Intelligent Systems And Their Societies

Walter Fritz

Autonomous Humanoid Robots
Androids

"Robby" (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now).
This is a link to a low cost household robot, proposed and being build by the author.

The best autonomous humanoid robots (androids) now seem to be the following: (Jun. 2003)
(It seems to me that the best humanoid robots are those that have a somewhat human shape, seize and weight; that can see and hear, and can learn most human activities. Thus they can be most useful in a human environment):

• Honda's ASIMO (Exterior link), last and best in their series of humanoid robots. The most beautiful of the human sized robots. It is 120 cm (48 inch) high and weighs 43 Kg (94 lbs), can walk and climb stairs.

• Kawada Industrial Corp. and Tokyo Univ. have developed jointlythe HRP-2P robot. It is 154 cm tall, weighs 58 Kg. and has 30 degrees of freedom. See here (Exterior link) and here (Exterior link).
  A previous robot from Tokyo Univ. is the H7, a human sized robot from Jouhou System Kougaku, that can walk indoors and outdoors. It has DC motors with gears, Dual Pentium III 750 MHz processors, uses the linux language and weighs 55 Kg.
  A previous robot from Kawada Industrial Corp. is the Isamu. It is 1.5 m tall and weighs 55 kg.

• Sony's QRIO (Exterior link), 58 cm high. This is a further development of the SDR-4X (Exterior link) (Sony Dream Robot 4), an entertainment robot, 58 cm (23 inch) high and weighs 6.5 Kg (12 lbs). Its lithium battery gives it an autonomy of one hour. It can walk on irregular surfaces, can learn and later recognize a face and can speak and sing.

Other interesting humanoid robots:

• Wabian from Waseda U. Humanoid Robotics Institute (Exterior link) that walks and dances.

• MIT's "Cog" (research) (Exterior link) and "Cog's" main page (Exterior link). Legs that function have been developed at the MIT LegLab (Exterior link). The plan is to add them to the Cog torso.

• Vanderbilt Univ.: "ISAC" (Exterior link) - a pneumatic Dual Arm Humanoid.

• Shadow Robot Company Ltd., London the pneumatic Shadow Biped (Exterior link). With arms being build.

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