Archive for сентября 2013
he world's first talking robot in space has uttered its first words in orbit, echoing famed moonwalking astronaut Neil Armstrong's "one small step" line, but this time for all robot-kind.
The small robot astronaut Kirobo, which was built by Japanese scientists, spoke its first orbital words while floating aboard the International Space Station. The robot launched to the space station in August aboard an unmanned Japanese cargo ship to help scientists study robot-human interaction.
A newly released video of Kirobo talking in space shows the robot's mouth light up as it delivers its first message, in Japanese, on Aug. 21
"On August 21, 2013, a robot took one small step toward a brighter future for all," Kirobo says, according to a translation from one of the project's partners, PR company Dentsu Inc.
Kirobo only speaks Japanese and is designed to help researchers explore the possibilities of coexistence with robots during long space voyages of the future. Its mission, called the Kibo Robot Project, was developed by the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, the Toyota Motor Corp., Robo Garage and Dentsu Inc.
Measuring just 13 inches (34 centimeters) tall, the robot's name is a mash-up of the word "robot" and Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese and is the name of Japan's research laboratory module on the space station.
Kirobo is awaiting the arrival of Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is set to become the first Japanese commander of the space station when he gets there in November or December this year. Wakata will also become the first person to converse with a robot in space. His historic chat with Kirobo is expected to take place in December.
The robot's technological capabilities include voice-recognition, natural language processing, facial recognition, a camera and emotion recognition. Kirobo also has a near-identical twin named Mirata on Earth, designed to allow engineers on the ground to troubleshoot any malfunctions that may arise with Kirobo in space.
Kirobo is expected to return to Earth in December 2014.
Atlas is a high mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough terrain. Atlas can walk bipedally leaving the upper limbs free to lift, carry, and manipulate the environment. In extremely challenging terrain, Atlas is strong and coordinated enough to climb using hands and feet, to pick its way through congested spaces. Several copies of the Atlas robot are being provided as Government Furnished Equipment for the DARPA Robotics Challenge program with delivery scheduled in the summer of 2013
This year marks the 20th birthday of our favorite corporate walking robot, the Honda ASIMO. Honda has a great site detailing the development and growth of the project over the years. I, for one, didn’t even know they’d been working on it for so long.
Honda has taken up a new challenge in mobility — the development of a two-legged humanoid robot that can walk.
They started off with just a pair of a legs and teaching it to walk. In four years, by 1990, they’d taught it to dynamically walk at the rate of a human being, followed by the first humanoid debut in 1996 and the P3 in 1997. ASIMO as we know him arrrived in 2000 and is still going strong.
The bionic muscles consist mainly of a hollow elastomer cylinder embedded with aramid fibres. When the fluidic muscle fills with air, it increases in diameter and contracts in length, enabling a fluid, elastic movement. The use of the fluidic muscle enables motion sequences which approach human movement not only in terms of kinematics, speed and strength, butalso sensitivity. The fluidic muscle can exert ten times the force of a comparably sized cylinder, is very sturdy, and can even be used under extreme conditions such as in sand or dust.
One of the major problems of robotics and especially legged machines is the need for high force/torque to weight and high power to weight ratios of the actuators combined with relative low actuation rate.Pneumatic artificial muscles are contractile devices operated by pressurized air. When inflated, they bulge, shorten and thereby generate a contraction force. The force depends on the applied pressure and on the muscle’s length, ranging from an extremely high value at maximum length, i.e. zero contraction, to zero at minimum length or maximum contraction. Because of the one-way force a paired or antagonistic set-up is needed in order to generate a restoring force or movement.
max air pressure: 120 psi
suggested lengths: 6"-30"
Ever dreamed of having a robot servant who would do all the boring chores around the house? Well mechanised domestic staff have come one step closer, thanks to an android being developed in Japan.
Researchers at Tokyo University's JSK Robotics Laboratory, have created a humanoid called Kojiro, who is learning how to mimic how we walk.
What makes him unique is that he has a skeletal structure similar to that of humans, which means he moves in a more natural fashion, and bends and twists via his artificial spine.
The team, led by Professor Nakanishi, said this newly developed spine would allow them to manufacture lighter and more flexible robots in the future to serve in the home.
In one scientific paper, they wrote: 'Currently normal humanoid robots are not suitable for working in our daily environment.
'Lack of safety and versatility is the main reason; their hard and heavy bodies can hurt humans or surrounding objects, and they can do limited tasks compared with what humans do in daily life.
Traditional robots have limbs and torsos powered by heavy motors at the joints.
However in Kojiro, the motors are lightweight and used to pull cables attached to different locations on the body. This simulates how our own muscles and tendons contract and relax when we move.
The sophisticated system of around 100 such tendon-muscle structures work together to give Kojiro 60 degrees of freedom.
Sensors were added to some of the joints to keep track of Kojiro's various postures and an accelerometer and two gyroscopes were added to help the robot balance.
