient and Safe Learning for Humanoid Locomotion Aided by a Dynamic Balancing Model

In this letter, we formulate a novel Markov Decision Process (MDP) for safe and data-efficient learning for humanoid locomotion aided by a dynamic balancing model. In our previous studies of biped locomotion, we relied on a low-dimensional robot model, commonly used in high-level Walking Pattern Generators (WPGs). However, a low-level feedback controller cannot precisely track desired footstep locations due to the discrepancies between the full order model and the simplified model. In this study, we propose mitigating this problem by complementing a WPG with reinforcement learning. More specifically, we propose a structured footstep control method consisting of a WPG, a neural network, and a safety controller. The WPG provides an analytical method that promotes efficient learning while the neural network maximizes long-term rewards, and the safety controller encourages safe exploration based on step capturability and the use of control-barrier functions. Our contributions include the following (1) a structured learning control method for locomotion, (2) a data-efficient and safe learning process to improve walking using a physics-based model, and (3) the scalability of the procedure to various types of humanoid robots and walking.

The Use of Humanoid Robots with Multilingual Interaction Skills in Teaching a Foreign Language: Opportunities, Research Challenges and Future Research Directions

Since a humanoid robot does not get tired regardless of how many mistakes a student makes, and because it can be equipped with novel teaching techniques and updated with the most current knowledge, it can be useful for achieving many educational goals. The rationale behind this is that it has been shown in the literature that robots are more useful as teaching aids than computers or other instructional tools, as they can mimic human responses. Furthermore, humans, especially children, prefer robot interaction to other interaction types. Adults generally struggle to learn a foreign language, but this is true of some students, too. With their multilingual interaction capabilities, their ability to provide real-time feedback, and their humanlike physical shape, some types of humanoid robots can be of great assistance to students in learning a foreign language. The use of humanoid robots leads to a personal connection with the students, and this can help overcome issues related to shyness, reluctance, frustration and lack of confidence that may emerge in dealing with a human teacher. Moreover, as humanoid robots can be programmed to know specifically what each individual student needs to learn, they can be quite useful for one-on-one speaking activities. Considering the many possibilities that can be offered by information and communication technology tools, particularly by humanoid robots, this paper reviews the roles and functions of humanoid robots in teaching a foreign language, presents novel approaches in this domain, provides research challenges, and finally outlines future research directions.

Relaxing Gaze Aversion of Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder in Consecutive Conversations With Human and Android Robot-A Preliminary Study.

Establishing a treatment method for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) not only to increase their frequency or duration of eye contact but also to maintain it after ceasing the intervention, and furthermore generalize it across communication partners, is a formidable challenge. Android robots, which are a type of humanoid robot with appearances quite similar to that of humans, are expected to adapt to the role of training partners of face-to-face communication for individuals with ASD and to create easier experiences transferrable to humans. To evaluate this possibility, four male adolescents with ASD and six without ASD were asked to participate a pilot experiment in which there were consecutive sessions of semistructured conversation where they alternately faced either a human female or a female-type android robot interlocutor five times in total. Although it is limited by the small sample size, the preliminary results of analysis of their fixation pattern during the conversations indicated positive signs; the subjects tended to look more at the face of the android robot than that of the human interlocutor regardless of whether they had ASD. However, the individuals with ASD looked more at the area around the eyes of the android robot than at the human, and also looked less at that of the human than the individuals without ASD did. An increasing tendency of looking at the area around the human eyes, which could be a positive sign of the transferability of the experiences with an android robot to a human interlocutor, was only weakly observed as the sessions progressed.

Negotiating privilege and social inequality in an alternative Sweden: Real Humans/Äkta Människor (SVT, 2012–2013)

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes representations of privilege and social inequality in the science fiction TV series Äkta människor (Real Humans) (2012–2013), produced by Sweden’s national public TV broadcaster (SVT). Set in the near future or a parallel present, Real Humans explores an alternative version of Sweden in which more and more human workers are replaced by a type of humanoid robot called “Hubots”. Reviewers and scholars have interpreted the series in light of various contemporary social and political issues, many of which pertain to not only technology, but also social inequality amongst humans. This article connects Real Humans specifically to the recent increase in paid domestic labor in Scandinavia, and argues that the series deals with moral conflicts associated with being privileged and outsourcing household and care work. This is especially evident in the series’ representation of Inger Engman, a Swedish mother, wife, and full-time employee, and her ambivalent relationship to her household and care work Hubot Mimi. Through Inger and Mimi, Real Humans explores moral and affective dimensions of privilege, and brings to mind concerns expressed by parents in Scandinavia who employ domestic workers and au pairs. Inger’s conflicted relationship to Mimi also evokes the concept of maternal guilt. As I show, Real Humans is one of several contemporary Scandinavian narratives that use the au pair figure to comment on social and gender inequality in a globalized age, yet the series stands out in its debt to the science fiction genre. In sum, Real Humans is not only a rare and noteworthy example of a Scandinavian science fiction TV series—it also invites the viewer to reflect on the connections between privilege, social (in)equality, and work in contemporary Scandinavia.

