WorldWideScience

Sample records for humanoid robot experiment

  1. Teen Sized Humanoid Robot: Archie

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baltes, Jacky; Byagowi, Ahmad; Anderson, John; Kopacek, Peter

    This paper describes our first teen sized humanoid robot Archie. This robot has been developed in conjunction with Prof. Kopacek’s lab from the Technical University of Vienna. Archie uses brushless motors and harmonic gears with a novel approach to position encoding. Based on our previous experience with small humanoid robots, we developed software to create, store, and play back motions as well as control methods which automatically balance the robot using feedback from an internal measurement unit (IMU).

  2. Introduction to humanoid robotics

    CERN Document Server

    Kajita, Shuuji; Harada, Kensuke; Yokoi, Kazuhito

    2014-01-01

    This book is for researchers, engineers, and students who are willing to understand how humanoid robots move and be controlled. The book starts with an overview of the humanoid robotics research history and state of the art. Then it explains the required mathematics and physics such as kinematics of multi-body system, Zero-Moment Point (ZMP) and its relationship with body motion. Biped walking control is discussed in depth, since it is one of the main interests of humanoid robotics. Various topics of the whole body motion generation are also discussed. Finally multi-body dynamics is presented to simulate the complete dynamic behavior of a humanoid robot. Throughout the book, Matlab codes are shown to test the algorithms and to help the reader´s understanding.

  3. Kinematic Model of NAO Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Miloš D. Jovanović

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents synthesis of kinematic model of NAO humanoid robot of Aldebaran Robotics. NAO humanoid robot has complex kinematic structure with 25 active degrees of freedom (DOF. Humanoid system is formed through 5 mutually depended kinematic chains. After that we applied standard aspects of kinematic chains synthesis and Denavit-Hartenberg parameters of each of 5 chains of robotic structure were introduced. Also, mutual relationships between chains were described, as well as their physical and structural dependence. Generated kinematic model will be the starting point for further dynamical modeling of NAO humanoid robot and motion synthesis on actual platform.

  4. A review on humanoid robotics in healthcare

    OpenAIRE

    Joseph Azeta; Christian Bolu; Abiodun Abioye A.; Oyawale Festus

    2018-01-01

    Humanoid robots have evolved over the years and today it is in many different areas of applications, from homecare to social care and healthcare robotics. This paper deals with a brief overview of the current and potential applications of humanoid robotics in healthcare settings. We present a comprehensive contextualization of humanoid robots in healthcare by identifying and characterizing active research activities on humanoid robot that can work interactively and effectively with humans so ...

  5. A review on humanoid robotics in healthcare

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joseph Azeta

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robots have evolved over the years and today it is in many different areas of applications, from homecare to social care and healthcare robotics. This paper deals with a brief overview of the current and potential applications of humanoid robotics in healthcare settings. We present a comprehensive contextualization of humanoid robots in healthcare by identifying and characterizing active research activities on humanoid robot that can work interactively and effectively with humans so as to fill some identified gaps in current healthcare deficiency.

  6. Humanoid Robot Head Design Based on Uncanny Valley and FACS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jizheng Yan

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Emotional robots are always the focus of artificial intelligence (AI, and intelligent control of robot facial expression is a hot research topic. This paper focuses on the design of humanoid robot head, which is divided into three steps to achieve. The first step is to solve the uncanny valley about humanoid robot, to find and avoid the relationship between human being and robot; the second step is to solve the association between human face and robot head; compared with human being and robots, we analyze the similarities and differences and explore the same basis and mechanisms between robot and human analyzing the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, which guides us to achieve humanoid expressions. On the basis of the previous two steps, the third step is to construct a robot head; through a series of experiments we test the robot head, which could show some humanoid expressions; through human-robot interaction, we find people are surprised by the robot head expression and feel happy.

  7. A CORBA-Based Control Architecture for Real-Time Teleoperation Tasks in a Developmental Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hanafiah Yussof

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents the development of new Humanoid Robot Control Architecture (HRCA platform based on Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA in a developmental biped humanoid robot for real-time teleoperation tasks. The objective is to make the control platform open for collaborative teleoperation research in humanoid robotics via the internet. Meanwhile, to generate optimal trajectory generation in bipedal walk, we proposed a real time generation of optimal gait by using Genetic Algorithms (GA to minimize the energy for humanoid robot gait. In addition, we proposed simplification of kinematical solutions to generate controlled trajectories of humanoid robot legs in teleoperation tasks. The proposed control systems and strategies was evaluated in teleoperation experiments between Australia and Japan using humanoid robot Bonten-Maru. Additionally, we have developed a user-friendly Virtual Reality (VR user interface that is composed of ultrasonic 3D mouse system and a Head Mounted Display (HMD for working coexistence of human and humanoid robot in teleoperation tasks. The teleoperation experiments show good performance of the proposed system and control, and also verified the good performance for working coexistence of human and humanoid robot.

  8. A CORBA-Based Control Architecture for Real-Time Teleoperation Tasks in a Developmental Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hanafiah Yussof

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents the development of new Humanoid Robot Control Architecture (HRCA platform based on Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA in a developmental biped humanoid robot for real‐time teleoperation tasks. The objective is to make the control platform open for collaborative teleoperation research in humanoid robotics via the internet. Meanwhile, to generate optimal trajectory generation in bipedal walk, we proposed a real time generation of optimal gait by using Genetic Algorithms (GA to minimize the energy for humanoid robot gait. In addition, we proposed simplification of kinematical solutions to generate controlled trajectories of humanoid robot legs in teleoperation tasks. The proposed control systems and strategies was evaluated in teleoperation experiments between Australia and Japan using humanoid robot Bonten‐Maru. Additionally, we have developed a user‐ friendly Virtual Reality (VR user interface that is composed of ultrasonic 3D mouse system and a Head Mounted Display (HMD for working coexistence of human and humanoid robot in teleoperation tasks. The teleoperation experiments show good performance of the proposed system and control, and also verified the good performance for working coexistence of human and humanoid robot.

  9. Teleoperation and beyond for assistive humanoid robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Goodrich, M.A.; Crandall, J.W.; Barakova, E.I.

    2013-01-01

    In this review, we explore how teleoperation could potentially be applied to the management of humanoid robots, with an emphasis on humanoid robots that are used in assistive roles, including clinical therapies. Since there are very few examples of the remote operation of a full humanoid, the review

  10. Sensory Integration with Articulated Motion on a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. Rojas

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes the integration of articulated motion with auditory and visual sensory information that enables a humanoid robot to achieve certain reflex actions that mimic those of people. Reflexes such as reach-and-grasp behavior enables the robot to learn, through experience, its own state and that of the world. A humanoid robot with binaural audio input, stereo vision, and pneumatic arms and hands exhibited tightly coupled sensory-motor behaviors in four different demonstrations. The complexity of successive demonstrations was increased to show that the reflexive sensory-motor behaviors combine to perform increasingly complex tasks. The humanoid robot executed these tasks effectively and established the groundwork for the further development of hardware and software systems, sensory-motor vector-space representations, and coupling with higher-level cognition.

  11. Extending NGOMSL Model for Human-Humanoid Robot Interaction in the Soccer Robotics Domain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rajesh Elara Mohan

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available In the field of human-computer interaction, the Natural Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules Language (NGOMSL model is one of the most popular methods for modelling knowledge and cognitive processes for rapid usability evaluation. The NGOMSL model is a description of the knowledge that a user must possess to operate the system represented as elementary actions for effective usability evaluations. In the last few years, mobile robots have been exhibiting a stronger presence in commercial markets and very little work has been done with NGOMSL modelling for usability evaluations in the human-robot interaction discipline. This paper focuses on extending the NGOMSL model for usability evaluation of human-humanoid robot interaction in the soccer robotics domain. The NGOMSL modelled human-humanoid interaction design of Robo-Erectus Junior was evaluated and the results of the experiments showed that the interaction design was able to find faults in an average time of 23.84 s. Also, the interaction design was able to detect the fault within the 60 s in 100% of the cases. The Evaluated Interaction design was adopted by our Robo-Erectus Junior version of humanoid robots in the RoboCup 2007 humanoid soccer league.

  12. Integrating Multi-Purpose Natural Language Understanding, Robot's Memory, and Symbolic Planning for Task Execution in Humanoid Robots

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wächter, Mirko; Ovchinnikova, Ekaterina; Wittenbeck, Valerij

    2017-01-01

    We propose an approach for instructing a robot using natural language to solve complex tasks in a dynamic environment. In this study, we elaborate on a framework that allows a humanoid robot to understand natural language, derive symbolic representations of its sensorimotor experience, generate....... The framework is implemented within the robot development environment ArmarX. We evaluate the framework on the humanoid robot ARMAR-III in the context of two experiments: a demonstration of the real execution of a complex task in the kitchen environment on ARMAR-III and an experiment with untrained users...

  13. Toward Speech and Nonverbal Behaviors Integration for Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wei Wang

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available It is essential to integrate speeches and nonverbal behaviors for a humanoid robot in human-robot interaction. This paper presents an approach using multi-object genetic algorithm to match the speeches and behaviors automatically. Firstly, with humanoid robot's emotion status, we construct a hierarchical structure to link voice characteristics and nonverbal behaviors. Secondly, these behaviors corresponding to speeches are matched and integrated into an action sequence based on genetic algorithm, so the robot can consistently speak and perform emotional behaviors. Our approach takes advantage of relevant knowledge described by psychologists and nonverbal communication. And from experiment results, our ultimate goal, implementing an affective robot to act and speak with partners vividly and fluently, could be achieved.

  14. Navigation Strategy by Contact Sensing Interaction for a Biped Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hanafiah Yussof

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available This report presents a basic contact interaction-based navigation strategy for a biped humanoid robot to support current visual-based navigation. The robot's arms were equipped with force sensors to detect physical contact with objects. We proposed a motion algorithm consisting of searching tasks, self-localization tasks, correction of locomotion direction tasks and obstacle avoidance tasks. Priority was given to right-side direction to navigate the robot locomotion. Analysis of trajectory generation, biped gait pattern, and biped walking characteristics was performed to define an efficient navigation strategy in a biped walking humanoid robot. The proposed algorithm is evaluated in an experiment with a 21-dofs humanoid robot operating in a room with walls and obstacles. The experimental results reveal good robot performance when recognizing objects by touching, grasping, and continuously generating suitable trajectories to correct direction and avoid collisions.

  15. A Framework for Obstacles Avoidance of Humanoid Robot Using Stereo Vision

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Widodo Budiharto

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we propose a framework for multiple moving obstacles avoidance strategy using stereo vision for humanoid robot in indoor environment. We assume that this model of humanoid robot is used as a service robot to deliver a cup to customer from starting point to destination point. We have successfully developed and introduced three main modules to recognize faces, to identify multiple moving obstacles and to initiate a maneuver. A group of people who are walking will be tracked as multiple moving obstacles. Predefined maneuver to avoid obstacles is applied to robot because the limitation of view angle from stereo camera to detect multiple obstacles. The contribution of this research is a new method for multiple moving obstacles avoidance strategy with Bayesian approach using stereo vision based on the direction and speed of obstacles. Depth estimation is used to obtain distance calculation between obstacles and the robot. We present the results of the experiment of the humanoid robot called Gatotkoco II which is used our proposed method and evaluate its performance. The proposed moving obstacles avoidance strategy was tested empirically and proved effective for humanoid robot.

  16. Artificial heart for humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Potnuru, Akshay; Wu, Lianjun; Tadesse, Yonas

    2014-03-01

    A soft robotic device inspired by the pumping action of a biological heart is presented in this study. Developing artificial heart to a humanoid robot enables us to make a better biomedical device for ultimate use in humans. As technology continues to become more advanced, the methods in which we implement high performance and biomimetic artificial organs is getting nearer each day. In this paper, we present the design and development of a soft artificial heart that can be used in a humanoid robot and simulate the functions of a human heart using shape memory alloy technology. The robotic heart is designed to pump a blood-like fluid to parts of the robot such as the face to simulate someone blushing or when someone is angry by the use of elastomeric substrates and certain features for the transport of fluids.

  17. Balancing Theory and Practical Work in a Humanoid Robotics Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wolff, Krister; Wahde, Mattias

    2010-01-01

    In this paper, we summarize our experiences from teaching a course in humanoid robotics at Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg, Sweden. We describe the robotic platform used in the course and we propose the use of a custom-built robot consisting of standard electronic and mechanical components. In our experience, by using standard…

  18. A Cross-Platform Tactile Capabilities Interface for Humanoid Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jie eMa

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available This article presents the core elements of a cross-platform tactile capabilities interface (TCI for humanoid arms. The aim of the interface is to reduce the cost of developing humanoid robot capabilities by supporting reuse through cross-platform deployment. The article presents a comparative analysis of existing robot middleware frameworks, as well as the technical details of the TCI framework that builds on the the existing YARP platform. The TCI framework currently includes robot arm actuators with robot skin sensors. It presents such hardware in a platform independent manner, making it possible to write robot control software that can be executed on different robots through the TCI frameworks. The TCI framework supports multiple humanoid platforms and this article also presents a case study of a cross-platform implementation of a set of tactile protective withdrawal reflexes that have been realised on both the Nao and iCub humanoid robot platforms using the same high-level source code.

  19. Open Object Recognition for Humanoid Robots

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Fitzpatrick, Paul

    2003-01-01

    .... At the MIT Humanoid Robotics Group, investigators are developing methods that permit their robots to deduce the structure of novel activities, adopt the vocabulary appropriate for communication...

  20. Gait control by foot placement for humanoid robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Botden, F.J.B.M.; Nijmeijer, H.; Zutven, van P.W.M.

    2013-01-01

    Humanoid robots are used as a research tool to understand bipedal locomotion. When pushed, a humanoid robot must be able to avoid falling and return to a balanced configuration. This is called push recovery and can be achieved using proper foot placement. Depending on the freedom of movement, one or

  1. Foot Placement Modification for a Biped Humanoid Robot with Narrow Feet

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenji Hashimoto

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes a walking stabilization control for a biped humanoid robot with narrow feet. Most humanoid robots have larger feet than human beings to maintain their stability during walking. If robot’s feet are as narrow as humans, it is difficult to realize a stable walk by using conventional stabilization controls. The proposed control modifies a foot placement according to the robot's attitude angle. If a robot tends to fall down, a foot angle is modified about the roll axis so that a swing foot contacts the ground horizontally. And a foot-landing point is also changed laterally to inhibit the robot from falling to the outside. To reduce a foot-landing impact, a virtual compliance control is applied to the vertical axis and the roll and pitch axes of the foot. Verification of the proposed method is conducted through experiments with a biped humanoid robot WABIAN-2R. WABIAN-2R realized a knee-bended walking with 30 mm breadth feet. Moreover, WABIAN-2R mounted on a human-like foot mechanism mimicking a human's foot arch structure realized a stable walking with the knee-stretched, heel-contact, and toe-off motion.

  2. Complete Low-Cost Implementation of a Teleoperated Control System for a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rafael Barea

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robotics is a field of a great research interest nowadays. This work implements a low-cost teleoperated system to control a humanoid robot, as a first step for further development and study of human motion and walking. A human suit is built, consisting of 8 sensors, 6 resistive linear potentiometers on the lower extremities and 2 digital accelerometers for the arms. The goal is to replicate the suit movements in a small humanoid robot. The data from the sensors is wirelessly transmitted via two ZigBee RF configurable modules installed on each device: the robot and the suit. Replicating the suit movements requires a robot stability control module to prevent falling down while executing different actions involving knees flexion. This is carried out via a feedback control system with an accelerometer placed on the robot’s back. The measurement from this sensor is filtered using Kalman. In addition, a two input fuzzy algorithm controlling five servo motors regulates the robot balance. The humanoid robot is controlled by a medium capacity processor and a low computational cost is achieved for executing the different algorithms. Both hardware and software of the system are based on open platforms. The successful experiments carried out validate the implementation of the proposed teleoperated system.

  3. LARM PKM solutions for torso design in humanoid robots

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ceccarelli, Marco

    2014-12-01

    Human-like torso features are essential in humanoid robots. In this paper problems for design and operation of solutions for a robotic torso are discussed by referring to experiences and designs that have been developed at Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics (LARM) in Cassino, Italy. A new solution is presented with conceptual views as waist-trunk structure that makes a proper partition of the performance for walking and arm operations as sustained by a torso.

  4. FPGA for Robotic Applications: from Android/Humanoid Robots to Artificial Men

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tole Sutikno

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Researches on home robots have been increasing enormously. There has always existed a continuous research effort on problems of anthropomorphic robots which is now called humanoid robots. Currently, robotics has evolved to the point that different branches have reached a remarkable level of maturity, that neural network and fuzzy logic are the main artificial intelligence as intelligent control on the robotics. Despite all this progress, while aiming at accomplishing work-tasks originally charged only to humans, robotic science has perhaps quite naturally turned into the attempt to create artificial men. It is true that artificial men or android humanoid robots open certainly very broad prospects. This “robot” may be viewed as a personal helper, and it will be called a home-robot, or personal robot. This is main reason why the two special sections are issued in the TELKOMNIKA sequentially.

  5. Design and Implementation of Autonomous Stair Climbing with Nao Humanoid Robot

    OpenAIRE

    Lu, Wei

    2015-01-01

    With the development of humanoid robots, autonomous stair climbing is an important capability. Humanoid robots will play an important role in helping people tackle some basic problems in the future. The main contribution of this thesis is that the NAO humanoid robot can climb the spiral staircase autonomously. In the vision module, the algorithm of image filtering and detecting the contours of the stair contributes to calculating the location of the stairs accurately. Additionally, the st...

  6. Humanoid Robots and Human Society

    OpenAIRE

    Bahishti, Adam A

    2017-01-01

    Almost every aspect of modern human life starting from the smartphone to the smart houses you live in has been influenced by science and technology. The field of science and technology has advanced throughout the last few decades. Among those advancements, robots have become significant by managing most of our day-to-day tasks and trying to get close to human lives. As robotics and autonomous systems flourish, human-robot relationships are becoming increasingly important. Recently humanoid ro...

  7. Trajectory Planning and Walking Pattern Generation of Humanoid Robot Motion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saeed Abdolshah

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Walking trajectory generation for a humanoid robot is a challenging control  issue. In this paper, a walking cycle has been recognized considering human motion, and nine simple steps were distinguished in a full step of walking which form motion trajectory, and generates a simplified ZMP motion formulation. This system was used in humanoid robot simulation motion and is achievable easily in walking steps of robot. A minimum DOFs humanoid robot has been considered and geometrical relationships between the robot links were presented by the Denavit-Hartenberg method. The inverse kinematics equations have been solved regarding to extracted ZMP trajectory formula, and constraints in different steps. As a result; angular velocity, acceleration and power of motors were obtained using the relationships and Jacobin. At each step, extracted data were applied on simulated robot in Matlab, and Visual Nastran software. Zero moment point trajectory was evaluated in simulation environment.

  8. Drum-mate: interaction dynamics and gestures in human-humanoid drumming experiments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kose-Bagci, Hatice; Dautenhahn, Kerstin; Syrdal, Dag S.; Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.

    2010-06-01

    This article investigates the role of interaction kinesics in human-robot interaction (HRI). We adopted a bottom-up, synthetic approach towards interactive competencies in robots using simple, minimal computational models underlying the robot's interaction dynamics. We present two empirical, exploratory studies investigating a drumming experience with a humanoid robot (KASPAR) and a human. In the first experiment, the turn-taking behaviour of the humanoid is deterministic and the non-verbal gestures of the robot accompany its drumming to assess the impact of non-verbal gestures on the interaction. The second experiment studies a computational framework that facilitates emergent turn-taking dynamics, whereby the particular dynamics of turn-taking emerge from the social interaction between the human and the humanoid. The results from the HRI experiments are presented and analysed qualitatively (in terms of the participants' subjective experiences) and quantitatively (concerning the drumming performance of the human-robot pair). The results point out a trade-off between the subjective evaluation of the drumming experience from the perspective of the participants and the objective evaluation of the drumming performance. A certain number of gestures was preferred as a motivational factor in the interaction. The participants preferred the models underlying the robot's turn-taking which enable the robot and human to interact more and provide turn-taking closer to 'natural' human-human conversations, despite differences in objective measures of drumming behaviour. The results are consistent with the temporal behaviour matching hypothesis previously proposed in the literature which concerns the effect that the participants adapt their own interaction dynamics to the robot's.

  9. Hierarchical Motion Control for a Team of Humanoid Soccer Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Seung-Joon Yi

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Robot soccer has become an effective benchmarking problem for robotics research as it requires many aspects of robotics including perception, self localization, motion planning and distributed coordination to work in uncertain and adversarial environments. Especially with humanoid robots that lack inherent stability, a capable and robust motion controller is crucial for generating walking and kicking motions without losing balance. In this paper, we describe the details of a motion controller to control a team of humanoid soccer robots, which consists of a hierarchy of controllers with different time frames and abstraction levels. A low level controller governs the real time control of each joint angle, either using target joint angles or target endpoint transforms. A mid-level controller handles bipedal locomotion and balancing of the robot. A high level controller decides the long term behavior of the robot, and finally the team level controller coordinates the behavior of a group of robots by means of asynchronous communication between the robots. The suggested motion system has been successfully used by many humanoid robot teams at the RoboCup international robot soccer competitions, which has awarded us five successful championships in a row.

  10. A Course in Simulation and Demonstration of Humanoid Robot Motion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Hsin-Yu; Wang, Wen-June; Wang, Rong-Jyue

    2011-01-01

    An introductory course for humanoid robot motion realization for undergraduate and graduate students is presented in this study. The basic operations of AX-12 motors and the mechanics combination of a 16 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) humanoid robot are presented first. The main concepts of multilink systems, zero moment point (ZMP), and feedback…

  11. A Novel Greeting Selection System for a Culture-Adaptive Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gabriele Trovato

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Robots, especially humanoids, are expected to perform human-like actions and adapt to our ways of communication in order to facilitate their acceptance in human society. Among humans, rules of communication change depending on background culture: greetings are a part of communication in which cultural differences are strong. Robots should adapt to these specific differences in order to communicate effectively, being able to select the appropriate manner of greeting for different cultures depending on the social context. In this paper, we present the modelling of social factors that influence greeting choice, and the resulting novel culture-dependent greeting gesture and words selection system. An experiment with German participants was run using the humanoid robot ARMAR-IIIb. Thanks to this system, the robot, after interacting with Germans, can perform greeting gestures appropriate to German culture in addition to a repertoire of greetings appropriate to Japanese culture.

  12. Design and Implementation an Autonomous Humanoid Robot Based on Fuzzy Rule-Based Motion Controller

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohsen Taheri

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available Research on humanoid robotics in Mechatronics and Automation Laboratory, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Islamic Azad University Khorasgan branch (Isfahan of Iran was started at
    the beginning of this decade. Various research prototypes for humanoid robots have been designed and are going through evolution over these years. This paper describes the hardware and software design of the kid size humanoid robot systems of the PERSIA Team in 2009. The robot has 20 actuated degrees of freedom based on Hitec HSR898. In this paper we have tried to focus on areas such as mechanical structure, Image processing unit, robot controller, Robot AI and behavior
    learning. In 2009, our developments for the Kid size humanoid robot include: (1 the design and construction of our new humanoid robots (2 the design and construction of a new hardware and software controller to be used in our robots. The project is described in two main parts: Hardware and Software. The software is developed a robot application which consists walking controller, autonomous motion robot, self localization base on vision and Particle Filter, local AI, Trajectory Planning, Motion Controller and Network. The hardware consists of the mechanical structure and the driver circuit board. Each robot is able to walk, fast walk, pass, kick and dribble when it catches
    the ball. These humanoids have been successfully participating in various robotic soccer competitions. This project is still in progress and some new interesting methods are described in the current report.

  13. Humanoid Robots in the Classroom

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Majgaard, Gunver

    2015-01-01

    Humanoid robots have been used as educational tools in primary and lower secondary schools. The students involved were between 11 and 16 years old. The learning goals included: programming, language learning, ethics, technology and mathematics, e.g. practised by 7th grade students who programmed...

  14. Qualitative validation of humanoid robot models through balance recovery side-stepping experiments

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Assman, T.M.; Zutven, van P.W.M.; Nijmeijer, H.

    2013-01-01

    Different models are used in literature to approximate the complex dynamics of a humanoid robot. Many models use strongly varying model assumptions that neglect the influence of feet, discontinuous ground impact, internal dynamics and coupling between the 3D coronal and sagittal plane dynamics.

  15. Humanoid Robotics: Real-Time Object Oriented Programming

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newton, Jason E.

    2005-01-01

    Programming of robots in today's world is often done in a procedural oriented fashion, where object oriented programming is not incorporated. In order to keep a robust architecture allowing for easy expansion of capabilities and a truly modular design, object oriented programming is required. However, concepts in object oriented programming are not typically applied to a real time environment. The Fujitsu HOAP-2 is the test bed for the development of a humanoid robot framework abstracting control of the robot into simple logical commands in a real time robotic system while allowing full access to all sensory data. In addition to interfacing between the motor and sensory systems, this paper discusses the software which operates multiple independently developed control systems simultaneously and the safety measures which keep the humanoid from damaging itself and its environment while running these systems. The use of this software decreases development time and costs and allows changes to be made while keeping results safe and predictable.

  16. Whole-body impedance control of wheeled humanoid robots

    CERN Document Server

    Dietrich, Alexander

    2016-01-01

    Introducing mobile humanoid robots into human environments requires the systems to physically interact and execute multiple concurrent tasks. The monograph at hand presents a whole-body torque controller for dexterous and safe robotic manipulation. This control approach enables a mobile humanoid robot to simultaneously meet several control objectives with different pre-defined levels of priority, while providing the skills for compliant physical contacts with humans and the environment. After a general introduction into the topic of whole-body control, several essential reactive tasks are developed to extend the repertoire of robotic control objectives. Additionally, the classical Cartesian impedance is extended to the case of mobile robots. All of these tasks are then combined and integrated into an overall, priority-based control law. Besides the experimental validation of the approach, the formal proof of asymptotic stability for this hierarchical controller is presented. By interconnecting the whole-body ...