The humanoid is also made mostly from light and flexible materials, which would make him less of a menace around the home.
The researchers found the most difficult challenge was finding a way to make such a sophisticated robot walk.
'The system has strong nonlinearity and is hard to model precisely. To control such a system, a kind of learning method is needed,' the team wrote.
At present the scientists are testing Kojiro's smaller movements using a games console controller.
The team plan to tweak the computer algorithms that control the robot's movements as they go and hope it will one day be able to handle complex movements using all of its limbs. Then perhaps one day, you will find Kojiro serving you breakfast in bed.
Around the world, researchers are working on dexterous tasks including catching balls, juggling, chopping vegetables, performing telesurgery, and pouring coffee. From a mechanical point of view, robot arms have come a long way, even in the last year or so. Once large and heavy with noisy, awkward hydraulics, some humanoids now have sleek, compliant limbs with high strength to weight ratios. While mechanical innovation will and should continue, the real hard problem is how to move from brittle, hard-coded dexterity toward adaptive control where graceful degradation can be realized. The humanoid body functions as a whole and consequently, small errors in even one joint can drastically degrade the performance of the whole body.
For humanoids to exploit the way in which we have structured our environment, they will need to have legs. They must be able to walk up stairs and steep inclines and over rough, uneven terrain. The problem is that walking is not simply a forwards-backwards mechanical movement of the legs, but a full-body balancing act that must occur faster than real-time. The best approaches look closely at the dynamics of the human body for insight.
With his innovative, engineering mind, Leonardo da Vinci had many ideas that employed the use of pulleys, weights and gears. Certainly, these three components were crucial to many of his automated inventions - including his versions of the clock, air conditioner and hydraulic power saw.
Da Vinci also incorporated these mechanisms into his self-propelled cart invention, which many people consider the very first robot. But da Vinci used the parts to create another robot too – his Robotic Knight. Though a full drawing of da Vinci’s robotic knight has never been recovered, fragments detailing different aspects of the knight have been found scattered throughout his notebooks.
Designed for a pageant in Milan (which the Duke had put Leonardo in charge of overseeing), the Robotic Knight consisted of a knight suit filled with gears and wheels that were connected to an elaborate pulley and cable system. Through these mechanisms, da Vinci’s robotic knight was capable of independent motion - sitting down, standing up, moving its head and lifting its visor.
Using several different da Vinci drawings as blueprints, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a prototype of the robotic knight in 2002, which was able to walk and wave. Rosheim noted how da Vinci had designed the robotic knight to be easily constructed, without a single unnecessary part. Rosheim also used da Vinci’s designs as inspiration for robots he developed for NASA.
Humanoid Robots includes a rich diversity of projects where perception, processing and action are embodied in a recognizably anthropomorphic form in order to emulate some subset of the physical, cognitive and social dimensions of the human body and experience. Humanoid Robot is not an attempt to recreate humans. The goal is not, nor should it ever be, to make machines that can be mistaken for or used interchangeably with real human beings. Rather, the goal is to create a new kind of tool, fundamentally different from any we have yet seen because it is designed to work with humans as well as for them. Humanoids will interact socially with people in typical, everyday environments. We already have robots to do tedious, repetitive labor for specialized environments and tasks. Instead, humanoids will be designed to act safely alongside humans, extending our capabilities in a wide variety of tasks and environments.
1. PETMAN ▪ Boston Dynamics
PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot designed for testing chemical protection clothing. Natural agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions.
2 . ASIMO ▪ Honda
Astronaut look alike Robot ASIMO by Honda probably is the most famous Humanoid robot till now.It is the first ever robot to walk,move and even climb stairs like humans.ASIMO is 4 Ft 3 inch tall and weighs 53 kilograms. One could call it the foundation for the future generation of robotics.It took over 15 years of extensive research to get it in this shape.
3. HRP- 4 ▪ Kawada
A slim,fast and more advanced robot by the Japanese.
4. Nao ▪ Aldebaran Robotics
One of the cutest and most intelligent robots,the Aldebaran Nao can behave on its own and can always be programmed to do more.
1. PETMAN ▪ Boston Dynamics
PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot designed for testing chemical protection clothing. Natural agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions.
2 . ASIMO ▪ Honda
Astronaut look alike Robot ASIMO by Honda probably is the most famous Humanoid robot till now.It is the first ever robot to walk,move and even climb stairs like humans.ASIMO is 4 Ft 3 inch tall and weighs 53 kilograms. One could call it the foundation for the future generation of robotics.It took over 15 years of extensive research to get it in this shape.
3. HRP- 4 ▪ Kawada
A slim,fast and more advanced robot by the Japanese.
4. Nao ▪ Aldebaran Robotics
One of the cutest and most intelligent robots,the Aldebaran Nao can behave on its own and can always be programmed to do more.