Ego-Noise Suppression for Robots Based on Semi-Blind Infinite Non-Negative Matrix Factorization

[abstFig src='/00290001/11.jpg' width='300' text='Ego-noise suppression achieves speech recognition even during motion' ] This paper addresses ego-motion noise suppression for a robot. Many ego-motion noise suppression methods use motion information such as position, velocity, and the acceleration of each joint to infer ego-motion noise. However, such inferences are not reliable, since motion information and ego-motion noise are not always correlated. We propose a new framework for ego-motion noise suppression based on single channel processing using only acoustic signals captured with a microphone. In the proposed framework, ego-motion noise features and their numbers are automatically estimated in advance from an ego-motion noise input using Infinite Non-negative Matrix Factorization (INMF), which is a non-parametric Bayesian model that does not use explicit motion information. After that, the proposed Semi-Blind INMF (SB-INMF) is applied to an input signal that consists of both the target and ego-motion noise signals. Ego-motion noise features, which are obtained with INMF, are used as inputs to the SB-INMF, and are treated as the fixed features for extracting the target signal. Finally, the target signal is extracted with SB-INMF using these newly-estimated features. The proposed framework was applied to ego-motion noise suppression on two types of humanoid robots. Experimental results showed that ego-motion noise was effectively and efficiently suppressed in terms of both signal-to-noise ratio and performance of automatic speech recognition compared to a conventional template-based ego-motion noise suppression method using motion information. Thus, the proposed method worked properly on a robot without a motion information interface.**This work is an extension of our publication “Taiki Tezuka, Takami Yoshida, Kazuhiro Nakadai: Ego-motion noise suppression for robots based on Semi-Blind Infinite Non-negative Matrix Factorization, ICRA 2014, pp.6293-6298, 2014.”

The mathematics of Soft logic

We strive to understand, by using mathematical tools, the phenomena where the observer can interpret simultaneously opposite situations, such as the distinct interpretations of the Necker cube. In this study we present a new coordinate system that draws a distinction between -0 and +0. The central theorem presented here postulates that when divisions and multiplications of 0 are combined with real numbers, the Mobius strip provides a model for non-standard analysis. We also suggest that the axis 0 is the fifth dimension extension of the quaternions. We also propose to add the soft logic capability to humanoid type robots, as a way to overcome the Turing test.

A Comprehensive Software Framework for Complex Locomotion and Manipulation Tasks Applicable to Different Types of Humanoid Robots

While recent advances in approaches for control of humanoid robot systems show highly promising results, consideration of fully integrated humanoid systems for solving complex tasks such as disaster response has only gained focus recently. In this work, a software framework for humanoid disaster response robots is introduced. It provides newcomers as well as experienced researchers in humanoid robotics a comprehensive system comprising open source packages for locomotion, manipulation, perception, world modeling, behavior control, and operator interaction. The system uses the Robot Operating System (ROS) as a middleware, which has emerged as a de-facto standard in robotics research in recent years. The described architecture and components allow for flexible interaction between operator(s) and robot from teleoperation to remotely supervised autonomous operation while considering bandwidth constraints. The components are self-­contained and can be used either in combination with others or standalone. They have been developed and evaluated during participation in the DARPA Robotics Challenge and their use for different tasks and parts of this competition are described.

Converting Motion between Different Types of Humanoid Robots Using Genetic Algorithms

Converting Motion between Different Types of Humanoid Robots Using Genetic Algorithms

Proposal and Evaluation of a Head Tilting Generation Method for Humanoid Communication Robot

A suitable control of head motion in robots synchronized with its utterances is important for having a smooth human-robot interaction. Based on rules inferred from analyses of the relationship between head motion and dialog acts, this paper proposes a model for generating head tilting and evaluates the model using different types of humanoid robots. Analysis of subjective scores showed that the proposed model can generate head motion with increased naturalness compared to nodding only or directly mapping people's original motions without gaze information. We also evaluate the proposed model in a real human-robot interaction, by conducting an experiment in which participants act as visitors to an information desk attended by robots. The effects of gazing control were also taken into account when mapping the original motion to the robot. Evaluation results indicated that the proposed model performs equally to directly mapping people's original motion with gaze information, in terms of perceived naturalness

PDAC-Based 3-D Biped Walking Adapted to Rough Terrain Environment

This paper deals with the 3-D biped walking of a humanoid type robot over rough terrain. We previously proposed efficient 3-D biped walking control using Passive Dynamic Autonomous Control (PDAC) based on the assumption of point-contact and virtual holonomic constraint of robot joints. Walking adaptability has not, however, been analyzed. We thus analyze the environmental adaptability of PDAC-based walking method in this paper. The robot is modeled as a variable-length 3-D inverted pendulum whose dynamics is modeled as a 2-D autonomous system by applying PDAC. We analyze the stability of the 2-D autonomous system using a Poincaré map and derive the stable range of uneven height over rough terrain. We then experimentally validate 3-D biped walking on unknown rough terrain using our humanoid type robot, Gorilla Robot III.