  17. The Rh-1 Full-Size Humanoid Robot: Design, Walking Pattern Generation and Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Arbulú

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper is an overview of the humanoid robot Rh-1, the second phase of the Rh project, which was launched by the Robotics Lab at the Carlos III University of Madrid in 2002. The robot mechanical design includes the specifications development in order to construct a platform, which is capable of stable biped walking. At first, the robots’ weights were calculated in order to obtain the inverse dynamics and to select the actuators. After that, mechanical specifications were introduced in order to verify the robot’s structural behaviour with different experimental gaits. In addition, an important aspect is the joints design when their axes are crossed, which is called ‘Joints of Rectangular Axes’ (JRA. The problem with these joints is obtaining two or more degrees of freedom (DOF in small space. The construction of a humanoid robot also includes the design of hardware and software architectures. The main advantage of the proposed hardware and software architectures is the use of standardised solutions frequently used in the automation industry and commercially available hardware components. It provides scalability, modularity and application of standardised interfaces and brings the design of the complex control system of the humanoid robot out of a closed laboratory to industry. Stable walking is the most essential ability for the humanoid robot. The three dimensional Linear Inverted Pendulum Model (3D-LIPM and the Cart-table models had been used in order to achieve natural and dynamic biped walking. Humanoid dynamics is widely simplified by concentrating its mass in the centre of gravity (COG and moving it following the natural inverted pendulum laws (3D-LIPM or by controlling the cart motion (Cart-table model. An offline-calculated motion pattern does not guarantee the walking stability of the humanoid robot. Control architecture for the dynamic humanoid robot walking was developed, which is able to make online modifications of the

  18. Data-Based Control for Humanoid Robots Using Support Vector Regression, Fuzzy Logic, and Cubature Kalman Filter

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liyang Wang

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Time-varying external disturbances cause instability of humanoid robots or even tip robots over. In this work, a trapezoidal fuzzy least squares support vector regression- (TF-LSSVR- based control system is proposed to learn the external disturbances and increase the zero-moment-point (ZMP stability margin of humanoid robots. First, the humanoid states and the corresponding control torques of the joints for training the controller are collected by implementing simulation experiments. Secondly, a TF-LSSVR with a time-related trapezoidal fuzzy membership function (TFMF is proposed to train the controller using the simulated data. Thirdly, the parameters of the proposed TF-LSSVR are updated using a cubature Kalman filter (CKF. Simulation results are provided. The proposed method is shown to be effective in learning and adapting occasional external disturbances and ensuring the stability margin of the robot.

  19. Modelling and testing proxemic behaviour for humanoid robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Torta, E.; Cuijpers, R.H.; Juola, J.F.; Pol, van der D.

    2012-01-01

    Humanoid robots that share the same space with humans need to be socially acceptable and effective as they interact with people. In this paper we focus our attention on the definition of a behavior-based robotic architecture that (1) allows the robot to navigate safely in a cluttered and dynamically

  20. The second me: Seeing the real body during humanoid robot embodiment produces an illusion of bi-location.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aymerich-Franch, Laura; Petit, Damien; Ganesh, Gowrishankar; Kheddar, Abderrahmane

    2016-11-01

    Whole-body embodiment studies have shown that synchronized multi-sensory cues can trick a healthy human mind to perceive self-location outside the bodily borders, producing an illusion that resembles an out-of-body experience (OBE). But can a healthy mind also perceive the sense of self in more than one body at the same time? To answer this question, we created a novel artificial reduplication of one's body using a humanoid robot embodiment system. We first enabled individuals to embody the humanoid robot by providing them with audio-visual feedback and control of the robot head movements and walk, and then explored the self-location and self-identification perceived by them when they observed themselves through the embodied robot. Our results reveal that, when individuals are exposed to the humanoid body reduplication, they experience an illusion that strongly resembles heautoscopy, suggesting that a healthy human mind is able to bi-locate in two different bodies simultaneously. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Development of a humanoid robot hand with coupling four-bar linkage

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xinhua Liu

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available To improve the operating performance of robots’ end-effector, a humanoid robot hand based on coupling four-bar linkage was designed. An improved transmission system was proposed for the base joint of the thumb. Thus, a far greater motion range and more reasonable layout of the palm were obtained. Moreover, the mathematical model for kinematics simulation was presented based on the Assur linkage group theory to verify and optimize the proposed structure. To research the motion relationships between the fingers and the object in the process of grasping object, the grasping analysis of multi-finger manipulation was presented based on contact kinematics. Finally, a prototype of the humanoid robot hand was produced by a three-dimensional printer, and a kinematics simulation example and the workspace solving of the humanoid robot hand were carried out. The results showed that the velocities of finger joints approximately met the proportion relationship 1:1:1, which accorded with the grasping law of the human hand. In addition, the large workspace, reasonable layout, and good manipulability of the humanoid robot hand were verified.

  2. Robotic Literacy Learning Companions: Exploring Student Engagement with a Humanoid Robot in an Afterschool Literacy Program

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levchak, Sofia

    2016-01-01

    This study was an investigation of the use of a NAO humanoid robot as an effective tool for engaging readers in an afterschool program as well as to find if increasing engagement using a humanoid robot would affect students' reading comprehension when compared to traditional forms of instruction. The targeted population of this study was…

  3. Modeling humanoid swarm robots with petri nets

    OpenAIRE

    Maharjan, Bikee

    2015-01-01

    Master's thesis in Computer science Robots have become a hot topic in today‟s electronic world. There are many definitions for it. One of the definition in Oxford dictionary states “a robot is a machine capable for carrying out a complex series of action automatically especially one programmable by a computer”. This paper deals with a special kind of robot, which is also known as humanoid robot. These robots are replication of human beings with head, torso, arms and legs. A model of hum...

  4. Autonomous learning in humanoid robotics through mental imagery.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Di Nuovo, Alessandro G; Marocco, Davide; Di Nuovo, Santo; Cangelosi, Angelo

    2013-05-01

    In this paper we focus on modeling autonomous learning to improve performance of a humanoid robot through a modular artificial neural networks architecture. A model of a neural controller is presented, which allows a humanoid robot iCub to autonomously improve its sensorimotor skills. This is achieved by endowing the neural controller with a secondary neural system that, by exploiting the sensorimotor skills already acquired by the robot, is able to generate additional imaginary examples that can be used by the controller itself to improve the performance through a simulated mental training. Results and analysis presented in the paper provide evidence of the viability of the approach proposed and help to clarify the rational behind the chosen model and its implementation. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Comparative Study of SSVEP- and P300-Based Models for the Telepresence Control of Humanoid Robots.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jing Zhao

    Full Text Available In this paper, we evaluate the control performance of SSVEP (steady-state visual evoked potential- and P300-based models using Cerebot-a mind-controlled humanoid robot platform. Seven subjects with diverse experience participated in experiments concerning the open-loop and closed-loop control of a humanoid robot via brain signals. The visual stimuli of both the SSVEP- and P300- based models were implemented on a LCD computer monitor with a refresh frequency of 60 Hz. Considering the operation safety, we set the classification accuracy of a model over 90.0% as the most important mandatory for the telepresence control of the humanoid robot. The open-loop experiments demonstrated that the SSVEP model with at most four stimulus targets achieved the average accurate rate about 90%, whereas the P300 model with the six or more stimulus targets under five repetitions per trial was able to achieve the accurate rates over 90.0%. Therefore, the four SSVEP stimuli were used to control four types of robot behavior; while the six P300 stimuli were chosen to control six types of robot behavior. Both of the 4-class SSVEP and 6-class P300 models achieved the average success rates of 90.3% and 91.3%, the average response times of 3.65 s and 6.6 s, and the average information transfer rates (ITR of 24.7 bits/min 18.8 bits/min, respectively. The closed-loop experiments addressed the telepresence control of the robot; the objective was to cause the robot to walk along a white lane marked in an office environment using live video feedback. Comparative studies reveal that the SSVEP model yielded faster response to the subject's mental activity with less reliance on channel selection, whereas the P300 model was found to be suitable for more classifiable targets and required less training. To conclude, we discuss the existing SSVEP and P300 models for the control of humanoid robots, including the models proposed in this paper.

  6. Toward humanoid robots for operations in complex urban environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pratt, Jerry E.; Neuhaus, Peter; Johnson, Matthew; Carff, John; Krupp, Ben

    2010-04-01

    Many infantry operations in urban environments, such as building clearing, are extremely dangerous and difficult and often result in high casualty rates. Despite the fast pace of technological progress in many other areas, the tactics and technology deployed for many of these dangerous urban operation have not changed much in the last 50 years. While robots have been extremely useful for improvised explosive device (IED) detonation, under-vehicle inspection, surveillance, and cave exploration, there is still no fieldable robot that can operate effectively in cluttered streets and inside buildings. Developing a fieldable robot that can maneuver in complex urban environments is challenging due to narrow corridors, stairs, rubble, doors and cluttered doorways, and other obstacles. Typical wheeled and tracked robots have trouble getting through most of these obstacles. A bipedal humanoid is ideally shaped for many of these obstacles because its legs are long and skinny. Therefore it has the potential to step over large barriers, gaps, rocks, and steps, yet squeeze through narrow passageways, and through narrow doorways. By being able to walk with one foot directly in front of the other, humanoids also have the potential to walk over narrow "balance beam" style objects and can cross a narrow row of stepping stones. We describe some recent advances in humanoid robots, particularly recovery from disturbances, such as pushes and walking over rough terrain. Our disturbance recovery algorithms are based on the concept of Capture Points. An N-Step Capture Point is a point on the ground in which a legged robot can step to in order to stop in N steps. The N-Step Capture Region is the set of all N-Step Capture Points. In order to walk without falling, a legged robot must step somewhere in the intersection between an N-Step Capture Region and the available footholds on the ground. We present results of push recovery using Capture Points on our humanoid robot M2V2.

  7. Control of humanoid robot motions with impacts : numerical experiments with reference spreading control

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rijnen, M.W.L.M.; De Mooij, E.B.C.; Traversaro, S.; Nori, F.; Van De Wouw, N.; Saccon, A.; Nijmeijer, H.

    2017-01-01

    This work explores the stabilization of desired dynamic motion tasks involving hard impacts at non-negligible speed for humanoid robots. To this end, a so-called reference spreading hybrid control law is designed showing promising results in simulation. The simulations are performed employing a

  8. Design and Nonlinear Control of a 2-DOF Flexible Parallel Humanoid Arm Joint Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leijie Jiang

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper focuses on the design and nonlinear control of the humanoid wrist/shoulder joint based on the cable-driven parallel mechanism which can realize roll and pitch movement. In view of the existence of the flexible parts in the mechanism, it is necessary to solve the vibration control of the flexible wrist/shoulder joint. In this paper, a cable-driven parallel robot platform is developed for the experiment study of the humanoid wrist/shoulder joint. And the dynamic model of the mechanism is formulated by using the coupling theory of the flexible body’s large global motion and small flexible deformation. Based on derived dynamics, antivibration control of the joint robot is studied with a nonlinear control method. Finally, simulations and experiments were performed to validate the feasibility of the developed parallel robot prototype and the proposed control scheme.

  9. Robosapien Robot used to Model Humanoid Interaction to Perform tasks in Dangerous Manufacturing Environments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Stopforth, R; Bright, G

    2014-01-01

    Humans are involved with accidents in manufacturing environments. A possibility to prevent humans from these scenarios is, to introduce humanoid robots within these industrial areas. This paper investigates the control scenario and environments required at a small scale level, with the use of the Robosapien robot. The Robosapien robot is modified to control it with a task of removing a cylinder and inserting it into a hole. Analysis is performed on the performance of the Robosapien robot and relating it with that of a humanoid robot. A discussion with suggestions is concluded with the efficiency and profitability that would need to be considered, for having a humanoid robot within the manufacturing environment

  10. Push Recovery for Humanoid Robot in Dynamic Environment and Classifying the Data Using K-Mean

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anubha Parashar

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Push recovery is prime ability that is essential to be incorporated in the process of developing a robust humanoid robot to support bipedalism. In real environment it is very essential for humanoid robot to maintain balance. In this paper we are generating a control system and push recovery controller for humanoid robot walking. We apply different kind of pushes to humanoid robot and the algorithm that can bring a change in the walking stage to sustain walking. The simulation is done in 3D environment using Webots. This paper describes techniques for feature selection to foreshow push recovery for hip, ankle and knee joint. We train the system by K-Mean algorithm and testing is done on crouch data and tested results are reported. Random push data of humanoid robot is collected and classified to see whether push lie in safer region and then tested on given proposed system.

  11. NUClear: A Loosely Coupled Software Architecture for Humanoid Robot Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Trent eHouliston

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the design and interface of NUClear, a new hybrid message-passing architecture for embodied humanoid robotics. NUClear is modular, low latency and promotes functional and expandable software design. It greatly reduces the latency for messages passed between modules as the messages routes are established at compile time. It also reduces the number of functions that must be written using a system called co-messages which aids in dealing with multiple simultaneous data. NUClear has primarily been evaluated on a humanoid robotic soccer platform and on a robotic boat platform, with evaluations showing that NUClear requires fewer callbacks and cache variables over existing message-passing architectures. NUClear does have limitations when applying these techniques on multi-processed systems. It performs best in lower power systems where computational resources are limited. Future work will focus on applying the architecture to new platforms, including a larger form humanoid platform and a virtual reality platform and further evaluating the impact of the novel techniques introduced.

  12. Robotic system construction with mechatronic components inverted pendulum: humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandru, Lucian Alexandru; Crainic, Marius Florin; Savu, Diana; Moldovan, Cristian; Dolga, Valer; Preitl, Stefan

    2017-03-01

    Mechatronics is a new methodology used to achieve an optimal design of an electromechanical product. This methodology is collection of practices, procedures and rules used by those who work in particular branch of knowledge or discipline. Education in mechatronics at the Polytechnic University Timisoara is organized on three levels: bachelor, master and PhD studies. These activities refer and to design the mechatronics systems. In this context the design, implementation and experimental study of a family of mechatronic demonstrator occupy an important place. In this paper, a variant for a mechatronic demonstrator based on the combination of the electrical and mechanical components is proposed. The demonstrator, named humanoid robot, is equivalent with an inverted pendulum. Is presented the analyze of components for associated functions of the humanoid robot. This type of development the mechatronic systems by the combination of hardware and software, offers the opportunity to build the optimal solutions.

  13. Design and motion control of bioinspired humanoid robot head from servo motors toward artificial muscles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Almubarak, Yara; Tadesse, Yonas

    2017-04-01

    The potential applications of humanoid robots in social environments, motivates researchers to design, and control biomimetic humanoid robots. Generally, people are more interested to interact with robots that have similar attributes and movements to humans. The head is one of most important part of any social robot. Currently, most humanoid heads use electrical motors, pneumatic actuators, and shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators for actuation. Electrical and pneumatic actuators take most of the space and would cause unsmooth motions. SMAs are expensive to use in humanoids. Recently, in many robotic projects, Twisted and Coiled Polymer (TCP) artificial muscles are used as linear actuators which take up little space compared to the motors. In this paper, we will demonstrate the designing process and motion control of a robotic head with TCP muscles. Servo motors and artificial muscles are used for actuating the head motion, which have been controlled by a cost efficient ARM Cortex-M7 based development board. A complete comparison between the two actuators is presented.

  14. Social humanoid robot SARA: development of the wrist mechanism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Penčić, M.; Rackov, M.; Čavić, M.; Kiss, I.; Cioată, V. G.

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents the development of a wrist mechanism for humanoid robots. The research was conducted within the project which develops social humanoid robot Sara - a mobile anthropomorphic platform for researching the social behaviour of robots. There are two basic ways for the realization of humanoid wrist. The first one is based on biologically inspired structures that have variable stiffness, and the second one on low backlash mechanisms that have high stiffness. Our solution is low backlash differential mechanism that requires small actuators. Based on the kinematic-dynamic requirements, a dynamic model of the robot wrist is formed. A dynamic simulation for several hand positions was performed and the driving torques of the wrist mechanism were determined. The realized wrist has 2 DOFs and enables movements in the direction of flexion/extension 115°, ulnar/radial deviation ±45° and the combination of these two movements. It consists of a differential mechanism with three spur bevel gears, two of which are driving and identical, while the last one is the driven gear to which the robot hand is attached. Power transmission and motion from the actuator to the input links of the differential mechanism is realized with two parallel placed identical gear mechanisms. The wrist mechanism has high carrying capacity and reliability, high efficiency, a compact design and low backlash that provides high positioning accuracy and repeatability of movements, which is essential for motion control.

  15. Cognitive-Developmental Learning for a Humanoid Robot: A Caregiver's Gift

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Arsenio, Artur M

    2004-01-01

    The goal of this work is to build a cognitive system for the humanoid robot, Cog, that exploits human caregivers as catalysts to perceive and learn about actions, objects, scenes, people, and the robot itself...

  16. A Hybrid Method of Analyzing Patents for Sustainable Technology Management in Humanoid Robot Industry

    OpenAIRE

    Jongchan Kim; Joonhyuck Lee; Gabjo Kim; Sangsung Park; Dongsik Jang

    2016-01-01

    A humanoid, which refers to a robot that resembles a human body, imitates a human’s intelligence, behavior, sense, and interaction in order to provide various types of services to human beings. Humanoids have been studied and developed constantly in order to improve their performance. Humanoids were previously developed for simple repetitive or hard work that required significant human power. However, intelligent service robots have been developed actively these days to provide necessary info...

  17. Human-Inspired Eigenmovement Concept Provides Coupling-Free Sensorimotor Control in Humanoid Robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alexandrov, Alexei V; Lippi, Vittorio; Mergner, Thomas; Frolov, Alexander A; Hettich, Georg; Husek, Dusan

    2017-01-01

    Control of a multi-body system in both robots and humans may face the problem of destabilizing dynamic coupling effects arising between linked body segments. The state of the art solutions in robotics are full state feedback controllers. For human hip-ankle coordination, a more parsimonious and theoretically stable alternative to the robotics solution has been suggested in terms of the Eigenmovement (EM) control. Eigenmovements are kinematic synergies designed to describe the multi DoF system, and its control, with a set of independent, and hence coupling-free , scalar equations. This paper investigates whether the EM alternative shows "real-world robustness" against noisy and inaccurate sensors, mechanical non-linearities such as dead zones, and human-like feedback time delays when controlling hip-ankle movements of a balancing humanoid robot. The EM concept and the EM controller are introduced, the robot's dynamics are identified using a biomechanical approach, and robot tests are performed in a human posture control laboratory. The tests show that the EM controller provides stable control of the robot with proactive ("voluntary") movements and reactive balancing of stance during support surface tilts and translations. Although a preliminary robot-human comparison reveals similarities and differences, we conclude (i) the Eigenmovement concept is a valid candidate when different concepts of human sensorimotor control are considered, and (ii) that human-inspired robot experiments may help to decide in future the choice among the candidates and to improve the design of humanoid robots and robotic rehabilitation devices.

  18. A Hybrid Method of Analyzing Patents for Sustainable Technology Management in Humanoid Robot Industry

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jongchan Kim

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available A humanoid, which refers to a robot that resembles a human body, imitates a human’s intelligence, behavior, sense, and interaction in order to provide various types of services to human beings. Humanoids have been studied and developed constantly in order to improve their performance. Humanoids were previously developed for simple repetitive or hard work that required significant human power. However, intelligent service robots have been developed actively these days to provide necessary information and enjoyment; these include robots manufactured for home, entertainment, and personal use. It has become generally known that artificial intelligence humanoid technology will significantly benefit civilization. On the other hand, Successful Research and Development (R & D on humanoids is possible only if they are developed in a proper direction in accordance with changes in markets and society. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze changes in technology markets and society for developing sustainable Management of Technology (MOT strategies. In this study, patent data related to humanoids are analyzed by various data mining techniques, including topic modeling, cross-impact analysis, association rule mining, and social network analysis, to suggest sustainable strategies and methodologies for MOT.

  19. The mechanical design of a humanoid robot with flexible skin sensor for use in psychiatric therapy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burns, Alec; Tadesse, Yonas

    2014-03-01

    In this paper, a humanoid robot is presented for ultimate use in the rehabilitation of children with mental disorders, such as autism. Creating affordable and efficient humanoids could assist the therapy in psychiatric disability by offering multimodal communication between the humanoid and humans. Yet, the humanoid development needs a seamless integration of artificial muscles, sensors, controllers and structures. We have designed a human-like robot that has 15 DOF, 580 mm tall and 925 mm arm span using a rapid prototyping system. The robot has a human-like appearance and movement. Flexible sensors around the arm and hands for safe human-robot interactions, and a two-wheel mobile platform for maneuverability are incorporated in the design. The robot has facial features for illustrating human-friendly behavior. The mechanical design of the robot and the characterization of the flexible sensors are presented. Comprehensive study on the upper body design, mobile base, actuators selection, electronics, and performance evaluation are included in this paper.

  20. Vision based persistent localization of a humanoid robot for locomotion tasks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Martínez Pablo A.

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Typical monocular localization schemes involve a search for matches between reprojected 3D world points and 2D image features in order to estimate the absolute scale transformation between the camera and the world. Successfully calculating such transformation implies the existence of a good number of 3D points uniformly distributed as reprojected pixels around the image plane. This paper presents a method to control the march of a humanoid robot towards directions that are favorable for visual based localization. To this end, orthogonal diagonalization is performed on the covariance matrices of both sets of 3D world points and their 2D image reprojections. Experiments with the NAO humanoid platform show that our method provides persistence of localization, as the robot tends to walk towards directions that are desirable for successful localization. Additional tests demonstrate how the proposed approach can be incorporated into a control scheme that considers reaching a target position.

  1. Unix Philosophy and the Real World: Control Software for Humanoid Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Neil Thomas Dantam

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Robot software combines the challenges of general purpose and real-time software, requiring complex logic and bounded resource use. Physical safety, particularly for dynamic systems such as humanoid robots, depends on correct software. General purpose computation has converged on unix-like operating systems -- standardized as POSIX, the Portable Operating System Interface -- for devices from cellular phones to supercomputers. The modular, multi-process design typical of POSIX applications is effective for building complex and reliable software. Absent from POSIX, however, is an interproccess communication mechanism that prioritizes newer data as typically desired for control of physical systems. We address this need in the Ach communication library which provides suitable semantics and performance for real-time robot control. Although initially designed for humanoid robots, Ach has broader applicability to complex mechatronic devices -- humanoid and otherwise -- that require real-time coupling of sensors, control, planning, and actuation. The initial user space implementation of Ach was limited in the ability to receive data from multiple sources. We remove this limitation by implementing Ach as a Linux kernel module, enabling Ach's high-performance and latest-message-favored semantics within conventional POSIX communication pipelines. We discuss how these POSIX interfaces and design principles apply to robot software, and we present a case study using the Ach kernel module for communication on the Baxter robot.

  2. Humanoid robotics in health care: An exploration of children's and parents' emotional reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beran, Tanya N; Ramirez-Serrano, Alex; Vanderkooi, Otto G; Kuhn, Susan

    2015-07-01

    A new non-pharmacological method of distraction was tested with 57 children during their annual flu vaccination. Given children's growing enthusiasm for technological devices, a humanoid robot was programmed to interact with them while a nurse administered the vaccination. Children smiled more often with the robot, as compared to the control condition, but they did not cry less. Parents indicated that their children held stronger memories for the robot than for the needle, wanted the robot in the future, and felt empowered to cope. We conclude that children and their parents respond positively to a humanoid robot at the bedside. © The Author(s) 2013.

  3. Human-Inspired Eigenmovement Concept Provides Coupling-Free Sensorimotor Control in Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas Mergner

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Control of a multi-body system in both robots and humans may face the problem of destabilizing dynamic coupling effects arising between linked body segments. The state of the art solutions in robotics are full state feedback controllers. For human hip-ankle coordination, a more parsimonious and theoretically stable alternative to the robotics solution has been suggested in terms of the Eigenmovement (EM control. Eigenmovements are kinematic synergies designed to describe the multi DoF system, and its control, with a set of independent, and hence coupling-free, scalar equations. This paper investigates whether the EM alternative shows “real-world robustness” against noisy and inaccurate sensors, mechanical non-linearities such as dead zones, and human-like feedback time delays when controlling hip-ankle movements of a balancing humanoid robot. The EM concept and the EM controller are introduced, the robot's dynamics are identified using a biomechanical approach, and robot tests are performed in a human posture control laboratory. The tests show that the EM controller provides stable control of the robot with proactive (“voluntary” movements and reactive balancing of stance during support surface tilts and translations. Although a preliminary robot-human comparison reveals similarities and differences, we conclude (i the Eigenmovement concept is a valid candidate when different concepts of human sensorimotor control are considered, and (ii that human-inspired robot experiments may help to decide in future the choice among the candidates and to improve the design of humanoid robots and robotic rehabilitation devices.

  4. Robot-mediated interviews--how effective is a humanoid robot as a tool for interviewing young children?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luke Jai Wood

    Full Text Available Robots have been used in a variety of education, therapy or entertainment contexts. This paper introduces the novel application of using humanoid robots for robot-mediated interviews. An experimental study examines how children's responses towards the humanoid robot KASPAR in an interview context differ in comparison to their interaction with a human in a similar setting. Twenty-one children aged between 7 and 9 took part in this study. Each child participated in two interviews, one with an adult and one with a humanoid robot. Measures include the behavioural coding of the children's behaviour during the interviews and questionnaire data. The questions in these interviews focused on a special event that had recently taken place in the school. The results reveal that the children interacted with KASPAR very similar to how they interacted with a human interviewer. The quantitative behaviour analysis reveal that the most notable difference between the interviews with KASPAR and the human were the duration of the interviews, the eye gaze directed towards the different interviewers, and the response time of the interviewers. These results are discussed in light of future work towards developing KASPAR as an 'interviewer' for young children in application areas where a robot may have advantages over a human interviewer, e.g. in police, social services, or healthcare applications.

  5. Feasibility of using a humanoid robot to elicit communicational response in children with mild autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Malik, Norjasween Abdul; Shamsuddin, Syamimi; Yussof, Hanafiah; Azfar Miskam, Mohd; Che Hamid, Aminullah

    2013-12-01

    Research evidences are accumulating with regards to the potential use of robots for the rehabilitation of children with autism. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the results of communicational response in two children with autism during interaction with the humanoid robot NAO. Both autistic subjects in this study have been diagnosed with mild autism. Following the outcome from our first pilot study; the aim of this current experiment is to explore the application of NAO robot to engage with a child and further teach about emotions through a game-centered and song-based approach. The experiment procedure involved interaction between humanoid robot NAO with each child through a series of four different modules. The observation items are based on ten items selected and referenced to GARS-2 (Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-second edition) and also input from clinicians and therapists. The results clearly indicated that both of the children showed optimistic response through the interaction. Negative responses such as feeling scared or shying away from the robot were not detected. Two-way communication between the child and robot in real time significantly gives positive impact in the responses towards the robot. To conclude, it is feasible to include robot-based interaction specifically to elicit communicational response as a part of the rehabilitation intervention of children with autism.

  6. New ankle actuation mechanism for a humanoid robot

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Oort, Gijs; Reinink, R.; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2011-01-01

    In this article we discuss the design of a new ankle actuation mechanism for the humanoid robot TUlip. The new mechanism consists of two coupled series-elastic systems. We discuss the choice of actuators according to calculations for maximum achievable walking speed. Some control issues, MIMO and

  7. HCBPM: An Idea toward a Social Learning Environment for Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fady Alnajjar

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available To advance robotics toward real-world applications, a growing body of research has focused on the development of control systems for humanoid robots in recent years. Several approaches have been proposed to support the learning stage of such controllers, where the robot can learn new behaviors by observing and/or receiving direct guidance from a human or even another robot. These approaches require dynamic learning and memorization techniques, which the robot can use to reform and update its internal systems continuously while learning new behaviors. Against this background, this study investigates a new approach to the development of an incremental learning and memorization model. This approach was inspired by the principles of neuroscience, and the developed model was named “Hierarchical Constructive Backpropagation with Memory” (HCBPM. The validity of the model was tested by teaching a humanoid robot to recognize a group of objects through natural interaction. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model efficiently enhances real-time machine learning in general and can be used to establish an environment suitable for social learning between the robot and the user in particular.

  8. On the imitation of goal directed movements of a humanoid robot

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bao, Y.; Cuijpers, R.H.

    2017-01-01

    Interacting with a social robot should give people a better understanding of the robot’s actions and intentions. In terms of human–human interaction (HHI), people can interpret actions of others in an effortless way. However, it is still unclear whether people can do the same with humanoid robots.

  9. Evidence in Support of the Independent Channel Model Describing the Sensorimotor Control of Human Stance Using a Humanoid Robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pasma, Jantsje H; Assländer, Lorenz; van Kordelaar, Joost; de Kam, Digna; Mergner, Thomas; Schouten, Alfred C

    2018-01-01

    The Independent Channel (IC) model is a commonly used linear balance control model in the frequency domain to analyze human balance control using system identification and parameter estimation. The IC model is a rudimentary and noise-free description of balance behavior in the frequency domain, where a stable model representation is not guaranteed. In this study, we conducted firstly time-domain simulations with added noise, and secondly robot experiments by implementing the IC model in a real-world robot (PostuRob II) to test the validity and stability of the model in the time domain and for real world situations. Balance behavior of seven healthy participants was measured during upright stance by applying pseudorandom continuous support surface rotations. System identification and parameter estimation were used to describe the balance behavior with the IC model in the frequency domain. The IC model with the estimated parameters from human experiments was implemented in Simulink for computer simulations including noise in the time domain and robot experiments using the humanoid robot PostuRob II. Again, system identification and parameter estimation were used to describe the simulated balance behavior. Time series, Frequency Response Functions, and estimated parameters from human experiments, computer simulations, and robot experiments were compared with each other. The computer simulations showed similar balance behavior and estimated control parameters compared to the human experiments, in the time and frequency domain. Also, the IC model was able to control the humanoid robot by keeping it upright, but showed small differences compared to the human experiments in the time and frequency domain, especially at high frequencies. We conclude that the IC model, a descriptive model in the frequency domain, can imitate human balance behavior also in the time domain, both in computer simulations with added noise and real world situations with a humanoid robot. This

  10. Evidence in Support of the Independent Channel Model Describing the Sensorimotor Control of Human Stance Using a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jantsje H. Pasma

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available The Independent Channel (IC model is a commonly used linear balance control model in the frequency domain to analyze human balance control using system identification and parameter estimation. The IC model is a rudimentary and noise-free description of balance behavior in the frequency domain, where a stable model representation is not guaranteed. In this study, we conducted firstly time-domain simulations with added noise, and secondly robot experiments by implementing the IC model in a real-world robot (PostuRob II to test the validity and stability of the model in the time domain and for real world situations. Balance behavior of seven healthy participants was measured during upright stance by applying pseudorandom continuous support surface rotations. System identification and parameter estimation were used to describe the balance behavior with the IC model in the frequency domain. The IC model with the estimated parameters from human experiments was implemented in Simulink for computer simulations including noise in the time domain and robot experiments using the humanoid robot PostuRob II. Again, system identification and parameter estimation were used to describe the simulated balance behavior. Time series, Frequency Response Functions, and estimated parameters from human experiments, computer simulations, and robot experiments were compared with each other. The computer simulations showed similar balance behavior and estimated control parameters compared to the human experiments, in the time and frequency domain. Also, the IC model was able to control the humanoid robot by keeping it upright, but showed small differences compared to the human experiments in the time and frequency domain, especially at high frequencies. We conclude that the IC model, a descriptive model in the frequency domain, can imitate human balance behavior also in the time domain, both in computer simulations with added noise and real world situations with a

  11. Humanoid Cognitive Robots That Learn by Imitating: Implications for Consciousness Studies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    James A. Reggia

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available While the concept of a conscious machine is intriguing, producing such a machine remains controversial and challenging. Here, we describe how our work on creating a humanoid cognitive robot that learns to perform tasks via imitation learning relates to this issue. Our discussion is divided into three parts. First, we summarize our previous framework for advancing the understanding of the nature of phenomenal consciousness. This framework is based on identifying computational correlates of consciousness. Second, we describe a cognitive robotic system that we recently developed that learns to perform tasks by imitating human-provided demonstrations. This humanoid robot uses cause–effect reasoning to infer a demonstrator’s intentions in performing a task, rather than just imitating the observed actions verbatim. In particular, its cognitive components center on top-down control of a working memory that retains the explanatory interpretations that the robot constructs during learning. Finally, we describe our ongoing work that is focused on converting our robot’s imitation learning cognitive system into purely neurocomputational form, including both its low-level cognitive neuromotor components, its use of working memory, and its causal reasoning mechanisms. Based on our initial results, we argue that the top-down cognitive control of working memory, and in particular its gating mechanisms, is an important potential computational correlate of consciousness in humanoid robots. We conclude that developing high-level neurocognitive control systems for cognitive robots and using them to search for computational correlates of consciousness provides an important approach to advancing our understanding of consciousness, and that it provides a credible and achievable route to ultimately developing a phenomenally conscious machine.

  12. Assistive humanoid robot MARKO: development of the neck mechanism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Penčić Marko

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents the development of neck mechanism for humanoid robots. The research was conducted within the project which is developing a humanoid robot Marko that represents assistive apparatus in the physical therapy for children with cerebral palsy.There are two basic ways for the neck realization of the robots. The first is based on low backlash mechanisms that have high stiffness and the second one based on the viscoelastic elements having variable flexibility. We suggest low backlash differential gear mechanism that requires small actuators. Based on the kinematic-dynamic requirements a dynamic model of the robots upper body is formed. Dynamic simulation for several positions of the robot was performed and the driving torques of neck mechanism are determined.Realized neck has 2 DOFs and enables movements in the direction of flexion-extension 100°, rotation ±90° and the combination of these two movements. It consists of a differential mechanism with three spiral bevel gears of which the two are driving and are identical, and the third one which is driven gear to which the robot head is attached. Power transmission and motion from the actuators to the input links of the differential mechanism is realized with two parallel placed gear mechanisms that are identical.Neck mechanism has high carrying capacity and reliability, high efficiency, low backlash that provide high positioning accuracy and repeatability of movements, compact design and small mass and dimensions.

  13. Humanoid Robot Control System Balance Dance Indonesia and Reader Filters Using Complementary Angle Values

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sholihin; Susanti, Eka

    2018-02-01

    The development of increasingly advanced technology, make people want to be more developed and curiosity to know more to determine the development of advanced technology. Robot is a tool that can be used as a tool for people who have several advantages. Basically humanoid robot is a robot that resembles a human being with all the driving structure. In the application of this humanoid robot manufacture researchers use MPU6050 module which is an important component of the robot because it can provide a response to the angle reference axis X and Y reference axis, the reading corner still has noise if not filtered out beforehand. On the other hand the use of Complementary filters are the answer to reduce the noise. By arranging the filter coefficients and time sampling filter that affects the signal updates corner. The angle value will be the value of the sensor to the process to the PID system which generates output values that are integrated with the servo pulses. Researchers will test to get a reading of the most stable angle for this experiment is the "a" or the value of the filter coefficient = 0.96 and "dt" or the sampling time = 10 ms.

  14. Eliminating drift of the head gesture reference to enhance Google Glass-based control of an NAO humanoid robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaoqian Mao

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available This article presents a strategy for hand-free control of an NAO humanoid robot via head gesture detected by Google Glass-based multi-sensor fusion. First, we introduce a Google Glass-based robot system by integrating the Google Glass and the NAO humanoid robot, which is able to send robot commands through Wi-Fi communications between the Google Glass and the robot. Second, we detect the operator’s head gestures by processing data from multiple sensors including accelerometers, geomagnetic sensors and gyroscopes. Next, we use a complementary filter to eliminate drift of the head gesture reference, which greatly improves the control performance. This is accomplished by the high-pass filter component on the control signal. Finally, we conduct obstacle avoidance experiments while navigating the robot to validate the effectiveness and reliability of this system. The experimental results show that the robot is smoothly navigated from its initial position to its destination with obstacle avoidance via the Google Glass. This hands-free control system can benefit those with paralysed limbs.

  15. Grounding language in action and perception: from cognitive agents to humanoid robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cangelosi, Angelo

    2010-06-01

    In this review we concentrate on a grounded approach to the modeling of cognition through the methodologies of cognitive agents and developmental robotics. This work will focus on the modeling of the evolutionary and developmental acquisition of linguistic capabilities based on the principles of symbol grounding. We review cognitive agent and developmental robotics models of the grounding of language to demonstrate their consistency with the empirical and theoretical evidence on language grounding and embodiment, and to reveal the benefits of such an approach in the design of linguistic capabilities in cognitive robotic agents. In particular, three different models will be discussed, where the complexity of the agent's sensorimotor and cognitive system gradually increases: from a multi-agent simulation of language evolution, to a simulated robotic agent model for symbol grounding transfer, to a model of language comprehension in the humanoid robot iCub. The review also discusses the benefits of the use of humanoid robotic platform, and specifically of the open source iCub platform, for the study of embodied cognition. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  16. Emotion Attribution to a Non-Humanoid Robot in Different Social Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakatos, Gabriella; Gácsi, Márta; Konok, Veronika; Brúder, Ildikó; Bereczky, Boróka; Korondi, Péter; Miklósi, Ádám

    2014-01-01

    In the last few years there was an increasing interest in building companion robots that interact in a socially acceptable way with humans. In order to interact in a meaningful way a robot has to convey intentionality and emotions of some sort in order to increase believability. We suggest that human-robot interaction should be considered as a specific form of inter-specific interaction and that human–animal interaction can provide a useful biological model for designing social robots. Dogs can provide a promising biological model since during the domestication process dogs were able to adapt to the human environment and to participate in complex social interactions. In this observational study we propose to design emotionally expressive behaviour of robots using the behaviour of dogs as inspiration and to test these dog-inspired robots with humans in inter-specific context. In two experiments (wizard-of-oz scenarios) we examined humans' ability to recognize two basic and a secondary emotion expressed by a robot. In Experiment 1 we provided our companion robot with two kinds of emotional behaviour (“happiness” and “fear”), and studied whether people attribute the appropriate emotion to the robot, and interact with it accordingly. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether participants tend to attribute guilty behaviour to a robot in a relevant context by examining whether relying on the robot's greeting behaviour human participants can detect if the robot transgressed a predetermined rule. Results of Experiment 1 showed that people readily attribute emotions to a social robot and interact with it in accordance with the expressed emotional behaviour. Results of Experiment 2 showed that people are able to recognize if the robot transgressed on the basis of its greeting behaviour. In summary, our findings showed that dog-inspired behaviour is a suitable medium for making people attribute emotional states to a non-humanoid robot. PMID:25551218

  17. Emotion attribution to a non-humanoid robot in different social situations.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gabriella Lakatos

    Full Text Available In the last few years there was an increasing interest in building companion robots that interact in a socially acceptable way with humans. In order to interact in a meaningful way a robot has to convey intentionality and emotions of some sort in order to increase believability. We suggest that human-robot interaction should be considered as a specific form of inter-specific interaction and that human-animal interaction can provide a useful biological model for designing social robots. Dogs can provide a promising biological model since during the domestication process dogs were able to adapt to the human environment and to participate in complex social interactions. In this observational study we propose to design emotionally expressive behaviour of robots using the behaviour of dogs as inspiration and to test these dog-inspired robots with humans in inter-specific context. In two experiments (wizard-of-oz scenarios we examined humans' ability to recognize two basic and a secondary emotion expressed by a robot. In Experiment 1 we provided our companion robot with two kinds of emotional behaviour ("happiness" and "fear", and studied whether people attribute the appropriate emotion to the robot, and interact with it accordingly. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether participants tend to attribute guilty behaviour to a robot in a relevant context by examining whether relying on the robot's greeting behaviour human participants can detect if the robot transgressed a predetermined rule. Results of Experiment 1 showed that people readily attribute emotions to a social robot and interact with it in accordance with the expressed emotional behaviour. Results of Experiment 2 showed that people are able to recognize if the robot transgressed on the basis of its greeting behaviour. In summary, our findings showed that dog-inspired behaviour is a suitable medium for making people attribute emotional states to a non-humanoid robot.

  18. Pre-Schoolers' Interest and Caring Behaviour around a Humanoid Robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ioannou, Andri; Andreou, Emily; Christofi, Maria

    2015-01-01

    This exploratory case study involved a humanoid robot, NAO, and four pre-schoolers. NAO was placed in an indoor playground together with other toys and appeared as a peer who played, talked, danced and said stories. Analysis of video recordings focused on children's behaviour around NAO and how the robot gained children's attention and…

  19. Whole-Body Motion Planning for Humanoid Robots by Specifying Via-Points

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ChangHyun Sung

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available We design a framework about the planning of whole body motion for humanoid robots. Motion planning with various constraints is essential to success the task. In this research, we propose a motion planning method corresponding to various conditions for achieving the task. We specify some via-points to deal with the conditions for target achievement depending on various constraints. Together with certain constraints including task accomplishment, the via-point representation plays a crucial role in the optimization process of our method. Furthermore, the via-points as the optimization parameters are related to some physical conditions. We applied this method to generate the kicking motion of a humanoid robot HOAP-3. We have confirmed that the robot was able to complete the task of kicking a ball over an obstacle into a goal in addition to changing conditions of the location of a ball. These results show that the proposed motion planning method using via-point representation can increase articulation of the motion.

  20. Making planned paths look more human-like in humanoid robot manipulation planning

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zacharias, F.; Schlette, C.; Schmidt, F.

    2011-01-01

    It contradicts the human's expectations when humanoid robots move awkwardly during manipulation tasks. The unnatural motion may be caused by awkward start or goal configurations or by probabilistic path planning processes that are often used. This paper shows that the choice of an arm's target...... for the robot arm....

  1. Making Humanoid Robots More Acceptable Based on the Study of Robot Characters in Animation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fatemeh Maleki

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we take an approach in Humanoid Robots are not considered as robots who resembles human beings in a realistic way of appearance and act but as robots who act and react like human that make them more believable by people. Regarding this approach we will study robot characters in animation movies and discuss what makes some of them to be accepted just like a moving body and what makes some other robot characters to be believable as a living human. The goal of this paper is to create a rule set that describes friendly, socially acceptable, kind, cute... robots and in this study we will review example robots in popular animated movies. The extracted rules and features can be used for making real robots more acceptable.

  2. Humanoid assessing rehabilitative exercises.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simonov, M; Delconte, G

    2015-01-01

    This article is part of the Focus Theme of Methods of Information in Medicine on "New Methodologies for Patients Rehabilitation". The article presents the approach in which the rehabilitative exercise prepared by healthcare professional is encoded as formal knowledge and used by humanoid robot to assist patients without involving other care actors. The main objective is the use of humanoids in rehabilitative care. An example is pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD patients. Another goal is the automated judgment functionality to determine how the rehabilitation exercise matches the pre-programmed correct sequence. We use the Aldebaran Robotics' NAO humanoid to set up artificial cognitive application. Pre-programmed NAO induces elderly patient to undertake humanoid-driven rehabilitation exercise, but needs to evaluate the human actions against the correct template. Patient is observed using NAO's eyes. We use the Microsoft Kinect SDK to extract motion path from the humanoid's recorded video. We compare human- and humanoid-operated process sequences by using the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and test the prototype. This artificial cognitive software showcases the use of DTW algorithm to enable humanoids to judge in near real-time about the correctness of rehabilitative exercises performed by patients following the robot's indications. One could enable better sustainable rehabilitative care services in remote residential settings by combining intelligent applications piloting humanoids with the DTW pattern matching algorithm applied at run time to compare humanoid- and human-operated process sequences. In turn, it will lower the need of human care.

  3. Folk-Psychological Interpretation of Human vs. Humanoid Robot Behavior: Exploring the Intentional Stance toward Robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thellman, Sam; Silvervarg, Annika; Ziemke, Tom

    2017-01-01

    People rely on shared folk-psychological theories when judging behavior. These theories guide people's social interactions and therefore need to be taken into consideration in the design of robots and other autonomous systems expected to interact socially with people. It is, however, not yet clear to what degree the mechanisms that underlie people's judgments of robot behavior overlap or differ from the case of human or animal behavior. To explore this issue, participants ( N = 90) were exposed to images and verbal descriptions of eight different behaviors exhibited either by a person or a humanoid robot. Participants were asked to rate the intentionality, controllability and desirability of the behaviors, and to judge the plausibility of seven different types of explanations derived from a recently proposed psychological model of lay causal explanation of human behavior. Results indicate: substantially similar judgments of human and robot behavior, both in terms of (1a) ascriptions of intentionality/controllability/desirability and in terms of (1b) plausibility judgments of behavior explanations; (2a) high level of agreement in judgments of robot behavior - (2b) slightly lower but still largely similar to agreement over human behaviors; (3) systematic differences in judgments concerning the plausibility of goals and dispositions as explanations of human vs. humanoid behavior. Taken together, these results suggest that people's intentional stance toward the robot was in this case very similar to their stance toward the human.

  4. Hybrid Taguchi DNA Swarm Intelligence for Optimal Inverse Kinematics Redundancy Resolution of Six-DOF Humanoid Robot Arms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hsu-Chih Huang

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a hybrid Taguchi deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA swarm intelligence for solving the inverse kinematics redundancy problem of six degree-of-freedom (DOF humanoid robot arms. The inverse kinematics problem of the multi-DOF humanoid robot arm is redundant and has no general closed-form solutions or analytical solutions. The optimal joint configurations are obtained by minimizing the predefined performance index in DNA algorithm for real-world humanoid robotics application. The Taguchi method is employed to determine the DNA parameters to search for the joint solutions of the six-DOF robot arms more efficiently. This approach circumvents the disadvantage of time-consuming tuning procedure in conventional DNA computing. Simulation results are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness and merit of the proposed methods. This Taguchi-based DNA (TDNA solver outperforms the conventional solvers, such as geometric solver, Jacobian-based solver, genetic algorithm (GA solver and ant, colony optimization (ACO solver.

  5. Visual perception system and method for a humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wells, James W. (Inventor); Mc Kay, Neil David (Inventor); Chelian, Suhas E. (Inventor); Linn, Douglas Martin (Inventor); Wampler, II, Charles W. (Inventor); Bridgwater, Lyndon (Inventor)

    2012-01-01

    A robotic system includes a humanoid robot with robotic joints each moveable using an actuator(s), and a distributed controller for controlling the movement of each of the robotic joints. The controller includes a visual perception module (VPM) for visually identifying and tracking an object in the field of view of the robot under threshold lighting conditions. The VPM includes optical devices for collecting an image of the object, a positional extraction device, and a host machine having an algorithm for processing the image and positional information. The algorithm visually identifies and tracks the object, and automatically adapts an exposure time of the optical devices to prevent feature data loss of the image under the threshold lighting conditions. A method of identifying and tracking the object includes collecting the image, extracting positional information of the object, and automatically adapting the exposure time to thereby prevent feature data loss of the image.

  6. Location and Position Determination Algorithm For Humanoid Soccer Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oei Kurniawan Utomo

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available The algorithm of location and position determination was designed for humanoid soccer robot. The robots have to be able to control the ball effectively on the field of Indonesian Robot Soccer Competition which has a size of 900 cm x 600 cm. The algorithm of location and position determination uses parameters, such as the goalpost’s thickness, the compass value, and the robot’s head servo value. The goalpost’s thickness is detected using The Centre of Gravity method. The width of the goalpost detected is analyzed using the principles of camera geometry to determine the distance between the robot and the goalpost. The tangent value of head servo’s tilt angle is used to determine the distance between the robot and the ball. The distance between robot-goalpost and the distance between robot-ball are processed with the difference of head servo’s pan angle and compass value using trigonometric formulas to determine the coordinates of the robot and the ball in the Cartesian coordinates.

  7. Mechatronic Design of a New Humanoid Robot with Hybrid Parallel Actuation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vítor Santos

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robotics is unquestionably a challenging and long-term field of research. Of the numerous and most urgent challenges to tackle, autonomous and efficient locomotion may possibly be the most underdeveloped at present in the research community. Therefore, to pursue studies in relation to autonomy with efficient locomotion, the authors have been developing a new teen-sized humanoid platform with hybrid characteristics. The hybrid nature is clear in the mixed actuation based on common electrical motors and passive actuators attached in parallel to the motors. This paper presents the mechatronic design of the humanoid platform, focusing mainly on the mechanical structure, the design and simulation of the hybrid joints, and the different subsystems implemented. Trying to keep the appropriate human proportions and main degrees of freedom, the developed platform utilizes a distributed control architecture and a rich set of sensing capabilities, both ripe for future development and research.

  8. Can We Talk to Robots? Ten-Month-Old Infants Expected Interactive Humanoid Robots to Be Talked to by Persons

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arita, A.; Hiraki, K.; Kanda, T.; Ishiguro, H.

    2005-01-01

    As technology advances, many human-like robots are being developed. Although these humanoid robots should be classified as objects, they share many properties with human beings. This raises the question of how infants classify them. Based on the looking-time paradigm used by [Legerstee, M., Barna, J., & DiAdamo, C., (2000). Precursors to the…

  9. Audio-visual feedback improves the BCI performance in the navigational control of a humanoid robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emmanuele eTidoni

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Advancement in brain computer interfaces (BCI technology allows people to actively interact in the world through surrogates. Controlling real humanoid robots using BCI as intuitively as we control our body represents a challenge for current research in robotics and neuroscience. In order to successfully interact with the environment the brain integrates multiple sensory cues to form a coherent representation of the world. Cognitive neuroscience studies demonstrate that multisensory integration may imply a gain with respect to a single modality and ultimately improve the overall sensorimotor performance. For example, reactivity to simultaneous visual and auditory stimuli may be higher than to the sum of the same stimuli delivered in isolation or in temporal sequence. Yet, knowledge about whether audio-visual integration may improve the control of a surrogate is meager. To explore this issue, we provided human footstep sounds as audio feedback to BCI users while controlling a humanoid robot. Participants were asked to steer their robot surrogate and perform a pick-and-place task through BCI-SSVEPs. We found that audio-visual synchrony between footsteps sound and actual humanoid’s walk reduces the time required for steering the robot. Thus, auditory feedback congruent with the humanoid actions may improve motor decisions of the BCI’s user and help in the feeling of control over it. Our results shed light on the possibility to increase robot’s control through the combination of multisensory feedback to a BCI user.

  10. Robust Sound Localization: An Application of an Auditory Perception System for a Humanoid Robot

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Irie, Robert E

    1995-01-01

    .... This thesis presents an integrated auditory system for a humanoid robot, currently under development, that will, among other things, learn to localize normal, everyday sounds in a realistic environment...

  11. Peripersonal Space and Margin of Safety around the Body: Learning Visuo-Tactile Associations in a Humanoid Robot with Artificial Skin.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roncone, Alessandro; Hoffmann, Matej; Pattacini, Ugo; Fadiga, Luciano; Metta, Giorgio

    2016-01-01

    This paper investigates a biologically motivated model of peripersonal space through its implementation on a humanoid robot. Guided by the present understanding of the neurophysiology of the fronto-parietal system, we developed a computational model inspired by the receptive fields of polymodal neurons identified, for example, in brain areas F4 and VIP. The experiments on the iCub humanoid robot show that the peripersonal space representation i) can be learned efficiently and in real-time via a simple interaction with the robot, ii) can lead to the generation of behaviors like avoidance and reaching, and iii) can contribute to the understanding the biological principle of motor equivalence. More specifically, with respect to i) the present model contributes to hypothesizing a learning mechanisms for peripersonal space. In relation to point ii) we show how a relatively simple controller can exploit the learned receptive fields to generate either avoidance or reaching of an incoming stimulus and for iii) we show how the robot can select arbitrary body parts as the controlled end-point of an avoidance or reaching movement.

  12. Brain response to a humanoid robot in areas implicated in the perception of human emotional gestures.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thierry Chaminade

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available The humanoid robot WE4-RII was designed to express human emotions in order to improve human-robot interaction. We can read the emotions depicted in its gestures, yet might utilize different neural processes than those used for reading the emotions in human agents.Here, fMRI was used to assess how brain areas activated by the perception of human basic emotions (facial expression of Anger, Joy, Disgust and silent speech respond to a humanoid robot impersonating the same emotions, while participants were instructed to attend either to the emotion or to the motion depicted.Increased responses to robot compared to human stimuli in the occipital and posterior temporal cortices suggest additional visual processing when perceiving a mechanical anthropomorphic agent. In contrast, activity in cortical areas endowed with mirror properties, like left Broca's area for the perception of speech, and in the processing of emotions like the left anterior insula for the perception of disgust and the orbitofrontal cortex for the perception of anger, is reduced for robot stimuli, suggesting lesser resonance with the mechanical agent. Finally, instructions to explicitly attend to the emotion significantly increased response to robot, but not human facial expressions in the anterior part of the left inferior frontal gyrus, a neural marker of motor resonance.Motor resonance towards a humanoid robot, but not a human, display of facial emotion is increased when attention is directed towards judging emotions.Artificial agents can be used to assess how factors like anthropomorphism affect neural response to the perception of human actions.