The Locomotion of Bipedal Walking Robot with Six Degree of Freedom

A bipedal walking robot is a type of humanoid robot which mimics like human being and can be programmed to perform some tasks as required. In this paper, a prototype robot is built to provide a test bed for the physical locomotion that is used to control the robot movements such as moving forward, backward, turn left and right, get up from front and back, rollover from left and right. The paper also describes how the bipedal robot is built; how the movement steps are obtained and the detection when it falls down. The movement of the robot also can be controlled by using a remote controller. This bipedal robot can assist human to carry out the tasks or activities in hazardous environment. This could eliminate human's risk of injury or life casualty.

2P1-L01 小型ヒューマノイドを用いた協調動作システムの構築(複数ロボットの協調制御)

Many humanoid type robots are developed of the recent years. However, a limit is among actions which can be performed only by one body. This research is for an example about a ready-made small humanoid, Position information measured from the camera of the bird's-eye view position which processes with PC. Directions are sent to each robot after that. Unlike ready-made systems, a system is formed. Considering it as a system with high flexibility by not modifying the actuating system of ready-made products, enabling it to perform cooperation operation, it is not made to become the humanoid robot itself with stress.

Design of an android robot head for stage performances

In this article, an android robot head is proposed for stage performances. As is well known, an android robot is a type of humanoid robot which is considered to be more like a human than many others types. An android robot has human-like joint structures and artificial skin, and so is the robot which is closest to a human in appearance. To date, several android robots have been developed, but most of them have been made for research purposes or exhibitions. In this article, attention is drawn to the more commercial value of an android robot, especially in the acting field. EveR-3, the android robot described here, has already been used in commercial plays in the theater, and through these it has been possible to learn which features of an android robot are necessary for it to function as an actor. A new 9-DOF head has been developed for stage performances. The DOF are reduced when larger motors are used to make exaggerated expressions, because exaggerated expressions are more important on the stage than detailed, complex expressions. LED lights are installed in both cheeks to emphasize emotional expressions by changes in color in the way that make-up is used to achieve a similar effect on human faces. From these trials, a new head which is more suitable for stage performances has been developed.

Young Children’s Folk Knowledge of Robots

Children, in their everyday lives, encounter several types of humanoid robots. The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s folk knowledge of robots using the card-choice task. In the task, both adults and five- and six-year-old children were given nine questions concerning the biological and psychological properties of robots. They were asked to choose the appropriate stimuli from among five objects including living things, nonliving things, and a robot. The results revealed that the children tended to attribute certain biological properties to the robot. These results accorded with previous results. However, in our study, contrary to previous such studies, even older children showed such a tendency. Moreover, the children were unable to choose all the cards in the same way as the adults. Thus, it can be concluded that children’s knowledge of robots is incomplete. And the children’s knowledge is changed by method.

Wheeled inverted pendulum type assistant robot: design concept and mobile control

This paper describes the design concept of the human assistant robot I-PENTAR (Inverted PENdulum Type Assistant Robot) aiming at the coexistence of safety and work capability and its mobile control strategy. I-PENTAR is a humanoid type robot which consists of a body with a waist joint, arms designed for safety, and a wheeled inverted pendulum mobile platform. Although the arms are designed low-power and lightweight for safety, it is able to perform tasks that require high power by utilizing its self-weight, which is the feature of a wheeled inverted pendulum mobile platform. I-PENTAR is modeled as a three dimensional robot; with controls of inclination angle, horizontal position, and steering angle to achieve high mobile capability. The motion equation is derived considering the non-holonomic constraint of the two-wheeled mobile robot, and a state feedback control method is applied for basic mobile controls wherein the control gain is calculated by the LQR method. Through several experiments of balancing, linear running, and steering, it was confirmed that the robot could realize stable mobile motion in a real environment by the proposed controller.

1P1-E15 EusLispとRTミドルウェアを用いたプロトタイピンクの容易なネットワーク分散型感覚行動統合システムの実現(RTミドルウェアとオープンシステム)

To efficiently construct perception-action system for many different robots trough many trials and errors, system structure should have modularized and developmental architecture, and prototyping easiness. For realizing such software platform, RT middleware and Lisp architecture are integrated in this paper. We extend the existing implementation of the RT middleware and make it be able to construct and manage the components interactively from Lisp interpreter. For confirmation of our proposed system, several perception-action systems for different types of humanoid robots are constructed and some experiments using actual robots are done.