  13. Brain response to a humanoid robot in areas implicated in the perception of human emotional gestures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chaminade, Thierry; Zecca, Massimiliano; Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne; Takanishi, Atsuo; Frith, Chris D; Micera, Silvestro; Dario, Paolo; Rizzolatti, Giacomo; Gallese, Vittorio; Umiltà, Maria Alessandra

    2010-07-21

    The humanoid robot WE4-RII was designed to express human emotions in order to improve human-robot interaction. We can read the emotions depicted in its gestures, yet might utilize different neural processes than those used for reading the emotions in human agents. Here, fMRI was used to assess how brain areas activated by the perception of human basic emotions (facial expression of Anger, Joy, Disgust) and silent speech respond to a humanoid robot impersonating the same emotions, while participants were instructed to attend either to the emotion or to the motion depicted. Increased responses to robot compared to human stimuli in the occipital and posterior temporal cortices suggest additional visual processing when perceiving a mechanical anthropomorphic agent. In contrast, activity in cortical areas endowed with mirror properties, like left Broca's area for the perception of speech, and in the processing of emotions like the left anterior insula for the perception of disgust and the orbitofrontal cortex for the perception of anger, is reduced for robot stimuli, suggesting lesser resonance with the mechanical agent. Finally, instructions to explicitly attend to the emotion significantly increased response to robot, but not human facial expressions in the anterior part of the left inferior frontal gyrus, a neural marker of motor resonance. Motor resonance towards a humanoid robot, but not a human, display of facial emotion is increased when attention is directed towards judging emotions. Artificial agents can be used to assess how factors like anthropomorphism affect neural response to the perception of human actions.

  14. Multi-physics modelling of a compliant humanoid robot

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zobova, Alexandra A., E-mail: azobova@mech.math.msu.su [Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics (Russian Federation); Habra, Timothée, E-mail: timothee.habra@uclouvain.be [Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Center for Research in Mechatronics, Institute of Mechanics, Materials, and Civil Engineering (Belgium); Van der Noot, Nicolas, E-mail: nicolas.vandernoot@uclouvain.be, E-mail: nicolas.vandernoot@epfl.ch [EPFL STI IBI BIOROB, Biorobotics Laboratory, Institute of Bioengineering, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) (Switzerland); Dallali, Houman, E-mail: houman.dallali@iit.it; Tsagarakis, Nikolaos G., E-mail: nikos.tsagarakis@iit.it [Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Department of Advanced Robotics (Italy); Fisette, Paul, E-mail: paul.fisette@uclouvain.be; Ronsse, Renaud, E-mail: renaud.ronsse@uclouvain.be [Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Center for Research in Mechatronics, Institute of Mechanics, Materials, and Civil Engineering (Belgium)

    2017-01-15

    We present a multibody simulator being used for compliant humanoid robot modelling and report our reasoning for choosing the settings of the simulator’s key features. First, we provide a study on how the numerical integration speed and accuracy depend on the coordinate representation of the multibody system. This choice is particularly critical for mechanisms with long serial chains (e.g. legs and arms). Our second contribution is a full electromechanical model of the inner dynamics of the compliant actuators embedded in the COMAN robot, since joints’ compliance is needed for the robot safety and energy efficiency. Third, we discuss the different approaches for modelling contacts and selecting an appropriate contact library. The recommended solution is to couple our simulator with an open-source contact library offering both accurate and fast contact modelling. The simulator performances are assessed by two different tasks involving contacts: a bimanual manipulation task and a squatting tasks. The former shows reliability of the simulator. For the latter, we report a comparison between the robot behaviour as predicted by our simulation environment, and the real one.

  15. Multi-physics modelling of a compliant humanoid robot

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zobova, Alexandra A.; Habra, Timothée; Van der Noot, Nicolas; Dallali, Houman; Tsagarakis, Nikolaos G.; Fisette, Paul; Ronsse, Renaud

    2017-01-01

    We present a multibody simulator being used for compliant humanoid robot modelling and report our reasoning for choosing the settings of the simulator’s key features. First, we provide a study on how the numerical integration speed and accuracy depend on the coordinate representation of the multibody system. This choice is particularly critical for mechanisms with long serial chains (e.g. legs and arms). Our second contribution is a full electromechanical model of the inner dynamics of the compliant actuators embedded in the COMAN robot, since joints’ compliance is needed for the robot safety and energy efficiency. Third, we discuss the different approaches for modelling contacts and selecting an appropriate contact library. The recommended solution is to couple our simulator with an open-source contact library offering both accurate and fast contact modelling. The simulator performances are assessed by two different tasks involving contacts: a bimanual manipulation task and a squatting tasks. The former shows reliability of the simulator. For the latter, we report a comparison between the robot behaviour as predicted by our simulation environment, and the real one.

  16. Method and apparatus for automatic control of a humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abdallah, Muhammad E (Inventor); Platt, Robert (Inventor); Wampler, II, Charles W. (Inventor); Reiland, Matthew J (Inventor); Sanders, Adam M (Inventor)

    2013-01-01

    A robotic system includes a humanoid robot having a plurality of joints adapted for force control with respect to an object acted upon by the robot, a graphical user interface (GUI) for receiving an input signal from a user, and a controller. The GUI provides the user with intuitive programming access to the controller. The controller controls the joints using an impedance-based control framework, which provides object level, end-effector level, and/or joint space-level control of the robot in response to the input signal. A method for controlling the robotic system includes receiving the input signal via the GUI, e.g., a desired force, and then processing the input signal using a host machine to control the joints via an impedance-based control framework. The framework provides object level, end-effector level, and/or joint space-level control of the robot, and allows for functional-based GUI to simplify implementation of a myriad of operating modes.

  17. Experimentally-based optimization of contact parameters in dynamics simulation of humanoid robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vivian, Michele; Reggiani, Monica; Sartori, Massimo

    2013-01-01

    With this work we introduce a novel methodology for the simulation of walking of a humanoid robot. Motion capture technology is used to calibrate the dynamics engine internal parameters and validate the simulated motor task. Results showed the calibrated contact model allows predicting dynamically

  18. Emotion Walking for Humanoid Avatars Using Brain Signals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahmad Hoirul Basori

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Interaction between humans and humanoid avatar representations is very important in virtual reality and robotics, since the humanoid avatar can represent either a human or a robot in a virtual environment. Many researchers have focused on providing natural interactions for humanoid avatars or even for robots with the use of camera tracking, gloves, giving them the ability to speak, brain interfaces and other devices. This paper provides a new multimodal interaction control for avatars by combining brain signals, facial muscle tension recognition and glove tracking to change the facial expression of humanoid avatars according to the user's emotional condition. The signals from brain activity and muscle movements are used as the emotional stimulator, while the glove acts as emotion intensity control for the avatar. This multimodal interface can determine when the humanoid avatar needs to change their facial expression or their walking power. The results show that humanoid avatar have different timelines of walking and facial expressions when the user stimulates them with different emotions. This finding is believed to provide new knowledge on controlling robots' and humanoid avatars' facial expressions and walking.

  19. Grounding action words in the sensorimotor interaction with the world: experiments with a simulated iCub humanoid robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Davide Marocco

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a cognitive robotics model for the study of the embodied representation of action words. The present research will present how a iCub humanoid robot can learn the meaning of action words (i.e. words that represent dynamical events that happen in time by physically acting on the environment and linking the effects of its own actions with the behaviour observed on the objects before and after the action. The control system of the robot is an artificial neural network trained to manipulate an object through a Back-Propagation Through Time algorithm. We will show that in the presented model the grounding of action words relies directly to the way in which an agent interacts with the environment and manipulates it.

  20. Reverse control for humanoid robot task recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hak, Sovannara; Mansard, Nicolas; Stasse, Olivier; Laumond, Jean Paul

    2012-12-01

    Efficient methods to perform motion recognition have been developed using statistical tools. Those methods rely on primitive learning in a suitable space, for example, the latent space of the joint angle and/or adequate task spaces. Learned primitives are often sequential: A motion is segmented according to the time axis. When working with a humanoid robot, a motion can be decomposed into parallel subtasks. For example, in a waiter scenario, the robot has to keep some plates horizontal with one of its arms while placing a plate on the table with its free hand. Recognition can thus not be limited to one task per consecutive segment of time. The method presented in this paper takes advantage of the knowledge of what tasks the robot is able to do and how the motion is generated from this set of known controllers, to perform a reverse engineering of an observed motion. This analysis is intended to recognize parallel tasks that have been used to generate a motion. The method relies on the task-function formalism and the projection operation into the null space of a task to decouple the controllers. The approach is successfully applied on a real robot to disambiguate motion in different scenarios where two motions look similar but have different purposes.

  1. Learning Spatial Object Localization from Vision on a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jürgen Leitner

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available We present a combined machine learning and computer vision approach for robots to localize objects. It allows our iCub humanoid to quickly learn to provide accurate 3D position estimates (in the centimetre range of objects seen. Biologically inspired approaches, such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN and Genetic Programming (GP, are trained to provide these position estimates using the two cameras and the joint encoder readings. No camera calibration or explicit knowledge of the robot's kinematic model is needed. We find that ANN and GP are not just faster and have lower complexity than traditional techniques, but also learn without the need for extensive calibration procedures. In addition, the approach is localizing objects robustly, when placed in the robot's workspace at arbitrary positions, even while the robot is moving its torso, head and eyes.

  2. FY1995 research on humanoid; 1995 nendo humanoid kenkyu

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1997-03-01

    The future robot must be a sensor-complex with high intelligence and flexible mechanical body. The purpose of the project is to improve the basic technologies by making a prototype of the human-like robot to work with human using various communication channels such as voice, facial expressions, and motion of the head, eyes, arms and legs. The following basic technologies are successfully developed and two humanoid robots were built as the total systems. They can perform some physical works communicating with human. Moreover these robots were connected to ISDN network for the experiments of tele-robotics. 1. a environment and human face understanding using vision and audition. 2. a speech conversation under the ordinary room environment. 3. a human machine communication using gesticulations. 4. a flexible human-like robot head, arms and hands. 5. a biped walking using the dynamic balance control. (NEDO)

  3. Visual SLAM and Moving-object Detection for a Small-size Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yin-Tien Wang

    2010-09-01

    Full Text Available In the paper, a novel moving object detection (MOD algorithm is developed and integrated with robot visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (vSLAM. The moving object is assumed to be a rigid body and its coordinate system in space is represented by a position vector and a rotation matrix. The MOD algorithm is composed of detection of image features, initialization of image features, and calculation of object coordinates. Experimentation is implemented on a small-size humanoid robot and the results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is efficient for robot visual SLAM and moving object detection.

  4. Dynamics based modeling of wheeled platform for humanoid robot torso

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Petrović Vladimir M.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available From the ancient mythology till the modern times, people were trying to build an artificial mechanical replica of themselves. Inspired by this long tradition of various engineering projects, we will hereby describe a partly humanoid robotic structure. Our robotic configuration is composed out of an anthropomimetic upper body, but instead of legs it uses a wheeled cart for the motion. In our research, this so-called semi-anthropomimetic structure has a four-wheeled cart. This work is aiming to analyze the behaviour of the robot that is exposed to different kind of external disturbances. Disturbances coming from the outside in the form of external forces (impulse and long term simulate the interactions of the robot and its ambience. Necessary simulations were thoroughly executed (in that way analyzing robotic balance and proper size of the cart is evaluated following the ZMP theoretical background. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR-35003 i br. III-44008

  5. Region of eye contact of humanoid Nao robot is similar to that of a human

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cuijpers, R.H.; Pol, van der D.; Herrmann, G.; Pearson, M.J.; Lenz, A.; Bremner, P.; Spiers, A.; Leonards, U.

    2013-01-01

    Eye contact is an important social cue in human-human interaction, but it is unclear how easily it carries over to humanoid robots. In this study we investigated whether the tolerance of making eye contact is similar for the Nao robot as compared to human lookers. We measured the region of eye

  6. Classification of obstacle shape for generating walking path of humanoid robot

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Park, Chan Soo; Kim, Do Ik

    2013-01-01

    To generate the walking path of a humanoid robot in an unknown environment, the shapes of obstacles around the robot should be detected accurately. However, doing so incurs a very large computational cast. Therefore this study proposes a method to classify the obstacle shape into three types: a shape small enough for the robot to go over, a shape planar enough for the robot foot to make contact with, and an uncertain shape that must be avoided by the robot. To classify the obstacle shape, first, the range and the number of the obstacles is detected. If an obstacle can make contact with the robot foot, the shape of an obstacle is accurately derived. If an obstacle has uncertain shape or small size, the shape of an obstacle is not detected to minimize the computational load. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm efficiently classifies the shapes of obstacles around the robot in real time with low computational load

  7. Classification of obstacle shape for generating walking path of humanoid robot

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Park, Chan Soo; Kim, Do Ik [Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

    2013-02-15

    To generate the walking path of a humanoid robot in an unknown environment, the shapes of obstacles around the robot should be detected accurately. However, doing so incurs a very large computational cast. Therefore this study proposes a method to classify the obstacle shape into three types: a shape small enough for the robot to go over, a shape planar enough for the robot foot to make contact with, and an uncertain shape that must be avoided by the robot. To classify the obstacle shape, first, the range and the number of the obstacles is detected. If an obstacle can make contact with the robot foot, the shape of an obstacle is accurately derived. If an obstacle has uncertain shape or small size, the shape of an obstacle is not detected to minimize the computational load. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm efficiently classifies the shapes of obstacles around the robot in real time with low computational load.

  8. Artificial heart for humanoid robot using coiled SMA actuators

    Science.gov (United States)

    Potnuru, Akshay; Tadesse, Yonas

    2015-03-01

    Previously, we have presented the design and characterization of artificial heart using cylindrical shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators for humanoids [1]. The robotic heart was primarily designed to pump a blood-like fluid to parts of the robot such as the face to simulate blushing or anger by the use of elastomeric substrates for the transport of fluids. It can also be used for other applications. In this paper, we present an improved design by using high strain coiled SMAs and a novel pumping mechanism that uses sequential actuation to create peristalsis-like motions, and hence pump the fluid. Various placements of actuators will be investigated with respect to the silicone elastomeric body. This new approach provides a better performance in terms of the fluid volume pumped.

  9. Adaptive neural control for dual-arm coordination of humanoid robot with unknown nonlinearities in output mechanism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Zhi; Chen, Ci; Zhang, Yun; Chen, C L P

    2015-03-01

    To achieve an excellent dual-arm coordination of the humanoid robot, it is essential to deal with the nonlinearities existing in the system dynamics. The literatures so far on the humanoid robot control have a common assumption that the problem of output hysteresis could be ignored. However, in the practical applications, the output hysteresis is widely spread; and its existing limits the motion/force performances of the robotic system. In this paper, an adaptive neural control scheme, which takes the unknown output hysteresis and computational efficiency into account, is presented and investigated. In the controller design, the prior knowledge of system dynamics is assumed to be unknown. The motion error is guaranteed to converge to a small neighborhood of the origin by Lyapunov's stability theory. Simultaneously, the internal force is kept bounded and its error can be made arbitrarily small.

  10. Room Volume Estimation Based on Ambiguity of Short-Term Interaural Phase Differences Using Humanoid Robot Head

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ryuichi Shimoyama

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Humans can recognize approximate room size using only binaural audition. However, sound reverberation is not negligible in most environments. The reverberation causes temporal fluctuations in the short-term interaural phase differences (IPDs of sound pressure. This study proposes a novel method for a binaural humanoid robot head to estimate room volume. The method is based on the statistical properties of the short-term IPDs of sound pressure. The humanoid robot turns its head toward a sound source, recognizes the sound source, and then estimates the ego-centric distance by its stereovision. By interpolating the relations between room volume, average standard deviation, and ego-centric distance experimentally obtained for various rooms in a prepared database, the room volume was estimated by the binaural audition of the robot from the average standard deviation of the short-term IPDs at the estimated distance.

  11. Inverse Kinematics of a Humanoid Robot with Non-Spherical Hip: A Hybrid Algorithm Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rafael Cisneros Limón

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes an approach to solve the inverse kinematics problem of humanoid robots whose construction shows a small but non negligible offset at the hip which prevents any purely analytical solution to be developed. Knowing that a purely numerical solution is not feasible due to variable efficiency problems, the proposed one first neglects the offset presence in order to obtain an approximate “solution” by means of an analytical algorithm based on screw theory, and then uses it as the initial condition of a numerical refining procedure based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. In this way, few iterations are needed for any specified attitude, making it possible to implement the algorithm for real-time applications. As a way to show the algorithm's implementation, one case of study is considered throughout the paper, represented by the SILO2 humanoid robot.

  12. Biologically inspired control of humanoid robot arms robust and adaptive approaches

    CERN Document Server

    Spiers, Adam; Herrmann, Guido

    2016-01-01

    This book investigates a biologically inspired method of robot arm control, developed with the objective of synthesising human-like motion dynamically, using nonlinear, robust and adaptive control techniques in practical robot systems. The control method caters to a rising interest in humanoid robots and the need for appropriate control schemes to match these systems. Unlike the classic kinematic schemes used in industrial manipulators, the dynamic approaches proposed here promote human-like motion with better exploitation of the robot’s physical structure. This also benefits human-robot interaction. The control schemes proposed in this book are inspired by a wealth of human-motion literature that indicates the drivers of motion to be dynamic, model-based and optimal. Such considerations lend themselves nicely to achievement via nonlinear control techniques without the necessity for extensive and complex biological models. The operational-space method of robot control forms the basis of many of the techniqu...

  13. Entorno para coreografiar movimientos en un robot humanoide

    OpenAIRE

    Inglés Romero, Juan Francisco; Vicente Chicote, Cristina; Alonso Cáceres, Diego

    2010-01-01

    En los últimos años, el Desarrollo Software Dirigido por Modelos ha ido ganando en importancia y, actualmente, es considerado uno de los enfoques más prometedores en el ámbito de la Ingeniería del Software. En este artículo, se presenta un ejemplo práctico de aplicación de este nuevo enfoque al dominio de la robótica, centrado en el desarrollo de un entorno para modelar coreografías de movimientos para el robot humanoide Robonova. Este entorno permite a los usuarios de esta plataforma r...

  14. Tech United Eindhoven RoboCup adult size humanoid team description 2012

    OpenAIRE

    Zutven, van, P.W.M.; van Dalen, S.J.; Assman, T.M.; Caarls, J.; Çilli, C.; Aarts, M.A.P.; Boshoven, Tom; Mironchyk, P.; Ilhan, E.; Nijmeijer, H.

    2012-01-01

    This document presents the 2012 Tech United Eindhoven adult size humanoid robot team from The Netherlands. The team contributes the adult-size humanoid robot TUlip. Here we present the mechanical design and kinematic structure of the robot. We introduce the walking gait and contribute a controller structure including gravity compensation. Finally, we describe the vision system, self localization and world model, which are used for the attacker and defender strategy in the humanoid robot socce...

  15. Combining gait optimization with passive system to increase the energy efficiency of a humanoid robot walking movement

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pereira, Ana I.; Lima, José; Costa, Paulo

    2015-01-01

    There are several approaches to create the Humanoid robot gait planning. This problem presents a large number of unknown parameters that should be found to make the humanoid robot to walk. Optimization in simulation models can be used to find the gait based on several criteria such as energy minimization, acceleration, step length among the others. The energy consumption can also be reduced with elastic elements coupled to each joint. The presented paper addresses an optimization method, the Stretched Simulated Annealing, that runs in an accurate and stable simulation model to find the optimal gait combined with elastic elements. Final results demonstrate that optimization is a valid gait planning technique

  16. Combining gait optimization with passive system to increase the energy efficiency of a humanoid robot walking movement

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Pereira, Ana I. [Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal); ALGORITMI,University of Minho (Portugal); Lima, José [Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal); INESC TEC (formerly INESC Porto) Porto (Portugal); Costa, Paulo [Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (Portugal); INESC TEC (formerly INESC Porto) Porto (Portugal)

    2015-03-10

    There are several approaches to create the Humanoid robot gait planning. This problem presents a large number of unknown parameters that should be found to make the humanoid robot to walk. Optimization in simulation models can be used to find the gait based on several criteria such as energy minimization, acceleration, step length among the others. The energy consumption can also be reduced with elastic elements coupled to each joint. The presented paper addresses an optimization method, the Stretched Simulated Annealing, that runs in an accurate and stable simulation model to find the optimal gait combined with elastic elements. Final results demonstrate that optimization is a valid gait planning technique.

  17. HBS-1: A Modular Child-Size 3D Printed Humanoid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lianjun Wu

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available An affordable, highly articulated, child-size humanoid robot could potentially be used for various purposes, widening the design space of humanoids for further study. Several findings indicated that normal children and children with autism interact well with humanoids. This paper presents a child-sized humanoid robot (HBS-1 intended primarily for children’s education and rehabilitation. The design approach is based on the design for manufacturing (DFM and the design for assembly (DFA philosophies to realize the robot fully using additive manufacturing. Most parts of the robot are fabricated with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS using rapid prototyping technology. Servomotors and shape memory alloy actuators are used as actuating mechanisms. The mechanical design, analysis and characterization of the robot are presented in both theoretical and experimental frameworks.

  18. Posture Control—Human-Inspired Approaches for Humanoid Robot Benchmarking: Conceptualizing Tests, Protocols and Analyses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas Mergner

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Posture control is indispensable for both humans and humanoid robots, which becomes especially evident when performing sensorimotor tasks such as moving on compliant terrain or interacting with the environment. Posture control is therefore targeted in recent proposals of robot benchmarking in order to advance their development. This Methods article suggests corresponding robot tests of standing balance, drawing inspirations from the human sensorimotor system and presenting examples from robot experiments. To account for a considerable technical and algorithmic diversity among robots, we focus in our tests on basic posture control mechanisms, which provide humans with an impressive postural versatility and robustness. Specifically, we focus on the mechanically challenging balancing of the whole body above the feet in the sagittal plane around the ankle joints in concert with the upper body balancing around the hip joints. The suggested tests target three key issues of human balancing, which appear equally relevant for humanoid bipeds: (1 four basic physical disturbances (support surface (SS tilt and translation, field and contact forces may affect the balancing in any given degree of freedom (DoF. Targeting these disturbances allows us to abstract from the manifold of possible behavioral tasks. (2 Posture control interacts in a conflict-free way with the control of voluntary movements for undisturbed movement execution, both with “reactive” balancing of external disturbances and “proactive” balancing of self-produced disturbances from the voluntary movements. Our proposals therefore target both types of disturbances and their superposition. (3 Relevant for both versatility and robustness of the control, linkages between the posture control mechanisms across DoFs provide their functional cooperation and coordination at will and on functional demands. The suggested tests therefore include ankle-hip coordination. Suggested benchmarking

  19. Developing Humanoid Robots for Real-World Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stoica, Adrian; Kuhlman, Michael; Assad, Chris; Keymeulen, Didier

    2008-01-01

    Humanoids are steadily improving in appearance and functionality demonstrated in controlled environments. To address the challenges of operation in the real-world, researchers have proposed the use of brain-inspired architectures for robot control, and the use of robot learning techniques that enable the robot to acquire and tune skills and behaviours. In the first part of the paper we introduce new concepts and results in these two areas. First, we present a cerebellum-inspired model that demonstrated efficiency in the sensory-motor control of anthropomorphic arms, and in gait control of dynamic walkers. Then, we present a set of new ideas related to robot learning, emphasizing the importance of developing teaching techniques that support learning. In the second part of the paper we propose the use in robotics of the iterative and incremental development methodologies, in the context of practical task-oriented applications. These methodologies promise to rapidly reach system-level integration, and to early identify system-level weaknesses to focus on. We apply this methodology in a task targeting the automated assembly of a modular structure using HOAP-2. We confirm this approach led to rapid development of a end-to-end capability, and offered guidance on which technologies to focus on for gradual improvement of a complete functional system. It is believed that providing Grand Challenge type milestones in practical task-oriented applications accelerates development. As a meaningful target in short-mid term we propose the 'IKEA Challenge', aimed at the demonstration of autonomous assembly of various pieces of furniture, from the box, following included written/drawn instructions.

  20. A direct methanol fuel cell system to power a humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joh, Han-Ik; Ha, Tae Jung; Hwang, Sang Youp; Kim, Jong-Ho; Chae, Seung-Hoon; Cho, Jae Hyung; Prabhuram, Joghee; Kim, Soo-Kil; Lim, Tae-Hoon; Cho, Baek-Kyu; Oh, Jun-Ho; Moon, Sang Heup; Ha, Heung Yong

    In this study, a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) system, which is the first of its kind, has been developed to power a humanoid robot. The DMFC system consists of a stack, a balance of plant (BOP), a power management unit (PMU), and a back-up battery. The stack has 42 unit cells and is able to produce about 400 W at 19.3 V. The robot is 125 cm tall, weighs 56 kg, and consumes 210 W during normal operation. The robot is integrated with the DMFC system that powers the robot in a stable manner for more than 2 h. The power consumption by the robot during various motions is studied, and load sharing between the fuel cell and the back-up battery is also observed. The loss of methanol feed due to crossover and evaporation amounts to 32.0% and the efficiency of the DMFC system in terms of net electric power is 22.0%.

  1. Mechanical design and optimal control of humanoid robot (TPinokio

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Teck Chew Wee

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available The mechanical structure and the control of the locomotion of bipedal humanoid is an important and challenging domain of research in bipedal robots. Accurate models of the kinematics and dynamics of the robot are essential to achieve bipedal locomotion. Toe-foot walking produces a more natural and faster walking speed and it is even possible to perform stretch knee walking. This study presents the mechanical design of a toe-feet bipedal, TPinokio and the implementation of some optimal walking gait generation methods. The optimality in the gait trajectory is achieved by applying augmented model predictive control method and the pole-zero cancellation method, taken into consideration of a trade-off between walking speed and stability. The mechanism of the TPinokio robot is designed in modular form, so that its kinematics can be modelled accurately into a multiple point-mass system, its dynamics is modelled using the single and double mass inverted pendulum model and zero-moment-point concept. The effectiveness of the design and control technique is validated by simulation testing with the robot walking on flat surface and climbing stairs.

  2. Investigating the ability to read others' intentions using humanoid robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sciutti, Alessandra; Ansuini, Caterina; Becchio, Cristina; Sandini, Giulio

    2015-01-01

    The ability to interact with other people hinges crucially on the possibility to anticipate how their actions would unfold. Recent evidence suggests that a similar skill may be grounded on the fact that we perform an action differently if different intentions lead it. Human observers can detect these differences and use them to predict the purpose leading the action. Although intention reading from movement observation is receiving a growing interest in research, the currently applied experimental paradigms have important limitations. Here, we describe a new approach to study intention understanding that takes advantage of robots, and especially of humanoid robots. We posit that this choice may overcome the drawbacks of previous methods, by guaranteeing the ideal trade-off between controllability and naturalness of the interactive scenario. Robots indeed can establish an interaction in a controlled manner, while sharing the same action space and exhibiting contingent behaviors. To conclude, we discuss the advantages of this research strategy and the aspects to be taken in consideration when attempting to define which human (and robot) motion features allow for intention reading during social interactive tasks.

  3. From Concept to Realization: Designing Miniature Humanoids for Running

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Youngbum Jun

    2010-02-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robots present exciting research possibilities such as human gaits, social interaction, and even creativity. Full-size humanoid designs have shown impressive capabilities, yet are custom-built and expensive. Cost and sophistication barriers make reproducing and verifying results very difficult. The recent proliferation of mini-humanoids presents an affordable alternative, in that smaller robots are cheaper to own and simpler to operate. At less than 2000 USD, these robots are capable of human-like motion, yet lack precision sensors and processing power. The authors' goal is to produce a miniature humanoid robot that is both small and affordable, while capable of advanced dynamic walking and running. This requires sensing of the robot's inertia and velocity, the forces on its feet, and the ability to generate and modify motion commands in real time. The presented design uses commercial parts and simple machining methods to minimize cost. A power-efficient mobile x86 computer on-board leverages existing operating systems and simplifies software development. Preliminary results demonstrate controlled walking and feedback control.

  4. Bio-Inspired Optimal Control Framework to Generate Walking Motions for the Humanoid Robot iCub Using Whole Body Models

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yue Hu

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Bipedal locomotion remains one of the major open challenges of humanoid robotics. The common approaches are based on simple reduced model dynamics to generate walking trajectories, often neglecting the whole-body dynamics of the robots. As motions in nature are often considered as optimal with respect to certain criteria, in this work, we present an optimal control-based approach that allows us to generate optimized walking motions using a precise whole-body dynamic model of the robot, in contrast with the common approaches. The optimal control problem is formulated to minimize a set of desired objective functions with respect to physical constraints of the robot and contact constraints of the walking phases; the problem is then solved with a direct multiple shooting method. We apply the formulation with combinations of different objective criteria to the model of a reduced version of the iCub humanoid robot of 15 internal DOF. The obtained trajectories are executed on the real robot, and we carry out a discussion on the differences between the outcomes of this approach with the classic approaches.

  5. Humanoid Head Face Mechanism with Expandable Facial Expressions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wagshum Techane Asheber

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Recently a social robot for daily life activities is becoming more common. To this end a humanoid robot with realistic facial expression is a strong candidate for common chores. In this paper, the development of a humanoid face mechanism with a simplified system complexity to generate human like facial expression is presented. The distinctive feature of this face robot is the use of significantly fewer actuators. Only three servo motors for facial expressions and five for the rest of the head motions have been used. This leads to effectively low energy consumption, making it suitable for applications such as mobile humanoid robots. Moreover, the modular design makes it possible to have as many face appearances as needed on one structure. The mechanism allows expansion to generate more expressions without addition or alteration of components. The robot is also equipped with an audio system and camera inside each eyeball, consequently hearing and vision sensibility are utilized in localization, communication and enhancement of expression exposition processes.

  6. Feasibility Study of a Socially Assistive Humanoid Robot for Guiding Elderly Individuals during Walking

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chiara Piezzo

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The impact of the world-wide ageing population has commenced with respect to society in developed countries. Several researchers focused on exploring new methods to improve the quality of life of elderly individuals by allowing them to remain independent and healthy to the maximum possible extent. For example, new walking aids are designed to allow elderly individuals to remain mobile in a safe manner because the importance of walking is well-known. The aim of the present study involves designing a humanoid robot guide as a walking trainer for elderly individuals. It is hypothesized that the same service robot provides an assistive and social contribution with respect to interaction between elderly users by motivating them to walk more and simultaneously provides assistance, such as physical assistance and gait monitoring, while walking. This study includes a detailed statement of the research problem as well as a literature review of existing studies related to walking companion robots. A user-centred design approach is adopted to report the results of the current first feasibility study by using a commercially available humanoid robot known as Pepper developed by Softbank-Aldebaran. A quantitative questionnaire was used to investigate all elements that assess intrinsic motivation in users while performing a given activity. Conversely, basic gait data were acquired through a video analysis to test the capability of the robot to modify the gait of human users. The results in terms of the feedback received from elderly subjects and the literature review improve the design of the walking trainer for elderly individuals.

  7. Robots testing robots: ALAN-Arm, a humanoid arm for the testing of robotic rehabilitation systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brookes, Jack; Kuznecovs, Maksims; Kanakis, Menelaos; Grigals, Arturs; Narvidas, Mazvydas; Gallagher, Justin; Levesley, Martin

    2017-07-01

    Robotics is increasing in popularity as a method of providing rich, personalized and cost-effective physiotherapy to individuals with some degree of upper limb paralysis, such as those who have suffered a stroke. These robotic rehabilitation systems are often high powered, and exoskeletal systems can attach to the person in a restrictive manner. Therefore, ensuring the mechanical safety of these devices before they come in contact with individuals is a priority. Additionally, rehabilitation systems may use novel sensor systems to measure current arm position. Used to capture and assess patient movements, these first need to be verified for accuracy by an external system. We present the ALAN-Arm, a humanoid robotic arm designed to be used for both accuracy benchmarking and safety testing of robotic rehabilitation systems. The system can be attached to a rehabilitation device and then replay generated or human movement trajectories, as well as autonomously play rehabilitation games or activities. Tests of the ALAN-Arm indicated it could recreate the path of a generated slow movement path with a maximum error of 14.2mm (mean = 5.8mm) and perform cyclic movements up to 0.6Hz with low gain (<1.5dB). Replaying human data trajectories showed the ability to largely preserve human movement characteristics with slightly higher path length and lower normalised jerk.

  8. Using the Functional Reach Test for Probing the Static Stability of Bipedal Standing in Humanoid Robots Based on the Passive Motion Paradigm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jacopo Zenzeri

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The goal of this paper is to analyze the static stability of a computational architecture, based on the Passive Motion Paradigm, for coordinating the redundant degrees of freedom of a humanoid robot during whole-body reaching movements in bipedal standing. The analysis is based on a simulation study that implements the Functional Reach Test, originally developed for assessing the danger of falling in elderly people. The study is carried out in the YARP environment that allows realistic simulations with the iCub humanoid robot.

  9. Investigating the ability to read others’ intentions using humanoid robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alessandra eSciutti

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available The ability to interact with other people hinges crucially on the possibility to anticipate how their actions would unfold. Recent evidence suggests that a similar skill may be grounded on the fact that we perform an action differently if different intentions lead it. Human observers can detect these differences and use them to predict the purpose leading the action. Although intention reading from movement observation is receiving a growing interest in research, the currently applied experimental paradigms have important limitations. Here, we describe a new approach to study intention understanding that takes advantage of robots, and especially of humanoid robots. We posit that this choice may overcome the drawbacks of previous methods, by guaranteeing the ideal trade-off between controllability and naturalness of the interactive scenario. Robots indeed can establish an interaction in a controlled manner, while sharing the same action space and guaranteeing contingent behaviors. To conclude, we discuss the advantages of this research strategy and the aspects to be taken in consideration when attempting to define which human (and robot motion features allow for intention reading during social interactive tasks.

  10. HYDROïD humanoid robot head with perception and emotion capabilities :Modeling, Design and Experimental Results

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Samer eAlfayad

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available In the framework of the HYDROïD humanoid robot project, this paper describes the modeling and design of an electrically actuated head mechanism. Perception and emotion capabilities are considered in the design process. Since HYDROïD humanoid robot is hydraulically actuated, the choice of electrical actuation for the head mechanism addressed in this paper is justified. Considering perception and emotion capabilities leads to a total number of 15 degrees of freedom for the head mechanism which are split on four main sub-mechanisms: the neck, the mouth, the eyes and the eyebrows. Biological data and kinematics performances of human head are taken as inputs of the design process. A new solution of uncoupled eyes is developed to possibly address the master-slave process that links the human eyes as well as vergence capabilities. Modeling each sub-system is carried out in order to get equations of motion, their frequency responses and their transfer functions. The neck pitch rotation is given as a study example. Then, the head mechanism performances are presented through a comparison between model and experimental results validating the hardware capabilities. Finally, the head mechanism is integrated on the HYDROïD upper-body. An object tracking experiment coupled with emotional expressions is carried out to validate the synchronization of the eye rotations with the body motions.

  11. Emotion expression of an affective state space; a humanoid robot displaying a dynamic emotional state during a soccer game

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Mey, A.; Smit, F; Droog, K.J.; Visser, A.

    2010-01-01

    Following a soccer game is an example where clear emotions are displayed. This example is worked out for a humanoid robot which can express emotions with body language. The emotions expressed by the robot are not just stimuli-response, but are based on an affective state which shows dynamic behavior

  12. Correction of Visual Perception Based on Neuro-Fuzzy Learning for the Humanoid Robot TEO

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juan Hernandez-Vicen

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available New applications related to robotic manipulation or transportation tasks, with or without physical grasping, are continuously being developed. To perform these activities, the robot takes advantage of different kinds of perceptions. One of the key perceptions in robotics is vision. However, some problems related to image processing makes the application of visual information within robot control algorithms difficult. Camera-based systems have inherent errors that affect the quality and reliability of the information obtained. The need of correcting image distortion slows down image parameter computing, which decreases performance of control algorithms. In this paper, a new approach to correcting several sources of visual distortions on images in only one computing step is proposed. The goal of this system/algorithm is the computation of the tilt angle of an object transported by a robot, minimizing image inherent errors and increasing computing speed. After capturing the image, the computer system extracts the angle using a Fuzzy filter that corrects at the same time all possible distortions, obtaining the real angle in only one processing step. This filter has been developed by the means of Neuro-Fuzzy learning techniques, using datasets with information obtained from real experiments. In this way, the computing time has been decreased and the performance of the application has been improved. The resulting algorithm has been tried out experimentally in robot transportation tasks in the humanoid robot TEO (Task Environment Operator from the University Carlos III of Madrid.

  13. The Making of a 3D-Printed, Cable-Driven, Single-Model, Lightweight Humanoid Robotic Hand

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Tian

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Dexterity robotic hands can (Cummings, 1996 greatly enhance the functionality of humanoid robots, but the making of such hands with not only human-like appearance but also the capability of performing the natural movement of social robots is a challenging problem. The first challenge is to create the hand’s articulated structure and the second challenge is to actuate it to move like a human hand. A robotic hand for humanoid robot should look and behave human like. At the same time, it also needs to be light and cheap for widely used purposes. We start with studying the biomechanical features of a human hand and propose a simplified mechanical model of robotic hands, which can achieve the important local motions of the hand. Then, we use 3D modeling techniques to create a single interlocked hand model that integrates pin and ball joints to our hand model. Compared to other robotic hands, our design saves the time required for assembling and adjusting, which makes our robotic hand ready-to-use right after the 3D printing is completed. Finally, the actuation of the hand is realized by cables and motors. Based on this approach, we have designed a cost-effective, 3D printable, compact, and lightweight robotic hand. Our robotic hand weighs 150 g, has 15 joints, which are similar to a real human hand, and 6 Degree of Freedom (DOFs. It is actuated by only six small size actuators. The wrist connecting part is also integrated into the hand model and could be customized for different robots such as Nadine robot (Magnenat Thalmann et al., 2017. The compact servo bed can be hidden inside the Nadine robot’s sleeve and the whole robotic hand platform will not cause extra load to her arm as the total weight (150 g robotic hand and 162 g artificial skin is almost the same as her previous unarticulated robotic hand which is 348 g. The paper also shows our test results with and without silicon artificial hand skin, and on Nadine robot.

  14. View-Invariant Visuomotor Processing in Computational Mirror Neuron System for Humanoid

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dawood, Farhan; Loo, Chu Kiong

    2016-01-01

    Mirror neurons are visuo-motor neurons found in primates and thought to be significant for imitation learning. The proposition that mirror neurons result from associative learning while the neonate observes his own actions has received noteworthy empirical support. Self-exploration is regarded as a procedure by which infants become perceptually observant to their own body and engage in a perceptual communication with themselves. We assume that crude sense of self is the prerequisite for social interaction. However, the contribution of mirror neurons in encoding the perspective from which the motor acts of others are seen have not been addressed in relation to humanoid robots. In this paper we present a computational model for development of mirror neuron system for humanoid based on the hypothesis that infants acquire MNS by sensorimotor associative learning through self-exploration capable of sustaining early imitation skills. The purpose of our proposed model is to take into account the view-dependency of neurons as a probable outcome of the associative connectivity between motor and visual information. In our experiment, a humanoid robot stands in front of a mirror (represented through self-image using camera) in order to obtain the associative relationship between his own motor generated actions and his own visual body-image. In the learning process the network first forms mapping from each motor representation onto visual representation from the self-exploratory perspective. Afterwards, the representation of the motor commands is learned to be associated with all possible visual perspectives. The complete architecture was evaluated by simulation experiments performed on DARwIn-OP humanoid robot. PMID:26998923

  15. View-Invariant Visuomotor Processing in Computational Mirror Neuron System for Humanoid.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dawood, Farhan; Loo, Chu Kiong

    2016-01-01

    Mirror neurons are visuo-motor neurons found in primates and thought to be significant for imitation learning. The proposition that mirror neurons result from associative learning while the neonate observes his own actions has received noteworthy empirical support. Self-exploration is regarded as a procedure by which infants become perceptually observant to their own body and engage in a perceptual communication with themselves. We assume that crude sense of self is the prerequisite for social interaction. However, the contribution of mirror neurons in encoding the perspective from which the motor acts of others are seen have not been addressed in relation to humanoid robots. In this paper we present a computational model for development of mirror neuron system for humanoid based on the hypothesis that infants acquire MNS by sensorimotor associative learning through self-exploration capable of sustaining early imitation skills. The purpose of our proposed model is to take into account the view-dependency of neurons as a probable outcome of the associative connectivity between motor and visual information. In our experiment, a humanoid robot stands in front of a mirror (represented through self-image using camera) in order to obtain the associative relationship between his own motor generated actions and his own visual body-image. In the learning process the network first forms mapping from each motor representation onto visual representation from the self-exploratory perspective. Afterwards, the representation of the motor commands is learned to be associated with all possible visual perspectives. The complete architecture was evaluated by simulation experiments performed on DARwIn-OP humanoid robot.

  16. View-Invariant Visuomotor Processing in Computational Mirror Neuron System for Humanoid.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Farhan Dawood

    Full Text Available Mirror neurons are visuo-motor neurons found in primates and thought to be significant for imitation learning. The proposition that mirror neurons result from associative learning while the neonate observes his own actions has received noteworthy empirical support. Self-exploration is regarded as a procedure by which infants become perceptually observant to their own body and engage in a perceptual communication with themselves. We assume that crude sense of self is the prerequisite for social interaction. However, the contribution of mirror neurons in encoding the perspective from which the motor acts of others are seen have not been addressed in relation to humanoid robots. In this paper we present a computational model for development of mirror neuron system for humanoid based on the hypothesis that infants acquire MNS by sensorimotor associative learning through self-exploration capable of sustaining early imitation skills. The purpose of our proposed model is to take into account the view-dependency of neurons as a probable outcome of the associative connectivity between motor and visual information. In our experiment, a humanoid robot stands in front of a mirror (represented through self-image using camera in order to obtain the associative relationship between his own motor generated actions and his own visual body-image. In the learning process the network first forms mapping from each motor representation onto visual representation from the self-exploratory perspective. Afterwards, the representation of the motor commands is learned to be associated with all possible visual perspectives. The complete architecture was evaluated by simulation experiments performed on DARwIn-OP humanoid robot.

  17. "Robovie, You'll Have to Go into the Closet Now": Children's Social and Moral Relationships with a Humanoid Robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahn, Peter H., Jr.; Kanda, Takayuki; Ishiguro, Hiroshi; Freier, Nathan G.; Severson, Rachel L.; Gill, Brian T.; Ruckert, Jolina H.; Shen, Solace

    2012-01-01

    Children will increasingly come of age with personified robots and potentially form social and even moral relationships with them. What will such relationships look like? To address this question, 90 children (9-, 12-, and 15-year-olds) initially interacted with a humanoid robot, Robovie, in 15-min sessions. Each session ended when an experimenter…

  18. Physical Embodiment can Produce Robot Operator’s Pseudo Presence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kazuaki eTanaka

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Recent studies have focused on humanoid robots for improving distant communication. When a user talks with a remote conversation partner through a humanoid robot, the user can see the remote partner’s body motions with physical embodiment but not the partner’s current appearance. The physical embodiment existing in the same room with the user is the main feature of humanoid robots, but the effects on social telepresence, i.e. the sense of resembling face-to-face interaction, had not yet been well demonstrated. To find the effects, we conducted an experiment in which subjects talked with a partner through robots and various existing communication media (e.g. voice, avatar and video chats. As a result, we found that the physical embodiment enhances social telepresence. However, in terms of the degree of social telepresence, the humanoid robot remained at the same level as the partner’s live-video, since presenting partner’s appearance also enhances social telepresence. To utilize the anonymity of a humanoid robot, we proposed the way that produces pseudo presence that is the sense of interacting with a remote partner when they are actually interacting with an autonomous robot. Through the second experiment, we discovered that the subjects tended to evaluate the degree of pseudo presence of a remote partner based on their prior experience of watching the partner’s body motions reproduced by a robot. When a subject interacted with an autonomous robot after interacting with a teleoperated robot (i.e., a remote operator that is identical with the autonomous robot, the subjects tended to feel as if they were talking with a remote operator.

  19. Forward Models Applied in Visual Servoing for a Reaching Task in the iCub Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Fernando Tello Gamarra

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper details the application of a forward model to improve a reaching task. The reaching task must be accomplished by a humanoid robot with 53 degrees of freedom (d.o.f. and a stereo-vision system. We have explored via simulations a new way of constructing and utilizing a forward model that encodes eye–hand relationships. We constructed a forward model using the data obtained from only a single reaching attempt. ANFIS neural networks are used to construct the forward model, but the forward model is updated online with new information that comes from each reaching attempt. Using the obtained forward model, an initial image Jacobian is estimated and is used with a visual servoing controller. Simulation results demonstrate that errors are lower when the initial image Jacobian is derived from the forward model. This paper is one of the few attempts at applying visual servoing in a complete humanoid robot.

  20. Caminata del robot humanoide RH-2 en la plataforma de simulación OpenHRP

    OpenAIRE

    Torre Doblas, Carlos de

    2010-01-01

    En primer lugar, en este proyecto se trabajará con el simulador OpenHRP3, intentando comprender su funcionamiento interno (carga de archivos, lenguajes, funcionalidades, etc.). También se adaptará el modelo del robot humanoide Rh-2 al entorno del mismo, pudiendo así realizar simulaciones. La verdadera finalidad de este proyecto, y en lo que se ha hecho especial incapié, es simular el robot sosteniendo una caja, validando así las fuerzas que sienten las distintas partes del cuerpo en los momen...

  1. Embedded diagnostic, prognostic, and health management system and method for a humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barajas, Leandro G. (Inventor); Sanders, Adam M (Inventor); Reiland, Matthew J (Inventor); Strawser, Philip A (Inventor)

    2013-01-01

    A robotic system includes a humanoid robot with multiple compliant joints, each moveable using one or more of the actuators, and having sensors for measuring control and feedback data. A distributed controller controls the joints and other integrated system components over multiple high-speed communication networks. Diagnostic, prognostic, and health management (DPHM) modules are embedded within the robot at the various control levels. Each DPHM module measures, controls, and records DPHM data for the respective control level/connected device in a location that is accessible over the networks or via an external device. A method of controlling the robot includes embedding a plurality of the DPHM modules within multiple control levels of the distributed controller, using the DPHM modules to measure DPHM data within each of the control levels, and recording the DPHM data in a location that is accessible over at least one of the high-speed communication networks.

  2. Robonaut 2 - The First Humanoid Robot in Space

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diftler, M. A.; Radford, N. A.; Mehling, J. S.; Abdallah, M. E.; Bridgwater, L. B.; Sanders, A. M.; Askew, R. S.; Linn, D. M.; Yamokoski, J. D.; Permenter, F. A.; hide

    2010-01-01

    NASA and General Motors have developed the second generation Robonaut, Robonaut 2 or R2, and it is scheduled to arrive on the International Space Station in late 2010 and undergo initial testing in early 2011. This state of the art, dexterous, anthropomorphic robotic torso has significant technical improvements over its predecessor making it a far more valuable tool for astronauts. Upgrades include: increased force sensing, greater range of motion, higher bandwidth and improved dexterity. R2 s integrated mechatronics design results in a more compact and robust distributed control system with a faction of the wiring of the original Robonaut. Modularity is prevalent throughout the hardware and software along with innovative and layered approaches for sensing and control. The most important aspects of the Robonaut philosophy are clearly present in this latest model s ability to allow comfortable human interaction and in its design to perform significant work using the same hardware and interfaces used by people. The following describes the mechanisms, integrated electronics, control strategies and user interface that make R2 a promising addition to the Space Station and other environments where humanoid robots can assist people.

  3. Designing of Medium-Size Humanoid Robot with Face Recognition Features

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christian Tarunajaya

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available owadays, there have been so many development of robot that can receive command and do speech recognition and face recognition. In this research, we develop a humanoid robot system with a controller that based on Raspberry Pi 2. The methods we used are based on Audio recognition and detection, and also face recognition using PCA (Principal Component Analysis with OpenCV and Python. PCA is one of the algorithms to do face detection by doing reduction to the number of dimension of the image possessed. The result of this reduction process is then known as eigenface to do face recognition process. In this research, we still find a false recognition. It can be caused by many things, like database condition, maybe the images are too dark or less varied, blur test image, etc. The accuracy from 3 tests on different people is about 93% (28 correct recognitions out of 30.

  4. Achievement report for fiscal 2000 on operational research of human cooperative and coexisting (humanoid) robot system. Operational research of humanoid robot system; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system un'yo kenkyu seika hokokusho

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-03-01

    This paper reports the achievements in fiscal 2000 in the operational research of humanoid robot system. Carrying out the development smoothly and efficiently requires accumulation of the operational know-how in both of the periodical check and maintenance and the aspects of hard and software to maintain the functions and performances of the robot platform having been developed in the previous fiscal year. Checks were given on fitting of the fasteners and connectors, batteries, and sensors. Operations were confirmed and adjusted on the liquid crystal projector of the surrounded visual display system for remotely controlled operation, polarization filters, screens, reflector mirrors, and wide viewing angle cameras. Verifications were made on fitting of the arm operation force sensing and presenting system, checks on the mechanical components, and operation of the driving system, whereas no change has been found in the operation for the period of one year, and sufficient performance was identified for the remote robot operation. The virtual robot platform has presented no crash and impediments during erroneous use in the disks of the dynamics simulator and the distributed network processing system. (NEDO)

  5. A Robust Vision Module for Humanoid Robotic Ping-Pong Game

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaopeng Chen

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Developing a vision module for a humanoid ping-pong game is challenging due to the spin and the non-linear rebound of the ping-pong ball. In this paper, we present a robust predictive vision module to overcome these problems. The hardware of the vision module is composed of two stereo camera pairs with each pair detecting the 3D positions of the ball on one half of the ping-pong table. The software of the vision module divides the trajectory of the ball into four parts and uses the perceived trajectory in the first part to predict the other parts. In particular, the software of the vision module uses an aerodynamic model to predict the trajectories of the ball in the air and uses a novel non-linear rebound model to predict the change of the ball's motion during rebound. The average prediction error of our vision module at the ball returning point is less than 50 mm - a value small enough for standard sized ping-pong rackets. Its average processing speed is 120fps. The precision and efficiency of our vision module enables two humanoid robots to play ping-pong continuously for more than 200 rounds.

  6. Cortex Inspired Model for Inverse Kinematics Computation for a Humanoid Robotic Finger

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gentili, Rodolphe J.; Oh, Hyuk; Molina, Javier; Reggia, James A.; Contreras-Vidal, José L.

    2013-01-01

    In order to approach human hand performance levels, artificial anthropomorphic hands/fingers have increasingly incorporated human biomechanical features. However, the performance of finger reaching movements to visual targets involving the complex kinematics of multi-jointed, anthropomorphic actuators is a difficult problem. This is because the relationship between sensory and motor coordinates is highly nonlinear, and also often includes mechanical coupling of the two last joints. Recently, we developed a cortical model that learns the inverse kinematics of a simulated anthropomorphic finger. Here, we expand this previous work by assessing if this cortical model is able to learn the inverse kinematics for an actual anthropomorphic humanoid finger having its two last joints coupled and controlled by pneumatic muscles. The findings revealed that single 3D reaching movements, as well as more complex patterns of motion of the humanoid finger, were accurately and robustly performed by this cortical model while producing kinematics comparable to those of humans. This work contributes to the development of a bioinspired controller providing adaptive, robust and flexible control of dexterous robotic and prosthetic hands. PMID:23366569

  7. Blind speech separation system for humanoid robot with FastICA for audio filtering and separation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Budiharto, Widodo; Santoso Gunawan, Alexander Agung

    2016-07-01

    Nowadays, there are many developments in building intelligent humanoid robot, mainly in order to handle voice and image. In this research, we propose blind speech separation system using FastICA for audio filtering and separation that can be used in education or entertainment. Our main problem is to separate the multi speech sources and also to filter irrelevant noises. After speech separation step, the results will be integrated with our previous speech and face recognition system which is based on Bioloid GP robot and Raspberry Pi 2 as controller. The experimental results show the accuracy of our blind speech separation system is about 88% in command and query recognition cases.

  8. Towards Autonomous Operations of the Robonaut 2 Humanoid Robotic Testbed

    Science.gov (United States)

    Badger, Julia; Nguyen, Vienny; Mehling, Joshua; Hambuchen, Kimberly; Diftler, Myron; Luna, Ryan; Baker, William; Joyce, Charles

    2016-01-01

    The Robonaut project has been conducting research in robotics technology on board the International Space Station (ISS) since 2012. Recently, the original upper body humanoid robot was upgraded by the addition of two climbing manipulators ("legs"), more capable processors, and new sensors, as shown in Figure 1. While Robonaut 2 (R2) has been working through checkout exercises on orbit following the upgrade, technology development on the ground has continued to advance. Through the Active Reduced Gravity Offload System (ARGOS), the Robonaut team has been able to develop technologies that will enable full operation of the robotic testbed on orbit using similar robots located at the Johnson Space Center. Once these technologies have been vetted in this way, they will be implemented and tested on the R2 unit on board the ISS. The goal of this work is to create a fully-featured robotics research platform on board the ISS to increase the technology readiness level of technologies that will aid in future exploration missions. Technology development has thus far followed two main paths, autonomous climbing and efficient tool manipulation. Central to both technologies has been the incorporation of a human robotic interaction paradigm that involves the visualization of sensory and pre-planned command data with models of the robot and its environment. Figure 2 shows screenshots of these interactive tools, built in rviz, that are used to develop and implement these technologies on R2. Robonaut 2 is designed to move along the handrails and seat track around the US lab inside the ISS. This is difficult for many reasons, namely the environment is cluttered and constrained, the robot has many degrees of freedom (DOF) it can utilize for climbing, and remote commanding for precision tasks such as grasping handrails is time-consuming and difficult. Because of this, it is important to develop the technologies needed to allow the robot to reach operator-specified positions as

  9. Can a humanoid face be expressive? A psychophysiological investigation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicole eLazzeri

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Non-verbal signals expressed through body language play a crucial role in multi-modal human communication during social relations. Indeed, in all cultures facial expressions are the most universal and direct signs to express innate emotional cues. A human face conveys important information in social interactions and helps us to better understand our social partners and establish empathic links.Latest researches show that humanoid and social robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans, both aesthetically and expressively. However, their visual expressiveness is a crucial issue that must be improved to make these robots more realistic and intuitively perceivable by humans as not different from them.This study concerns the capability of a humanoid robot to exhibit emotion through facial expressions. More specifically, emotional signs performed by a humanoid robot have been compared with corresponding human facial expressions in terms of recognition rate and response time. The set of stimuli included standardized human expressions taken from an Ekman-based database and the same facial expressions performed by the robot. Furthermore, participants' psychophysiological responses have been explored to investigate whether there could be differences induced by interpreting robot or human emotional stimuli.Preliminary results show a trend to better recognize expressions performed by the robot than 2D photos or 3D models. Moreover no significant differences in the subjects' psychophysiological state have been found during the discrimination of facial expressions performed by the robot in comparison with the same task performed with 2D photos and 3D models.

  10. iCub-HRI: A Software Framework for Complex Human–Robot Interaction Scenarios on the iCub Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tobias Fischer

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Generating complex, human-like behavior in a humanoid robot like the iCub requires the integration of a wide range of open source components and a scalable cognitive architecture. Hence, we present the iCub-HRI library which provides convenience wrappers for components related to perception (object recognition, agent tracking, speech recognition, and touch detection, object manipulation (basic and complex motor actions, and social interaction (speech synthesis and joint attention exposed as a C++ library with bindings for Java (allowing to use iCub-HRI within Matlab and Python. In addition to previously integrated components, the library allows for simple extension to new components and rapid prototyping by adapting to changes in interfaces between components. We also provide a set of modules which make use of the library, such as a high-level knowledge acquisition module and an action recognition module. The proposed architecture has been successfully employed for a complex human–robot interaction scenario involving the acquisition of language capabilities, execution of goal-oriented behavior and expression of a verbal narrative of the robot’s experience in the world. Accompanying this paper is a tutorial which allows a subset of this interaction to be reproduced. The architecture is aimed at researchers familiarizing themselves with the iCub ecosystem, as well as expert users, and we expect the library to be widely used in the iCub community.

  11. Smooth and Energy Saving Gait Planning for Humanoid Robot Using Geodesics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liandong Zhang

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available A novel gait planning method using geodesics for humanoid robot is given in this paper. Both the linear inverted pendulum model and the exact Single Support Phase (SSP are studied in our energy optimal gait planning based on geodesics. The kinetic energy of a 2-dimension linear inverted pendulum is obtained at first. We regard the kinetic energy as the Riemannian metric and the geodesic on this metric is studied and this is the shortest line between two points on the Riemannian surface. This geodesic is the optimal kinetic energy gait for the COG because the kinetic energy along geodesic is invariant according to the geometric property of geodesics and the walking is smooth and energy saving. Then the walking in Single Support Phase is studied and the energy optimal gait for the swing leg is obtained using our geodesics method. Finally, experiments using state-of-the-art method and using our geodesics optimization method are carried out respectively and the corresponding currents of the joint motors are recorded. With the currents comparing results, the feasibility of this new gait planning method is verified.

  12. An affordable compact humanoid robot for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions in children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dickstein-Fischer, Laurie; Alexander, Elizabeth; Yan, Xiaoan; Su, Hao; Harrington, Kevin; Fischer, Gregory S

    2011-01-01

    Autism Spectrum Disorder impacts an ever-increasing number of children. The disorder is marked by social functioning that is characterized by impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors, failure to develop appropriate peer relationships and lack of social and emotional exchanges. Providing early intervention through the modality of play therapy has been effective in improving behavioral and social outcomes for children with autism. Interacting with humanoid robots that provide simple emotional response and interaction has been shown to improve the communication skills of autistic children. In particular, early intervention and continuous care provide significantly better outcomes. Currently, there are no robots capable of meeting these requirements that are both low-cost and available to families of autistic children for in-home use. This paper proposes the piloting the use of robotics as an improved diagnostic and early intervention tool for autistic children that is affordable, non-threatening, durable, and capable of interacting with an autistic child. This robot has the ability to track the child with its 3 degree of freedom (DOF) eyes and 3-DOF head, open and close its 1-DOF beak and 1-DOF each eyelids, raise its 1-DOF each wings, play sound, and record sound. These attributes will give it the ability to be used for the diagnosis and treatment of autism. As part of this project, the robot and the electronic and control software have been developed, and integrating semi-autonomous interaction, teleoperation from a remote healthcare provider and initiating trials with children in a local clinic are in progress.

  13. Study on State Transition Method Applied to Motion Planning for a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuyang Wang

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an approach of motion planning for a humanoid robot using a state transition method. In this method, motion planning is simplified by introducing a state-space to describe the whole motion series. And each state in the state-space corresponds to a contact state specified during the motion. The continuous motion is represented by a sequence of discrete states. The concept of the transition between two neighboring states, that is the state transition, can be realized by using some traditional path planning methods. Considering the dynamical stability of the robot, a state transition method based on search strategy is proposed. Different sets of trajectories are generated by using a variable 5th-order polynomial interpolation method. After quantifying the stabilities of these trajectories, the trajectories with the largest stability margin are selected as the final state transition trajectories. Rising motion process is exemplified to validate the method and the simulation results show the proposed method to be feasible and effective.

  14. YARP: Yet Another Robot Platform

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lorenzo Natale

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available We describe YARP, Yet Another Robot Platform, an open-source project that encapsulates lessons from our experience in building humanoid robots. The goal of YARP is to minimize the effort devoted to infrastructure-level software development by facilitating code reuse, modularity and so maximize research-level development and collaboration. Humanoid robotics is a "bleeding edge" field of research, with constant flux in sensors, actuators, and processors. Code reuse and maintenance is therefore a significant challenge. We describe the main problems we faced and the solutions we adopted. In short, the main features of YARP include support for inter-process communication, image processing as well as a class hierarchy to ease code reuse across different hardware platforms. YARP is currently used and tested on Windows, Linux and QNX6 which are common operating systems used in robotics.

  15. Design Approach of Biologically-Inspired Musculoskeletal Humanoids

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuto Nakanishi

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available In order to realize more natural and various motions like humans, humanlike musculoskeletal tendon-driven humanoids have been studied. Especially, it is very challenging to design musculoskeletal body structure which consists of complicated bones, redundant powerful and flexible muscles, and large number of distributed sensors. In addition, it is very challenging to reveal humanlike intelligence to manage these complicated musculoskeletal body structure. This paper sums up life-sized musculoskeletal humanoids Kenta, Kotaro, Kenzoh and Kenshiro which we have developed so far, and describes key technologies to develop and control these robots.

  16. Human-robot interaction assessment using dynamic engagement profiles

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Drimus, Alin; Poltorak, Nicole

    2017-01-01

    -1] interval, where 0 represents disengaged and 1 fully engaged. The network shows a good accuracy at recognizing the engagement state of humans given positive emotions. A time based analysis of interaction experiments between small humanoid robots and humans provides time series of engagement estimates, which...... and is applicable to humanoid robotics as well as other related contexts.......This paper addresses the use of convolutional neural networks for image analysis resulting in an engagement metric that can be used to assess the quality of human robot interactions. We propose a method based on a pretrained convolutional network able to map emotions onto a continuous [0...

  17. Experiences of a Motivational Interview Delivered by a Robot: Qualitative Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galvão Gomes da Silva, Joana; Kavanagh, David J; Belpaeme, Tony; Taylor, Lloyd; Beeson, Konna

    2018-01-01

    Background Motivational interviewing is an effective intervention for supporting behavior change but traditionally depends on face-to-face dialogue with a human counselor. This study addressed a key challenge for the goal of developing social robotic motivational interviewers: creating an interview protocol, within the constraints of current artificial intelligence, which participants will find engaging and helpful. Objective The aim of this study was to explore participants’ qualitative experiences of a motivational interview delivered by a social robot, including their evaluation of usability of the robot during the interaction and its impact on their motivation. Methods NAO robots are humanoid, child-sized social robots. We programmed a NAO robot with Choregraphe software to deliver a scripted motivational interview focused on increasing physical activity. The interview was designed to be comprehensible even without an empathetic response from the robot. Robot breathing and face-tracking functions were used to give an impression of attentiveness. A total of 20 participants took part in the robot-delivered motivational interview and evaluated it after 1 week by responding to a series of written open-ended questions. Each participant was left alone to speak aloud with the robot, advancing through a series of questions by tapping the robot’s head sensor. Evaluations were content-analyzed utilizing Boyatzis’ steps: (1) sampling and design, (2) developing themes and codes, and (3) validating and applying the codes. Results Themes focused on interaction with the robot, motivation, change in physical activity, and overall evaluation of the intervention. Participants found the instructions clear and the navigation easy to use. Most enjoyed the interaction but also found it was restricted by the lack of individualized response from the robot. Many positively appraised the nonjudgmental aspect of the interview and how it gave space to articulate their motivation for

  18. Desarrollo de algoritmo para detección y comando de robots humanoides en tareas de recolección

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Germán Andrés Vargas Torres

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available This article presents an algorithm which commands a group of Bioloid humanoid robots in order to organize them around an object of interest, previously detected by an external vision system. The robots form a Multi-Agent System (MAS oriented towards cooperative gathering tasks. Development of the MAS, as well as each of the organization algorithm’s components and simulation inside a virtual environment are all detailed. The algorithm is subdivided in two dedicated threads: one of which handles machine vision (filtering, contour detection and classification achieved through EmguCV libraries and operational space calculations, and another which operates ZigBee wireless communication with the robots. Furthermore, the robots possess their own embedded code which enables them to translate a sequence of received instructions into gait patterns which allow them to move towards the object of interest. Total execution time for the gathering task is chosen as the global performance measure to evaluate.

  19. Approaching human performance the functionality-driven Awiwi robot hand

    CERN Document Server

    Grebenstein, Markus

    2014-01-01

    Humanoid robotics have made remarkable progress since the dawn of robotics. So why don't we have humanoid robot assistants in day-to-day life yet? This book analyzes the keys to building a successful humanoid robot for field robotics, where collisions become an unavoidable part of the game. The author argues that the design goal should be real anthropomorphism, as opposed to mere human-like appearance. He deduces three major characteristics to aim for when designing a humanoid robot, particularly robot hands: _ Robustness against impacts _ Fast dynamics _ Human-like grasping and manipulation performance   Instead of blindly copying human anatomy, this book opts for a holistic design me-tho-do-lo-gy. It analyzes human hands and existing robot hands to elucidate the important functionalities that are the building blocks toward these necessary characteristics.They are the keys to designing an anthropomorphic robot hand, as illustrated in the high performance anthropomorphic Awiwi Hand presented in this book.  ...

  20. The Study of Fractional Order Controller with SLAM in the Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shuhuan Wen

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available We present a fractional order PI controller (FOPI with SLAM method, and the proposed method is used in the simulation of navigation of NAO humanoid robot from Aldebaran. We can discretize the transfer function by the Al-Alaoui generating function and then get the FOPI controller by Power Series Expansion (PSE. FOPI can be used as a correction part to reduce the accumulated error of SLAM. In the FOPI controller, the parameters (Kp,Ki,  and  α need to be tuned to obtain the best performance. Finally, we compare the results of position without controller and with PI controller, FOPI controller. The simulations show that the FOPI controller can reduce the error between the real position and estimated position. The proposed method is efficient and reliable for NAO navigation.

  1. Human likeness: cognitive and affective factors affecting adoption of robot-assisted learning systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoo, Hosun; Kwon, Ohbyung; Lee, Namyeon

    2016-07-01

    With advances in robot technology, interest in robotic e-learning systems has increased. In some laboratories, experiments are being conducted with humanoid robots as artificial tutors because of their likeness to humans, the rich possibilities of using this type of media, and the multimodal interaction capabilities of these robots. The robot-assisted learning system, a special type of e-learning system, aims to increase the learner's concentration, pleasure, and learning performance dramatically. However, very few empirical studies have examined the effect on learning performance of incorporating humanoid robot technology into e-learning systems or people's willingness to accept or adopt robot-assisted learning systems. In particular, human likeness, the essential characteristic of humanoid robots as compared with conventional e-learning systems, has not been discussed in a theoretical context. Hence, the purpose of this study is to propose a theoretical model to explain the process of adoption of robot-assisted learning systems. In the proposed model, human likeness is conceptualized as a combination of media richness, multimodal interaction capabilities, and para-social relationships; these factors are considered as possible determinants of the degree to which human cognition and affection are related to the adoption of robot-assisted learning systems.

  2. Humanoid infers Archimedes' principle: understanding physical relations and object affordances through cumulative learning experiences

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    Emerging studies indicate that several species such as corvids, apes and children solve ‘The Crow and the Pitcher’ task (from Aesop's Fables) in diverse conditions. Hidden beneath this fascinating paradigm is a fundamental question: by cumulatively interacting with different objects, how can an agent abstract the underlying cause–effect relations to predict and creatively exploit potential affordances of novel objects in the context of sought goals? Re-enacting this Aesop's Fable task on a humanoid within an open-ended ‘learning–prediction–abstraction’ loop, we address this problem and (i) present a brain-guided neural framework that emulates rapid one-shot encoding of ongoing experiences into a long-term memory and (ii) propose four task-agnostic learning rules (elimination, growth, uncertainty and status quo) that correlate predictions from remembered past experiences with the unfolding present situation to gradually abstract the underlying causal relations. Driven by the proposed architecture, the ensuing robot behaviours illustrated causal learning and anticipation similar to natural agents. Results further demonstrate that by cumulatively interacting with few objects, the predictions of the robot in case of novel objects converge close to the physical law, i.e. the Archimedes principle: this being independent of both the objects explored during learning and the order of their cumulative exploration. PMID:27466440

  3. Humanoid infers Archimedes' principle: understanding physical relations and object affordances through cumulative learning experiences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bhat, Ajaz Ahmad; Mohan, Vishwanathan; Sandini, Giulio; Morasso, Pietro

    2016-07-01

    Emerging studies indicate that several species such as corvids, apes and children solve 'The Crow and the Pitcher' task (from Aesop's Fables) in diverse conditions. Hidden beneath this fascinating paradigm is a fundamental question: by cumulatively interacting with different objects, how can an agent abstract the underlying cause-effect relations to predict and creatively exploit potential affordances of novel objects in the context of sought goals? Re-enacting this Aesop's Fable task on a humanoid within an open-ended 'learning-prediction-abstraction' loop, we address this problem and (i) present a brain-guided neural framework that emulates rapid one-shot encoding of ongoing experiences into a long-term memory and (ii) propose four task-agnostic learning rules (elimination, growth, uncertainty and status quo) that correlate predictions from remembered past experiences with the unfolding present situation to gradually abstract the underlying causal relations. Driven by the proposed architecture, the ensuing robot behaviours illustrated causal learning and anticipation similar to natural agents. Results further demonstrate that by cumulatively interacting with few objects, the predictions of the robot in case of novel objects converge close to the physical law, i.e. the Archimedes principle: this being independent of both the objects explored during learning and the order of their cumulative exploration. © 2016 The Author(s).

  4. On the Use of the Humanoid Bioloid System for Robot-Assisted Transcription of Mexican Spanish Speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Santiago-Omar Caballero-Morales

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Within the context of service robotics (SR, the development of assistive technologies has become an important research field. However, the accomplishment of assistive tasks requires precise and fine control of the mechanic systems that integrate the robotic entity. Among the most challenging tasks in robot control, the handwriting task (transcription is of particular interest due to the fine control required to draw single and multiple alphabet characters to express words and sentences. For language learning activities, robot-assisted speech transcription can motivate the student to practice pronunciation and writing tasks in a dynamic environment. Hence, this paper is aimed to provide the techniques and models to accomplish accurate robot-assisted transcription of Spanish speech. The transcriptor is integrated by a multi-user speech recognizer for continuous speech and the kinematic models for the Mexican Spanish alphabet characters. The Bioloid system with the standard humanoid configuration and no special modifications or tools was considered for implementation. Particularly, the proposed transcriptor could perform the handwriting task with the Bioloid’s two two DOF (degrees-of-freedom arms. This enabled writing of one-line short and long sentences with small alphabet characters (width <1.0 cm. It is expected that the technique and models that integrate the transcriptor can provide support for the development of robot-assisted language learning activities for children and young adults.

  5. Experiences of a Motivational Interview Delivered by a Robot: Qualitative Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galvão Gomes da Silva, Joana; Kavanagh, David J; Belpaeme, Tony; Taylor, Lloyd; Beeson, Konna; Andrade, Jackie

    2018-05-03

    Motivational interviewing is an effective intervention for supporting behavior change but traditionally depends on face-to-face dialogue with a human counselor. This study addressed a key challenge for the goal of developing social robotic motivational interviewers: creating an interview protocol, within the constraints of current artificial intelligence, which participants will find engaging and helpful. The aim of this study was to explore participants' qualitative experiences of a motivational interview delivered by a social robot, including their evaluation of usability of the robot during the interaction and its impact on their motivation. NAO robots are humanoid, child-sized social robots. We programmed a NAO robot with Choregraphe software to deliver a scripted motivational interview focused on increasing physical activity. The interview was designed to be comprehensible even without an empathetic response from the robot. Robot breathing and face-tracking functions were used to give an impression of attentiveness. A total of 20 participants took part in the robot-delivered motivational interview and evaluated it after 1 week by responding to a series of written open-ended questions. Each participant was left alone to speak aloud with the robot, advancing through a series of questions by tapping the robot's head sensor. Evaluations were content-analyzed utilizing Boyatzis' steps: (1) sampling and design, (2) developing themes and codes, and (3) validating and applying the codes. Themes focused on interaction with the robot, motivation, change in physical activity, and overall evaluation of the intervention. Participants found the instructions clear and the navigation easy to use. Most enjoyed the interaction but also found it was restricted by the lack of individualized response from the robot. Many positively appraised the nonjudgmental aspect of the interview and how it gave space to articulate their motivation for change. Some participants felt that the

  6. Robot Comedy Lab: experimenting with the social dynamics of live performance

    OpenAIRE

    Katevas, Kleomenis; Healey, Patrick G. T.; Harris, Matthew Tobias

    2015-01-01

    The success of live comedy depends on a performer's ability to 'work' an audience. Ethnographic studies suggest that this involves the co-ordinated use of subtle social signals such as body orientation, gesture, gaze by both performers and audience members. Robots provide a unique opportunity to test the effects of these signals experimentally. Using a life-size humanoid robot, programmed to perform a stand-up comedy routine, we manipulated the robot's patterns of gesture and gaze and examine...

  7. Advances in robot kinematics

    CERN Document Server

    Khatib, Oussama

    2014-01-01

    The topics addressed in this book cover the whole range of kinematic analysis, synthesis and design and consider robotic systems possessing serial, parallel and cable driven mechanisms. The robotic systems range from being less than fully mobile to kinematically redundant to overconstrained.  The fifty-six contributions report the latest results in robot kinematics with emphasis on emerging areas such as design and control of humanoids or humanoid subsystems. The book is of interest to researchers wanting to bring their knowledge up to date regarding modern topics in one of the basic disciplines in robotics, which relates to the essential property of robots, the motion of mechanisms.

  8. Motion control of the Twente humanoid head

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Visser, L.C.; Carloni, Raffaella; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2009-01-01

    In this work, we present the design and the realization of the motion control algorithm implemented in the Twente hu- manoid head, a seven degrees of freedom (dof) robotic sys- tem. The aim of the project is to have a humanoid head that can serve as a research platform for human-machine interac-

  9. Experiments with a First Prototype of a Spatial Model of Cultural Meaning through Natural-Language Human-Robot Interaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oliver Schürer

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available When using assistive systems, the consideration of individual and cultural meaning is crucial for the utility and acceptance of technology. Orientation, communication and interaction are rooted in perception and therefore always happen in material space. We understand that a major problem lies in the difference between human and technical perception of space. Cultural policies are based on meanings including their spatial situation and their rich relationships. Therefore, we have developed an approach where the different perception systems share a hybrid spatial model that is generated by artificial intelligence—a joint effort by humans and assistive systems. The aim of our project is to create a spatial model of cultural meaning based on interaction between humans and robots. We define the role of humanoid robots as becoming our companions. This calls for technical systems to include still inconceivable human and cultural agendas for the perception of space. In two experiments, we tested a first prototype of the communication module that allows a humanoid to learn cultural meanings through a machine learning system. Interaction is achieved by non-verbal and natural-language communication between humanoids and test persons. This helps us to better understand how a spatial model of cultural meaning can be developed.

  10. Air Muscle Actuated Low Cost Humanoid Hand

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter Scarfe

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available The control of humanoid robot hands has historically been expensive due to the cost of precision actuators. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost air muscle actuated humanoid hand developed at Curtin University of Technology. This hand offers 10 individually controllable degrees of freedom ranging from the elbow to the fingers, with overall control handled through a computer GUI. The hand is actuated through 20 McKibben-style air muscles, each supplied by a pneumatic pressure-balancing valve that allows for proportional control to be achieved with simple and inexpensive components. The hand was successfully able to perform a number of human-equivalent tasks, such as grasping and relocating objects.

  11. Air Muscle Actuated Low Cost Humanoid Hand

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter Scarfe

    2006-06-01

    Full Text Available The control of humanoid robot hands has historically been expensive due to the cost of precision actuators. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost air muscle actuated humanoid hand developed at Curtin University of Technology. This hand offers 10 individually controllable degrees of freedom ranging from the elbow to the fingers, with overall control handled through a computer GUI. The hand is actuated through 20 McKibben-style air muscles, each supplied by a pneumatic pressure-balancing valve that allows for proportional control to be achieved with simple and inexpensive components. The hand was successfully able to perform a number of human-equivalent tasks, such as grasping and relocating objects.

  12. Emotion based human-robot interaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Berns Karsten

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Human-machine interaction is a major challenge in the development of complex humanoid robots. In addition to verbal communication the use of non-verbal cues such as hand, arm and body gestures or mimics can improve the understanding of the intention of the robot. On the other hand, by perceiving such mechanisms of a human in a typical interaction scenario the humanoid robot can adapt its interaction skills in a better way. In this work, the perception system of two social robots, ROMAN and ROBIN of the RRLAB of the TU Kaiserslautern, is presented in the range of human-robot interaction.

  13. Feasibility of using a humanoid robot for enhancing attention and social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jordan, Kimberlee; King, Marcus; Hellersteth, Sophia; Wirén, Anna; Mulligan, Hilda

    2013-09-01

    This study investigated the use of robotic technology for promoting attention, communication and social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Attention, communication and social skills were measured while participants played a memory card matching game (Face Match) using (a) a humanoid robot, (b) a Smart Board and (c) playing cards. Three participants with ASD and three with other cognitive impairments were recruited from a secondary school with a special needs unit. Participants were paired such that one of each pair had a diagnosis of ASD and Face Match was played in these pairs for ∼15 min, with a game organizer present. On 3 separate days, video recordings were made as the participants played Face Match; a different game mode (robot, Smart Board, playing cards) was used each day. A system for categorizing attention, communication and social skills was developed that described 16 subcategories of interactions and intra-actions. In general, participants with ASD showed highly individualized patterns of behaviour in the three different modes. However, repetitive behaviour was reduced in participants with ASD when using both the robot and the Smart Board compared with playing cards. We show that it is feasible to use a robot to assist teaching of social skills to adolescents with ASD, but suggest that the robot features could be further explored and utilized.

  14. Advanced mechanics in robotic systems

    CERN Document Server

    Nava Rodríguez, Nestor Eduardo

    2011-01-01

    Illustrates original and ambitious mechanical designs and techniques for the development of new robot prototypes Includes numerous figures, tables and flow charts Discusses relevant applications in robotics fields such as humanoid robots, robotic hands, mobile robots, parallel manipulators and human-centred robots

  15. Developmental Robots - A New Paradigm

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Weng, Juyang; Zhang, Yilu

    2005-01-01

    .... This is especially true for a humanoid robot due to the very large number of redundant degrees of freedom and large number of sensors that are required for a humanoid to work safely and effectively...

  16. Vision based motion control for a humanoid head

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Visser, L.C.; Carloni, Raffaella; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes the design of a motion control algorithm for a humanoid robotic head, which consists of a neck with four degrees of freedom and two eyes (a stereo pair system) that tilt on a common axis and rotate sideways freely. The kinematic and dynamic properties of the head are analyzed

  17. Camera-laser fusion sensor system and environmental recognition for humanoids in disaster scenarios

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Inho; Oh, Jaesung; Oh, Jun-Ho; Kim, Inhyeok

    2017-01-01

    This research aims to develop a vision sensor system and a recognition algorithm to enable a humanoid to operate autonomously in a disaster environment. In disaster response scenarios, humanoid robots that perform manipulation and locomotion tasks must identify the objects in the environment from those challenged by the call by the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, e.g., doors, valves, drills, debris, uneven terrains, and stairs, among others. In order for a humanoid to undertake a number of tasks, we con- struct a camera–laser fusion system and develop an environmental recognition algorithm. Laser distance sensor and motor are used to obtain 3D cloud data. We project the 3D cloud data onto a 2D image according to the intrinsic parameters of the camera and the distortion model of the lens. In this manner, our fusion sensor system performs functions such as those performed by the RGB-D sensor gener- ally used in segmentation research. Our recognition algorithm is based on super-pixel segmentation and random sampling. The proposed approach clusters the unorganized cloud data according to geometric characteristics, namely, proximity and co-planarity. To assess the feasibility of our system and algorithm, we utilize the humanoid robot, DRC-HUBO, and the results are demonstrated in the accompanying video.

  18. Camera-laser fusion sensor system and environmental recognition for humanoids in disaster scenarios

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lee, Inho [Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), Florida (United States); Oh, Jaesung; Oh, Jun-Ho [Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Inhyeok [NAVER Green Factory, Seongnam (Korea, Republic of)

    2017-06-15

    This research aims to develop a vision sensor system and a recognition algorithm to enable a humanoid to operate autonomously in a disaster environment. In disaster response scenarios, humanoid robots that perform manipulation and locomotion tasks must identify the objects in the environment from those challenged by the call by the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, e.g., doors, valves, drills, debris, uneven terrains, and stairs, among others. In order for a humanoid to undertake a number of tasks, we con- struct a camera–laser fusion system and develop an environmental recognition algorithm. Laser distance sensor and motor are used to obtain 3D cloud data. We project the 3D cloud data onto a 2D image according to the intrinsic parameters of the camera and the distortion model of the lens. In this manner, our fusion sensor system performs functions such as those performed by the RGB-D sensor gener- ally used in segmentation research. Our recognition algorithm is based on super-pixel segmentation and random sampling. The proposed approach clusters the unorganized cloud data according to geometric characteristics, namely, proximity and co-planarity. To assess the feasibility of our system and algorithm, we utilize the humanoid robot, DRC-HUBO, and the results are demonstrated in the accompanying video.

  19. Human-Derived Disturbance Estimation and Compensation (DEC) Method Lends Itself to a Modular Sensorimotor Control in a Humanoid Robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lippi, Vittorio; Mergner, Thomas

    2017-01-01

    The high complexity of the human posture and movement control system represents challenges for diagnosis, therapy, and rehabilitation of neurological patients. We envisage that engineering-inspired, model-based approaches will help to deal with the high complexity of the human posture control system. Since the methods of system identification and parameter estimation are limited to systems with only a few DoF, our laboratory proposes a heuristic approach that step-by-step increases complexity when creating a hypothetical human-derived control systems in humanoid robots. This system is then compared with the human control in the same test bed, a posture control laboratory. The human-derived control builds upon the identified disturbance estimation and compensation (DEC) mechanism, whose main principle is to support execution of commanded poses or movements by compensating for external or self-produced disturbances such as gravity effects. In previous robotic implementation, up to 3 interconnected DEC control modules were used in modular control architectures separately for the sagittal plane or the frontal body plane and successfully passed balancing and movement tests. In this study we hypothesized that conflict-free movement coordination between the robot's sagittal and frontal body planes emerges simply from the physical embodiment, not necessarily requiring a full body control. Experiments were performed in the 14 DoF robot Lucy Posturob (i) demonstrating that the mechanical coupling from the robot's body suffices to coordinate the controls in the two planes when the robot produces movements and balancing responses in the intermediate plane, (ii) providing quantitative characterization of the interaction dynamics between body planes including frequency response functions (FRFs), as they are used in human postural control analysis, and (iii) witnessing postural and control stability when all DoFs are challenged together with the emergence of inter

  20. The Paradigm of Utilizing Robots in the Teaching Process: A Comparative Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bacivarov, Ioan C.; Ilian, Virgil L. M.

    2012-01-01

    This paper discusses a comparative study of the effects of using a humanoid robot for introducing students to personal robotics. Even if a humanoid robot is one of the more complicated types of robots, comprehension was not an issue. The study highlighted the importance of using real hardware for teaching such complex subjects as opposed to…

  1. Herbert: Design and Realisation of an full-sized anthropometrically correct humanoid robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brennand ePierce

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we present the development of a new full-sized anthropometrically correct humanoid robot Herbert. Herbert has 33 DOFs: 1 29 active DOFs (2 × 4 in the legs, 2 × 7 in the arms, 4 in the waist and 3 in the head; 2 4 passive DOFs (2 × 2 in the ankles. We present the objectives of the design and the development of our system, the hardware (mechanical, electronics as well as the supporting software architecture that encompasses the realisation of the complete humanoid system.Several key elements, that have to be taken into account in our approach to keep the costs low while ensuring high-performance, will be presented. In realising Herbert we applied a modular design for the overall mechanical structure. Two core mechanical module types make up the main structural elements of Herbert: 1 small compact mechanical drive modules; and 2 compliant mechanical drive modules. The electronic system of Herbert, which is based on two different types of motor control boards and an FPGA module with a central controller, is discussed. The software architecture is based on ROS with a number of sub nodes used for the controller. All these supporting components have been important in the development of the complete system.Finally, we present results showing our robot’s performances: demonstrating the behaviour of the compliant modules, the ability of tracking a desired position/velocity as well as a simple torque controller. We also evaluate our custom communication system. Additionally, we demonstrate Herbert balancing and squatting to show its performance. Moreover, we also show the simplicity of the higher level supporting software framework in realising new behaviours. All in all, we show that our system is compact and able to achieve comparable human performances and has human proportions while being low cost.

  2. Slow walking model for children with multiple disabilities via an application of humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, ZeFeng; Peyrodie, Laurent; Cao, Hua; Agnani, Olivier; Watelain, Eric; Wang, HaoPing

    2016-02-01

    Walk training research with children having multiple disabilities is presented. Orthosis aid in walking for children with multiple disabilities such as Cerebral Palsy continues to be a clinical and technological challenge. In order to reduce pain and improve treatment strategies, an intermediate structure - humanoid robot NAO - is proposed as an assay platform to study walking training models, to be transferred to future special exoskeletons for children. A suitable and stable walking model is proposed for walk training. It would be simulated and tested on NAO. This comparative study of zero moment point (ZMP) supports polygons and energy consumption validates the model as more stable than the conventional NAO. Accordingly direction variation of the center of mass and the slopes of linear regression knee/ankle angles, the Slow Walk model faithfully emulates the gait pattern of children.

  3. Effects of eye contact and iconic gestures on message retention in human-robot interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dijk, van E.T.; Torta, E.; Cuijpers, R.H.

    2013-01-01

    The effects of iconic gestures and eye contact on message retention in human-robot interaction were investigated in a series of experiments. A humanoid robot gave short verbal messages to participants, accompanied either by iconic gestures or no gestures while making eye contact with the participant

  4. An Integrated Framework for Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheng, Weihua; Thobbi, Anand; Gu, Ye

    2015-10-01

    This paper presents an integrated learning framework that enables humanoid robots to perform human-robot collaborative manipulation tasks. Specifically, a table-lifting task performed jointly by a human and a humanoid robot is chosen for validation purpose. The proposed framework is split into two phases: 1) phase I-learning to grasp the table and 2) phase II-learning to perform the manipulation task. An imitation learning approach is proposed for phase I. In phase II, the behavior of the robot is controlled by a combination of two types of controllers: 1) reactive and 2) proactive. The reactive controller lets the robot take a reactive control action to make the table horizontal. The proactive controller lets the robot take proactive actions based on human motion prediction. A measure of confidence of the prediction is also generated by the motion predictor. This confidence measure determines the leader/follower behavior of the robot. Hence, the robot can autonomously switch between the behaviors during the task. Finally, the performance of the human-robot team carrying out the collaborative manipulation task is experimentally evaluated on a platform consisting of a Nao humanoid robot and a Vicon motion capture system. Results show that the proposed framework can enable the robot to carry out the collaborative manipulation task successfully.

  5. On ‘Spillikin – A Love Story’: Issues around the Humanoid Robot as a Social Actor on Stage

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eugenia Stamboliev

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available The inclusion of media technology in theatrical plays (Saltz, 2013 follows a contingent fascination and entanglement between human actors, technology and automata (Reilly, 2011 on stage. The contemporary play Spillikin – A Love Story places a new digital ‘ac⁠tor’ in this debate: the humanoid robot as a socially interactive agent (Breazeal, 2002; Fong, Nourbakhsh, & Dautenhahn, 2003 and caring companion. This paper discusses the exhibition of sociability through the robot’s humanlike gestures and its ability to decipher human gestures on stage. The aim is to point to the ethical consequences for the audience concerning the robot’s implied autonomy to interact socially.

  6. Robotic Technology Efforts at the NASA/Johnson Space Center

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diftler, Ron

    2017-01-01

    The NASA/Johnson Space Center has been developing robotic systems in support of space exploration for more than two decades. The goal of the Center’s Robotic Systems Technology Branch is to design and build hardware and software to assist astronauts in performing their mission. These systems include: rovers, humanoid robots, inspection devices and wearable robotics. Inspection systems provide external views of space vehicles to search for surface damage and also maneuver inside restricted areas to verify proper connections. New concepts in human and robotic rovers offer solutions for navigating difficult terrain expected in future planetary missions. An important objective for humanoid robots is to relieve the crew of “dull, dirty or dangerous” tasks allowing them more time to perform their important science and exploration missions. Wearable robotics one of the Center’s newest development areas can provide crew with low mass exercise capability and also augment an astronaut’s strength while wearing a space suit.This presentation will describe the robotic technology and prototypes developed at the Johnson Space Center that are the basis for future flight systems. An overview of inspection robots will show their operation on the ground and in-orbit. Rovers with independent wheel modules, crab steering, and active suspension are able to climb over large obstacles, and nimbly maneuver around others. Humanoid robots, including the First Humanoid Robot in Space: Robonaut 2, demonstrate capabilities that will lead to robotic caretakers for human habitats in space, and on Mars. The Center’s Wearable Robotics Lab supports work in assistive and sensing devices, including exoskeletons, force measuring shoes, and grasp assist gloves.

  7. Design and control of a pneumatic musculoskeletal biped robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zang, Xizhe; Liu, Yixiang; Liu, Xinyu; Zhao, Jie

    2016-04-29

    Pneumatic artificial muscles are quite promising actuators for humanoid robots owing to their similar characteristics with human muscles. Moreover, biologically inspired musculoskeletal systems are particularly important for humanoid robots to perform versatile dynamic tasks. This study aims to develop a pneumatic musculoskeletal biped robot, and its controller, to realize human-like walking. According to the simplified musculoskeletal structure of human lower limbs, each leg of the biped robot is driven by nine muscles, including three pairs of monoarticular muscles which are arranged in the flexor-extensor form, as well as three biarticular muscles which span two joints. To lower cost, high-speed on/off solenoid valves rather than proportional valves are used to control the muscles. The joint trajectory tracking controller based on PID control method is designed to achieve the desired motion. Considering the complex characteristics of pneumatic artificial muscles, the control model is obtained through parameter identification experiments. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate that the biped robot is able to walk with this control strategy. The proposed musculoskeletal structure and control strategy are effective for the biped robot to achieve human-like walking.

  8. Social categorization of social robots: anthropomorphism as a function of robot group membership.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eyssel, Friederike; Kuchenbrandt, Dieta

    2012-12-01

    Previous work on social categorization has shown that people often use cues such as a person's gender, age, or ethnicity to categorize and form impressions of others. The present research investigated effects of social category membership on the evaluation of humanoid robots. More specifically, participants rated a humanoid robot that either belonged to their in-group or to a national out-group with regard to anthropomorphism (e.g., mind attribution, warmth), psychological closeness, contact intentions, and design. We predicted that participants would show an in-group bias towards the robot that ostensibly belonged to their in-group--as indicated by its name and location of production. In line with our hypotheses, participants not only rated the in-group robot more favourably--importantly, they also anthropomorphized it more strongly than the out-group robot. Our findings thus document that people even apply social categorization processes and subsequent differential social evaluations to robots. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

  9. Curiosity driven reinforcement learning for motion planning on humanoids

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frank, Mikhail; Leitner, Jürgen; Stollenga, Marijn; Förster, Alexander; Schmidhuber, Jürgen

    2014-01-01

    Most previous work on artificial curiosity (AC) and intrinsic motivation focuses on basic concepts and theory. Experimental results are generally limited to toy scenarios, such as navigation in a simulated maze, or control of a simple mechanical system with one or two degrees of freedom. To study AC in a more realistic setting, we embody a curious agent in the complex iCub humanoid robot. Our novel reinforcement learning (RL) framework consists of a state-of-the-art, low-level, reactive control layer, which controls the iCub while respecting constraints, and a high-level curious agent, which explores the iCub's state-action space through information gain maximization, learning a world model from experience, controlling the actual iCub hardware in real-time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ever embodied, curious agent for real-time motion planning on a humanoid. We demonstrate that it can learn compact Markov models to represent large regions of the iCub's configuration space, and that the iCub explores intelligently, showing interest in its physical constraints as well as in objects it finds in its environment. PMID:24432001

  10. Robots Learn Writing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Huan Tan

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper proposes a general method for robots to learn motions and corresponding semantic knowledge simultaneously. A modified ISOMAP algorithm is used to convert the sampled 6D vectors of joint angles into 2D trajectories, and the required movements for writing numbers are learned from this modified ISOMAP-based model. Using this algorithm, the knowledge models are established. Learned motion and knowledge models are stored in a 2D latent space. Gaussian Process (GP method is used to model and represent these models. Practical experiments are carried out on a humanoid robot, named ISAC, to learn the semantic representations of numbers and the movements of writing numbers through imitation and to verify the effectiveness of this framework. This framework is applied into training a humanoid robot, named ISAC. At the learning stage, ISAC not only learns the dynamics of the movement required to write the numbers, but also learns the semantic meaning of the numbers which are related to the writing movements from the same data set. Given speech commands, ISAC recognizes the words and generated corresponding motion trajectories to write the numbers. This imitation learning method is implemented on a cognitive architecture to provide robust cognitive information processing.

  11. Robot initiative in a team learning task increases the rhythm of interaction but not the perceived engagement

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ivaldi, Serena; Anzalone, Salvatore M.; Rousseau, Woody; Sigaud, Olivier; Chetouani, Mohamed

    2014-01-01

    We hypothesize that the initiative of a robot during a collaborative task with a human can influence the pace of interaction, the human response to attention cues, and the perceived engagement. We propose an object learning experiment where the human interacts in a natural way with the humanoid iCub. Through a two-phases scenario, the human teaches the robot about the properties of some objects. We compare the effect of the initiator of the task in the teaching phase (human or robot) on the rhythm of the interaction in the verification phase. We measure the reaction time of the human gaze when responding to attention utterances of the robot. Our experiments show that when the robot is the initiator of the learning task, the pace of interaction is higher and the reaction to attention cues faster. Subjective evaluations suggest that the initiating role of the robot, however, does not affect the perceived engagement. Moreover, subjective and third-person evaluations of the interaction task suggest that the attentive mechanism we implemented in the humanoid robot iCub is able to arouse engagement and make the robot's behavior readable. PMID:24596554

  12. Influence of facial feedback during a cooperative human-robot task in schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cohen, Laura; Khoramshahi, Mahdi; Salesse, Robin N; Bortolon, Catherine; Słowiński, Piotr; Zhai, Chao; Tsaneva-Atanasova, Krasimira; Di Bernardo, Mario; Capdevielle, Delphine; Marin, Ludovic; Schmidt, Richard C; Bardy, Benoit G; Billard, Aude; Raffard, Stéphane

    2017-11-03

    Rapid progress in the area of humanoid robots offers tremendous possibilities for investigating and improving social competences in people with social deficits, but remains yet unexplored in schizophrenia. In this study, we examined the influence of social feedbacks elicited by a humanoid robot on motor coordination during a human-robot interaction. Twenty-two schizophrenia patients and twenty-two matched healthy controls underwent a collaborative motor synchrony task with the iCub humanoid robot. Results revealed that positive social feedback had a facilitatory effect on motor coordination in the control participants compared to non-social positive feedback. This facilitatory effect was not present in schizophrenia patients, whose social-motor coordination was similarly impaired in social and non-social feedback conditions. Furthermore, patients' cognitive flexibility impairment and antipsychotic dosing were negatively correlated with patients' ability to synchronize hand movements with iCub. Overall, our findings reveal that patients have marked difficulties to exploit facial social cues elicited by a humanoid robot to modulate their motor coordination during human-robot interaction, partly accounted for by cognitive deficits and medication. This study opens new perspectives for comprehension of social deficits in this mental disorder.

  13. Autonomous learning of robust visual object detection and identification on a humanoid

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Leitner, J.; Chandrashekhariah, P.; Harding, S.; Frank, M.; Spina, G.; Förster, A.; Triesch, J.; Schmidhuber, J.

    2012-01-01

    In this work we introduce a technique for a humanoid robot to autonomously learn the representations of objects within its visual environment. Our approach involves an attention mechanism in association with feature based segmentation that explores the environment and provides object samples for

  14. The Walk-Man Robot Software Architecture

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mirko Ferrati

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available A software and control architecture for a humanoid robot is a complex and large project, which involves a team of developers/researchers to be coordinated and requires many hard design choices. If such project has to be done in a very limited time, i.e., less than 1 year, more constraints are added and concepts, such as modular design, code reusability, and API definition, need to be used as much as possible. In this work, we describe the software architecture developed for Walk-Man, a robot participant at the Darpa Robotics Challenge. The challenge required the robot to execute many different tasks, such as walking, driving a car, and manipulating objects. These tasks need to be solved by robotics specialists in their corresponding research field, such as humanoid walking, motion planning, or object manipulation. The proposed architecture was developed in 10 months, provided boilerplate code for most of the functionalities required to control a humanoid robot and allowed robotics researchers to produce their control modules for DRC tasks in a short time. Additional capabilities of the architecture include firmware and hardware management, mixing of different middlewares, unreliable network management, and operator control station GUI. All the source code related to the architecture and some control modules have been released as open source projects.

  15. Initial phases of design-based research into the educational potentials of NAO-robots

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Majgaard, Gunver; Bertel, Lykke Brogaard

    2014-01-01

    In this paper, we describe our initial research, using the humanoid robot NAO in primary and secondary schools. How does a programmable humanoid enrich teaching and how do we prepare the teachers? Ten school classes are using the robot for creative programming. So far we have experienced...... that the robot enriches the learning processes by combining the auditory, visual and kinaesthetic modalities....

  16. New trends in medical and service robots human centered analysis, control and design

    CERN Document Server

    Chevallereau, Christine; Pisla, Doina; Bleuler, Hannes; Rodić, Aleksandar

    2016-01-01

    Medical and service robotics integrates several disciplines and technologies such as mechanisms, mechatronics, biomechanics, humanoid robotics, exoskeletons, and anthropomorphic hands. This book presents the most recent advances in medical and service robotics, with a stress on human aspects. It collects the selected peer-reviewed papers of the Fourth International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots, held in Nantes, France in 2015, covering topics on: exoskeletons, anthropomorphic hands, therapeutic robots and rehabilitation, cognitive robots, humanoid and service robots, assistive robots and elderly assistance, surgical robots, human-robot interfaces, BMI and BCI, haptic devices and design for medical and assistive robotics. This book offers a valuable addition to existing literature.

  17. Ping-Pong Robotics with High-Speed Vision System

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Li, Hailing; Wu, Haiyan; Lou, Lei

    2012-01-01

    The performance of vision-based control is usually limited by the low sampling rate of the visual feedback. We address Ping-Pong robotics as a widely studied example which requires high-speed vision for highly dynamic motion control. In order to detect a flying ball accurately and robustly...... of the manipulator are updated iteratively with decreasing error. Experiments are conducted on a 7 degrees of freedom humanoid robot arm. A successful Ping-Pong playing between the robot arm and human is achieved with a high successful rate of 88%....

  18. Natural Tasking of Robots Based on Human Interaction Cues

    Science.gov (United States)

    2005-06-01

    MIT. • Matthew Marjanovic , researcher, ITA Software. • Brian Scasselatti, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Yale. • Matthew Williamson...2004. 25 [74] Charlie C. Kemp. Shoes as a platform for vision. 7th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 2004. [75] Matthew Marjanovic ...meso: Simulated muscles for a humanoid robot. Presentation for Humanoid Robotics Group, MIT AI Lab, August 2001. [76] Matthew J. Marjanovic . Teaching

  19. Inventing Japan's 'robotics culture': the repeated assembly of science, technology, and culture in social robotics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sabanović, Selma

    2014-06-01

    Using interviews, participant observation, and published documents, this article analyzes the co-construction of robotics and culture in Japan through the technical discourse and practices of robotics researchers. Three cases from current robotics research--the seal-like robot PARO, the Humanoid Robotics Project HRP-2 humanoid, and 'kansei robotics' - show the different ways in which scientists invoke culture to provide epistemological grounding and possibilities for social acceptance of their work. These examples show how the production and consumption of social robotic technologies are associated with traditional crafts and values, how roboticists negotiate among social, technical, and cultural constraints while designing robots, and how humans and robots are constructed as cultural subjects in social robotics discourse. The conceptual focus is on the repeated assembly of cultural models of social behavior, organization, cognition, and technology through roboticists' narratives about the development of advanced robotic technologies. This article provides a picture of robotics as the dynamic construction of technology and culture and concludes with a discussion of the limits and possibilities of this vision in promoting a culturally situated understanding of technology and a multicultural view of science.

  20. Robot Mechanisms

    CERN Document Server

    Lenarcic, Jadran; Stanišić, Michael M

    2013-01-01

    This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the area of robot mechanisms, primarily considering industrial manipulators and humanoid arms. The book is intended for both teaching and self-study. Emphasis is given to the fundamentals of kinematic analysis and the design of robot mechanisms. The coverage of topics is untypical. The focus is on robot kinematics. The book creates a balance between theoretical and practical aspects in the development and application of robot mechanisms, and includes the latest achievements and trends in robot science and technology.

  1. Deep ART Neural Model for Biologically Inspired Episodic Memory and Its Application to Task Performance of Robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Park, Gyeong-Moon; Yoo, Yong-Ho; Kim, Deok-Hwa; Kim, Jong-Hwan

    2017-06-26

    Robots are expected to perform smart services and to undertake various troublesome or difficult tasks in the place of humans. Since these human-scale tasks consist of a temporal sequence of events, robots need episodic memory to store and retrieve the sequences to perform the tasks autonomously in similar situations. As episodic memory, in this paper we propose a novel Deep adaptive resonance theory (ART) neural model and apply it to the task performance of the humanoid robot, Mybot, developed in the Robot Intelligence Technology Laboratory at KAIST. Deep ART has a deep structure to learn events, episodes, and even more like daily episodes. Moreover, it can retrieve the correct episode from partial input cues robustly. To demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed Deep ART, experiments are conducted with the humanoid robot, Mybot, for performing the three tasks of arranging toys, making cereal, and disposing of garbage.

  2. Generalisation, decision making, and embodiment effects in mental rotation: A neurorobotic architecture tested with a humanoid robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seepanomwan, Kristsana; Caligiore, Daniele; Cangelosi, Angelo; Baldassarre, Gianluca

    2015-12-01

    Mental rotation, a classic experimental paradigm of cognitive psychology, tests the capacity of humans to mentally rotate a seen object to decide if it matches a target object. In recent years, mental rotation has been investigated with brain imaging techniques to identify the brain areas involved. Mental rotation has also been investigated through the development of neural-network models, used to identify the specific mechanisms that underlie its process, and with neurorobotics models to investigate its embodied nature. Current models, however, have limited capacities to relate to neuro-scientific evidence, to generalise mental rotation to new objects, to suitably represent decision making mechanisms, and to allow the study of the effects of overt gestures on mental rotation. The work presented in this study overcomes these limitations by proposing a novel neurorobotic model that has a macro-architecture constrained by knowledge held on brain, encompasses a rather general mental rotation mechanism, and incorporates a biologically plausible decision making mechanism. The model was tested using the humanoid robot iCub in tasks requiring the robot to mentally rotate 2D geometrical images appearing on a computer screen. The results show that the robot gained an enhanced capacity to generalise mental rotation to new objects and to express the possible effects of overt movements of the wrist on mental rotation. The model also represents a further step in the identification of the embodied neural mechanisms that may underlie mental rotation in humans and might also give hints to enhance robots' planning capabilities. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  3. Continuing Robot Skill Learning after Demonstration with Human Feedback

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Argall Brenna D.

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Though demonstration-based approaches have been successfully applied to learning a variety of robot behaviors, there do exist some limitations. The ability to continue learning after demonstration, based on execution experience with the learned policy, therefore has proven to be an asset to many demonstration-based learning systems. This paper discusses important considerations for interfaces that provide feedback to adapt and improve demonstrated behaviors. Feedback interfaces developed for two robots with very different motion capabilities - a wheeled mobile robot and high degree-of-freedom humanoid - are highlighted.

  4. Audio-Visual Perception System for a Humanoid Robotic Head

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raquel Viciana-Abad

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available One of the main issues within the field of social robotics is to endow robots with the ability to direct attention to people with whom they are interacting. Different approaches follow bio-inspired mechanisms, merging audio and visual cues to localize a person using multiple sensors. However, most of these fusion mechanisms have been used in fixed systems, such as those used in video-conference rooms, and thus, they may incur difficulties when constrained to the sensors with which a robot can be equipped. Besides, within the scope of interactive autonomous robots, there is a lack in terms of evaluating the benefits of audio-visual attention mechanisms, compared to only audio or visual approaches, in real scenarios. Most of the tests conducted have been within controlled environments, at short distances and/or with off-line performance measurements. With the goal of demonstrating the benefit of fusing sensory information with a Bayes inference for interactive robotics, this paper presents a system for localizing a person by processing visual and audio data. Moreover, the performance of this system is evaluated and compared via considering the technical limitations of unimodal systems. The experiments show the promise of the proposed approach for the proactive detection and tracking of speakers in a human-robot interactive framework.

  5. Motion and operation planning of robotic systems background and practical approaches

    CERN Document Server

    Gomez-Barvo, Fernando

    2015-01-01

    This book addresses the broad multi-disciplinary topic of robotics, and presents the basic techniques for motion and operation planning in robotics systems. Gathering contributions from experts in diverse and wide ranging fields, it offers an overview of the most recent and cutting-edge practical applications of these methodologies. It covers both theoretical and practical approaches, and elucidates the transition from theory to implementation. An extensive analysis is provided, including humanoids, manipulators, aerial robots and ground mobile robots. ‘Motion and Operation Planning of Robotic Systems’ addresses the following topics: *The theoretical background of robotics. *Application of motion planning techniques to manipulators, such as serial and parallel manipulators. *Mobile robots planning, including robotic applications related to aerial robots, large scale robots and traditional wheeled robots. *Motion planning for humanoid robots. An invaluable reference text for graduate students and researche...

  6. Humanoid Upper Torso Complexity for Displaying Gestures

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert Richardson

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available Body language is an important part of human-to-human communication; therefore body language in humanoid robots is very important for successful communication and social interaction with humans. The number of degrees of freedom (d.o.f necessary to achieve realistic body language in robots has been investigated. Using animation, three robots were simulated performing body language gestures; the complex model was given 25 d.o.f, the simplified model 18 d.o.f and the basic model 10 d.o.f. A subjective survey was created online using these animations, to obtain people's opinions on the realism of the gestures and to see if they could recognise the emotions portrayed. It was concluded that the basic system was the least realistic, complex system the most realistic, and the simplified system was only slightly less realistic than the human. Modular robotic joints were then fabricated so that the gestures could be implemented experimentally. The experimental results demonstrate that through simplification of the required degrees of freedom, the gestures can be experimentally reproduced.

  7. A Basic Architecture of an Autonomous Adaptive System With Conscious-Like Function for a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yasuo Kinouchi

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available In developing a humanoid robot, there are two major objectives. One is developing a physical robot having body, hands, and feet resembling those of human beings and being able to similarly control them. The other is to develop a control system that works similarly to our brain, to feel, think, act, and learn like ours. In this article, an architecture of a control system with a brain-oriented logical structure for the second objective is proposed. The proposed system autonomously adapts to the environment and implements a clearly defined “consciousness” function, through which both habitual behavior and goal-directed behavior are realized. Consciousness is regarded as a function for effective adaptation at the system-level, based on matching and organizing the individual results of the underlying parallel-processing units. This consciousness is assumed to correspond to how our mind is “aware” when making our moment to moment decisions in our daily life. The binding problem and the basic causes of delay in Libet’s experiment are also explained by capturing awareness in this manner. The goal is set as an image in the system, and efficient actions toward achieving this goal are selected in the goal-directed behavior process. The system is designed as an artificial neural network and aims at achieving consistent and efficient system behavior, through the interaction of highly independent neural nodes. The proposed architecture is based on a two-level design. The first level, which we call the “basic-system,” is an artificial neural network system that realizes consciousness, habitual behavior and explains the binding problem. The second level, which we call the “extended-system,” is an artificial neural network system that realizes goal-directed behavior.

  8. I Reach Faster When I See You Look: Gaze Effects in Human–Human and Human–Robot Face-to-Face Cooperation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boucher, Jean-David; Pattacini, Ugo; Lelong, Amelie; Bailly, Gerard; Elisei, Frederic; Fagel, Sascha; Dominey, Peter Ford; Ventre-Dominey, Jocelyne

    2012-01-01

    Human–human interaction in natural environments relies on a variety of perceptual cues. Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly refined in their sensorimotor capabilities, and thus should now be able to manipulate and exploit these social cues in cooperation with their human partners. Previous studies have demonstrated that people follow human and robot gaze, and that it can help them to cope with spatially ambiguous language. Our goal is to extend these findings into the domain of action, to determine how human and robot gaze can influence the speed and accuracy of human action. We report on results from a human–human cooperation experiment demonstrating that an agent’s vision of her/his partner’s gaze can significantly improve that agent’s performance in a cooperative task. We then implement a heuristic capability to generate such gaze cues by a humanoid robot that engages in the same cooperative interaction. The subsequent human–robot experiments demonstrate that a human agent can indeed exploit the predictive gaze of their robot partner in a cooperative task. This allows us to render the humanoid robot more human-like in its ability to communicate with humans. The long term objectives of the work are thus to identify social cooperation cues, and to validate their pertinence through implementation in a cooperative robot. The current research provides the robot with the capability to produce appropriate speech and gaze cues in the context of human–robot cooperation tasks. Gaze is manipulated in three conditions: Full gaze (coordinated eye and head), eyes hidden with sunglasses, and head fixed. We demonstrate the pertinence of these cues in terms of statistical measures of action times for humans in the context of a cooperative task, as gaze significantly facilitates cooperation as measured by human response times. PMID:22563315

  9. I Reach Faster When I See You Look: Gaze Effects in Human-Human and Human-Robot Face-to-Face Cooperation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boucher, Jean-David; Pattacini, Ugo; Lelong, Amelie; Bailly, Gerrard; Elisei, Frederic; Fagel, Sascha; Dominey, Peter Ford; Ventre-Dominey, Jocelyne

    2012-01-01

    Human-human interaction in natural environments relies on a variety of perceptual cues. Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly refined in their sensorimotor capabilities, and thus should now be able to manipulate and exploit these social cues in cooperation with their human partners. Previous studies have demonstrated that people follow human and robot gaze, and that it can help them to cope with spatially ambiguous language. Our goal is to extend these findings into the domain of action, to determine how human and robot gaze can influence the speed and accuracy of human action. We report on results from a human-human cooperation experiment demonstrating that an agent's vision of her/his partner's gaze can significantly improve that agent's performance in a cooperative task. We then implement a heuristic capability to generate such gaze cues by a humanoid robot that engages in the same cooperative interaction. The subsequent human-robot experiments demonstrate that a human agent can indeed exploit the predictive gaze of their robot partner in a cooperative task. This allows us to render the humanoid robot more human-like in its ability to communicate with humans. The long term objectives of the work are thus to identify social cooperation cues, and to validate their pertinence through implementation in a cooperative robot. The current research provides the robot with the capability to produce appropriate speech and gaze cues in the context of human-robot cooperation tasks. Gaze is manipulated in three conditions: Full gaze (coordinated eye and head), eyes hidden with sunglasses, and head fixed. We demonstrate the pertinence of these cues in terms of statistical measures of action times for humans in the context of a cooperative task, as gaze significantly facilitates cooperation as measured by human response times.

  10. Latest Advances in Robot Kinematics

    CERN Document Server

    Husty, Manfred

    2012-01-01

    This book is  of interest to researchers inquiring about modern topics and methods in the kinematics, control and design of robotic manipulators. It considers the full range of robotic systems, including serial, parallel and cable driven manipulators, both planar and spatial. The systems range from being less than fully mobile to kinematically redundant to overconstrained. In addition to recognized areas, this book also presents recent advances in emerging areas such as the design and control of humanoids and humanoid subsystems, and the analysis, modeling and simulation of human body motions, as well as the mobility analysis of protein molecules and the development of machines which incorporate man.

  11. Synthesis of adaptive impedance control for bipedal robot mechanisms

    OpenAIRE

    Petrović Milena; Rodić Aleksandar

    2008-01-01

    The paper describes the impedance algorithm in locomotion of humanoid robot with proposed parameter modulation depending on the gate phase. The analysis shows influence of walking speed and foot elevation on regulator's parameters. Chosen criterion cares for footpath tracking and needed energy for that way of walking. The experiments give recommendation for impedance regulator tuning.

  12. Effect of feedback from a socially interactive humanoid robot on reaching kinematics in children with and without cerebral palsy: A pilot study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yuping; Garcia-Vergara, Sergio; Howard, Ayanna M

    2017-08-17

    To examine whether children with or without cerebral palsy (CP) would follow a humanoid robot's (i.e., Darwin) feedback to move their arm faster when playing virtual reality (VR) games. Seven children with mild CP and 10 able-bodied children participated. Real-time reaching was evaluated by playing the Super Pop VR TM system, including 2-game baseline, 3-game acquisition, and another 2-game extinction. During acquisition, Darwin provided verbal feedback to direct the child to reach a kinematically defined target goal (i.e., 80% of average movement time in baseline). Outcome variables included the percentage of successful reaches ("% successful reaches"), movement time (MT), average speed, path, and number of movement units. All games during acquisition and extinction had larger "%successful reaches," faster speeds, and faster MTs than the 2 games during baseline (p robot's feedback for changing their reaching kinematics when playing VR games.

  13. Can a humanoid face be expressive? A psychophysiological investigation

    OpenAIRE

    Nicole eLazzeri; Daniele eMazzei; Alberto eGreco; Annalisa eRotesi; Antonio eLanatà; Danilo Emilio De Rossi; Danilo Emilio De Rossi

    2015-01-01

    Non-verbal signals expressed through body language play a crucial role in multi-modal human communication during social relations. Indeed, in all cultures facial expressions are the most universal and direct signs to express innate emotional cues. A human face conveys important information in social interactions and helps us to better understand our social partners and establish empathic links.Latest researches show that humanoid and social robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans, ...

  14. Can a Humanoid Face be Expressive? A Psychophysiological Investigation

    OpenAIRE

    Lazzeri, N.; Mazzei, D.; Greco, A.; Rotesi, A.; Lanatà, A.; De Rossi, D.

    2015-01-01

    Non-verbal signals expressed through body language play a crucial role in multi-modal human communication during social relations. Indeed, in all cultures, facial expressions are the most universal and direct signs to express innate emotional cues. A human face conveys important information in social interactions and helps us to better understand our social partners and establish empathic links. Latest researches show that humanoid and social robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans...

  15. Tele-operated service robots for household and care

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Osch, van M.P.W.J.; Bera, D.; Koks, Y.; Hee, van K.M.; Bronswijk, van J.E.M.H.; Maas, G.J.; Gassel, van F.J.M.

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: Service robots are a relatively new branch of robotics after the successful industry robots and the experimental humanoids. Service robots are supposed to perform tasks that normally are done by humans in particular daily life activities. However they do not have to do it in the same way as

  16. The Snackbot: Documenting the Design of a Robot for Long-term Human-Robot Interaction

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-03-01

    distributed robots. Proceedings of the Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference’02. NY: ACM Press. [18] Kanda, T., Takayuki , H., Eaton, D., and...humanoid robots. Proceedings of HRI’06. New York, NY: ACM Press, 351-352. [23] Nabe, S., Kanda, T., Hiraki , K., Ishiguro, H., Kogure, K., and Hagita

  17. Designing Emotionally Expressive Robots

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tsiourti, Christiana; Weiss, Astrid; Wac, Katarzyna

    2017-01-01

    Socially assistive agents, be it virtual avatars or robots, need to engage in social interactions with humans and express their internal emotional states, goals, and desires. In this work, we conducted a comparative study to investigate how humans perceive emotional cues expressed by humanoid...... robots through five communication modalities (face, head, body, voice, locomotion) and examined whether the degree of a robot's human-like embodiment affects this perception. In an online survey, we asked people to identify emotions communicated by Pepper -a highly human-like robot and Hobbit – a robot...... for robots....

  18. Reinforcement Learning on autonomous humanoid robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schuitema, E.

    2012-01-01

    Service robots have the potential to be of great value in households, health care and other labor intensive environments. However, these environments are typically unique, not very structured and frequently changing, which makes it difficult to make service robots robust and versatile through manual

  19. Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willemse, Cesco; Marchesi, Serena; Wykowska, Agnieszka

    2018-01-01

    Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive-affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot's characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human-human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants' gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

  20. Infant discrimination of humanoid robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Goh eMatsuda

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Recently, extremely humanlike robots called androids have been developed, some of which are already being used in the field of entertainment. In the context of psychological studies, androids are expected to be used in the future as fully controllable human stimuli to investigate human nature. In this study, we used an android to examine infant discrimination ability between human beings and non-human agents. Participants (N = 42 infants were assigned to three groups based on their age, i.e., 6- to 8-month-olds, 9- to 11-month-olds, and 12- to 14-month-olds, and took part in a preferential looking paradigm. Of three types of agents involved in the paradigm—a human, an android modeled on the human, and a mechanical-looking robot made from the android—two at a time were presented side-by-side as they performed a grasping action. Infants’ looking behavior was measured using an eye tracking system, and the amount of time spent focusing on each of three areas of interest (face, goal, and body was analyzed. Results showed that all age groups predominantly looked at the robot and at the face area, and that infants aged over 9 months watched the goal area for longer than the body area. There was no difference in looking times and areas focused on between the human and the android. These findings suggest that 6- to 14-month-olds are unable to discriminate between the human and the android, although they can distinguish the mechanical robot from the human.

  1. Autonomous military robotics

    CERN Document Server

    Nath, Vishnu

    2014-01-01

    This SpringerBrief reveals the latest techniques in computer vision and machine learning on robots that are designed as accurate and efficient military snipers. Militaries around the world are investigating this technology to simplify the time, cost and safety measures necessary for training human snipers. These robots are developed by combining crucial aspects of computer science research areas including image processing, robotic kinematics and learning algorithms. The authors explain how a new humanoid robot, the iCub, uses high-speed cameras and computer vision algorithms to track the objec

  2. Using a cognitive architecture for general purpose service robot control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Puigbo, Jordi-Ysard; Pumarola, Albert; Angulo, Cecilio; Tellez, Ricardo

    2015-04-01

    A humanoid service robot equipped with a set of simple action skills including navigating, grasping, recognising objects or people, among others, is considered in this paper. By using those skills the robot should complete a voice command expressed in natural language encoding a complex task (defined as the concatenation of a number of those basic skills). As a main feature, no traditional planner has been used to decide skills to be activated, as well as in which sequence. Instead, the SOAR cognitive architecture acts as the reasoner by selecting which action the robot should complete, addressing it towards the goal. Our proposal allows to include new goals for the robot just by adding new skills (without the need to encode new plans). The proposed architecture has been tested on a human-sized humanoid robot, REEM, acting as a general purpose service robot.

  3. Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willemse, Cesco; Marchesi, Serena; Wykowska, Agnieszka

    2018-01-01

    Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings. PMID:29459842

  4. Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cesco Willemse

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition. Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

  5. Human-Robot Interaction: Status and Challenges.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheridan, Thomas B

    2016-06-01

    The current status of human-robot interaction (HRI) is reviewed, and key current research challenges for the human factors community are described. Robots have evolved from continuous human-controlled master-slave servomechanisms for handling nuclear waste to a broad range of robots incorporating artificial intelligence for many applications and under human supervisory control. This mini-review describes HRI developments in four application areas and what are the challenges for human factors research. In addition to a plethora of research papers, evidence of success is manifest in live demonstrations of robot capability under various forms of human control. HRI is a rapidly evolving field. Specialized robots under human teleoperation have proven successful in hazardous environments and medical application, as have specialized telerobots under human supervisory control for space and repetitive industrial tasks. Research in areas of self-driving cars, intimate collaboration with humans in manipulation tasks, human control of humanoid robots for hazardous environments, and social interaction with robots is at initial stages. The efficacy of humanoid general-purpose robots has yet to be proven. HRI is now applied in almost all robot tasks, including manufacturing, space, aviation, undersea, surgery, rehabilitation, agriculture, education, package fetch and delivery, policing, and military operations. © 2016, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

  6. Fiscal 2000 report on result of R and D on robot system cooperating and coexisting with human beings. R and D on robot system cooperating and coexisting with human beings; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system kenkyu kaihatsu seika hokokusho

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-06-01

    A highly safe and reliable robot is being developed capable of cooperating with human beings and executing complicated operations in a human working/living space. This paper describes the fiscal 2000 results. Development of robot motion library was continued for extended task for providing services to people in care houses for the aged controlling motions of the humanoid robot. A basic design for a personal service system by the humanoid robot was conducted with the aim of nursing assistance and for the objective of developing a portable terminal type tele-operation device. A public and a home cockpit were researched with the purpose of developing user interfaces for telexistence control. A dynamic simulator for humanoid robots was built, with motions of standing-up and walking examined, in order to develop basic theories for the dual-handed tasks aided by the leg-arm cooperative motion. To develop a robot that properly and safely cooperates and coexists with the human beings, it is essential to obtain a dynamically reasonable and natural control law, so that the basic studies were conducted in this direction. With the purpose of developing a motion capture and learning system, a virtual robot platform and an information acquiring interface were developed. Studies were also conducted on modeling technique for achieving realistic material properties from high-precision image synthesis and actual images. (NEDO)

  7. Active Vision for Sociable Robots

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Breazeal, Cynthia; Edsinger, Aaron; Fitzpatrick, Paul; Scassellati, Brian

    2001-01-01

    .... In humanoid robotic systems, or in any animate vision system that interacts with people, social dynamics provide additional levels of constraint and provide additional opportunities for processing economy...

  8. Presence of Life-Like Robot Expressions Influences Children’s Enjoyment of Human-Robot Interactions in the Field

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cameron, David; Fernando, Samuel; Collins, Emily; Millings, Abigail; Moore, Roger; Sharkey, Amanda; Evers, Vanessa; Prescott, Tony

    Emotions, and emotional expression, have a broad influence on the interactions we have with others and are thus a key factor to consider in developing social robots. As part of a collaborative EU project, this study examined the impact of lifelike affective facial expressions, in the humanoid robot

  9. Design and development an insect-inspired humanoid gripper that is structurally sound, yet very flexible

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hajjaj, S.; Pun, N.

    2013-06-01

    One of the biggest challenges in mechanical robotics design is the balance between structural integrity and flexibility. An industrial robotic gripper could be technically advanced, however it contains only 1 Degree of Freedom (DOF). If one is to add more DOFs the design would become complex. On the other hand, the human wrist and fingers contain 23 DOFs, and is very lightweight and highly flexible. Robotics are becoming more and more part of our social life, they are more and more being incorporated in social, medical, and personal application. Therefore, for such robots to be effective, they need to mimic human performance, both in performance as well as in mechanical design. In this work, a Humanoid Gripper is designed and built to mimic a simplified version of a human wrist and fingers. This is attempted by mimicking insect and human designs of grippes. The main challenge was to insure that the gripper is structurally sound, but at the same time flexible and lightweight. A combination of light weight material and a unique design of finger actuators were applied. The gripper is controlled by a PARALLAX servo controller 28823 (PSCI), which mounted on the assembly itself. At the end, a 6 DOF humanoid gripper made of lightweight material, similar in size to the human arm, and is able to carry a weight of 1 Kg has been designed and built.

  10. Design and development an insect-inspired humanoid gripper that is structurally sound, yet very flexible

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hajjaj, S; Pun, N

    2013-01-01

    One of the biggest challenges in mechanical robotics design is the balance between structural integrity and flexibility. An industrial robotic gripper could be technically advanced, however it contains only 1 Degree of Freedom (DOF). If one is to add more DOFs the design would become complex. On the other hand, the human wrist and fingers contain 23 DOFs, and is very lightweight and highly flexible. Robotics are becoming more and more part of our social life, they are more and more being incorporated in social, medical, and personal application. Therefore, for such robots to be effective, they need to mimic human performance, both in performance as well as in mechanical design. In this work, a Humanoid Gripper is designed and built to mimic a simplified version of a human wrist and fingers. This is attempted by mimicking insect and human designs of grippes. The main challenge was to insure that the gripper is structurally sound, but at the same time flexible and lightweight. A combination of light weight material and a unique design of finger actuators were applied. The gripper is controlled by a PARALLAX servo controller 28823 (PSCI), which mounted on the assembly itself. At the end, a 6 DOF humanoid gripper made of lightweight material, similar in size to the human arm, and is able to carry a weight of 1 Kg has been designed and built.

  11. Robot sex and consent : Is consent to sex between a robot and a human conceivable, possible, and desirable?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Frank, L.; Nyholm, S.

    2017-01-01

    The development of highly humanoid sex robots is on the technological horizon. If sex robots are integrated into the legal community as “electronic persons”, the issue of sexual consent arises, which is essential for legally and morally permissible sexual relations between human persons. This paper

  12. Analysis of flat terrain for the Atlas robot

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Waard, M.; Inja, M.; Visser, A.; Mousakhani, M.; Ataei, M.; Jamzad, M.

    2013-01-01

    This paper gives a description of an approach to analyze the sensor information of the surroundings to select places where the foot of a humanoid can be placed. This will allow apply such robot in a rescue scenario, as foreseen in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, where a robot is forced to traverse

  13. Tema 2: Ethel and her Telenoid: Toward using humanoids to alleviate symptoms of dementia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jens Dinesen Strandbech

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available This article elaborates on a longitudinal study investigating if conversations with the teleoperated humanoid robot Telenoid can alleviate symptoms of dementia. The article initially frames Telenoid in the field of social robotics and relevant dementia-initiatives before dwelling on the emerging relationship between Telenoid and a person with severe dementia. Here it is shown how persons with severe dementia can benefit greatly from interaction with Functionally Designed Anthropomorphic Robots such as Telenoid as a means of providing a temporary ‘conversational stepping stone’, working toward improving quality of life and regaining conversational and social confidence to seek and interact socially with others.

  14. Cable-driven elastic parallel humanoid head with face tracking for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Su, Hao; Dickstein-Fischer, Laurie; Harrington, Kevin; Fu, Qiushi; Lu, Weina; Huang, Haibo; Cole, Gregory; Fischer, Gregory S

    2010-01-01

    This paper presents the development of new prismatic actuation approach and its application in human-safe humanoid head design. To reduce actuator output impedance and mitigate unexpected external shock, the prismatic actuation method uses cables to drive a piston with preloaded spring. By leveraging the advantages of parallel manipulator and cable-driven mechanism, the developed neck has a parallel manipulator embodiment with two cable-driven limbs embedded with preloaded springs and one passive limb. The eye mechanism is adapted for low-cost webcam with succinct "ball-in-socket" structure. Based on human head anatomy and biomimetics, the neck has 3 degree of freedom (DOF) motion: pan, tilt and one decoupled roll while each eye has independent pan and synchronous tilt motion (3 DOF eyes). A Kalman filter based face tracking algorithm is implemented to interact with the human. This neck and eye structure is translatable to other human-safe humanoid robots. The robot's appearance reflects a non-threatening image of a penguin, which can be translated into a possible therapeutic intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

  15. Contextual action recognition and target localization with an active allocation of attention on a humanoid robot

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ognibene, Dimitri; Chinellato, Eris; Sarabia, Miguel; Demiris, Yiannis

    2013-01-01

    Exploratory gaze movements are fundamental for gathering the most relevant information regarding the partner during social interactions. Inspired by the cognitive mechanisms underlying human social behaviour, we have designed and implemented a system for a dynamic attention allocation which is able to actively control gaze movements during a visual action recognition task exploiting its own action execution predictions. Our humanoid robot is able, during the observation of a partner's reaching movement, to contextually estimate the goal position of the partner's hand and the location in space of the candidate targets. This is done while actively gazing around the environment, with the purpose of optimizing the gathering of information relevant for the task. Experimental results on a simulated environment show that active gaze control, based on the internal simulation of actions, provides a relevant advantage with respect to other action perception approaches, both in terms of estimation precision and of time required to recognize an action. Moreover, our model reproduces and extends some experimental results on human attention during an action perception. (paper)

  16. Cognitive Tools for Humanoid Robots in Space

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Sofge, Donald; Perzanowski, Dennis; Skubic, Marjorie; Bugajska, Magdalena; Trafton, J. G; Cassimatis, Nicholas; Brock, Derek; Adams, William; Schultz, Alan

    2004-01-01

    .... The key to achieving this interaction is to provide the robot with sufficient skills for natural communication with humans so that humans can interact with the robot almost as though it were another human...

  17. Robot Comedy Lab: Experimenting with the Social Dynamics of Live Performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kleomenis eKatevas

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available The success of live comedy depends on a performer's ability to 'work' an audience. Ethnographic studies suggest that this involves the co-ordinated use of subtle social signals such as body orientation, gesture, gaze by both performers and audience members. Robots provide a unique opportunity to test the effects of these signals experimentally. Using a life-size humanoid robot, programmed to perform a stand-up comedy routine, we manipulated the robot's patterns of gesture and gaze and examined their effects on the real-time responses of a live audience. The strength and type of responses were captured using SHOREtm computer vision analytics. The results highlight the complex, reciprocal social dynamics of performer and audience behavior. People respond more positively when the robot looks at them, negatively when it looks away and that different performative gestures elicit systematically different patterns of audience response. This demonstrates that the responses of individual audience members depend on the specific interaction they're having with the performer. This work provides insights into how to design more effective, more socially engaging, forms of robot interaction that can be used in a variety of service contexts.

  18. State Generation Method for Humanoid Motion Planning Based on Genetic Algorithm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuyang Wang

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available A new approach to generate the original motion data for humanoid motion planning is presented in this paper. And a state generator is developed based on the genetic algorithm, which enables users to generate various motion states without using any reference motion data. By specifying various types of constraints such as configuration constraints and contact constraints, the state generator can generate stable states that satisfy the constraint conditions for humanoid robots. To deal with the multiple constraints and inverse kinematics, the state generation is finally simplified as a problem of optimizing and searching. In our method, we introduce a convenient mathematic representation for the constraints involved in the state generator, and solve the optimization problem with the genetic algorithm to acquire a desired state. To demonstrate the effectiveness and advantage of the method, a number of motion states are generated according to the requirements of the motion.

  19. State Generation Method for Humanoid Motion Planning Based on Genetic Algorithm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuyang Wang

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available A new approach to generate the original motion data for humanoid motion planning is presented in this paper. And a state generator is developed based on the genetic algorithm, which enables users to generate various motion states without using any reference motion data. By specifying various types of constraints such as configuration constraints and contact constraints, the state generator can generate stable states that satisfy the constraint conditions for humanoid robots.To deal with the multiple constraints and inverse kinematics, the state generation is finally simplified as a problem of optimizing and searching. In our method, we introduce a convenient mathematic representation for the constraints involved in the state generator, and solve the optimization problem with the genetic algorithm to acquire a desired state. To demonstrate the effectiveness and advantage of the method, a number of motion states are generated according to the requirements of the motion.

  20. Concurrent Path Planning with One or More Humanoid Robots

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sanders, Adam M. (Inventor); Reiland, Matthew J. (Inventor)

    2014-01-01

    A robotic system includes a controller and one or more robots each having a plurality of robotic joints. Each of the robotic joints is independently controllable to thereby execute a cooperative work task having at least one task execution fork, leading to multiple independent subtasks. The controller coordinates motion of the robot(s) during execution of the cooperative work task. The controller groups the robotic joints into task-specific robotic subsystems, and synchronizes motion of different subsystems during execution of the various subtasks of the cooperative work task. A method for executing the cooperative work task using the robotic system includes automatically grouping the robotic joints into task-specific subsystems, and assigning subtasks of the cooperative work task to the subsystems upon reaching a task execution fork. The method further includes coordinating execution of the subtasks after reaching the task execution fork.

  1. Biologically-Inspired Control Architecture for Musical Performance Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorge Solis

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available At Waseda University, since 1990, the authors have been developing anthropomorphic musical performance robots as a means for understanding human control, introducing novel ways of interaction between musical partners and robots, and proposing applications for humanoid robots. In this paper, the design of a biologically-inspired control architecture for both an anthropomorphic flutist robot and a saxophone playing robot are described. As for the flutist robot, the authors have focused on implementing an auditory feedback system to improve the calibration procedure for the robot in order to play all the notes correctly during a performance. In particular, the proposed auditory feedback system is composed of three main modules: an Expressive Music Generator, a Feed Forward Air Pressure Control System and a Pitch Evaluation System. As for the saxophone-playing robot, a pressure-pitch controller (based on the feedback error learning to improve the sound produced by the robot during a musical performance was proposed and implemented. In both cases studied, a set of experiments are described to verify the improvements achieved while considering biologically-inspired control approaches.

  2. Multibody system dynamics, robotics and control

    CERN Document Server

    Gerstmayr, Johannes

    2013-01-01

    The volume contains 19 contributions by international experts in the field of multibody system dynamics, robotics and control. The book aims to bridge the gap between the modeling of mechanical systems by means of multibody dynamics formulations and robotics. In the classical approach, a multibody dynamics model contains a very high level of detail, however, the application of such models to robotics or control is usually limited. The papers aim to connect the different scientific communities in multibody dynamics, robotics and control. Main topics are flexible multibody systems, humanoid robots, elastic robots, nonlinear control, optimal path planning, and identification.

  3. Universal Robot Hand Equipped with Tactile and Joint Torque Sensors: Development and Experiments on Stiffness Control and Object Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hiroyuki NAKAMOTO

    2007-04-01

    Full Text Available Various humanoid robots have been developed and multifunction robot hands which are able to attach those robots like human hand is needed. But a useful robot hand has not been depeveloped, because there are a lot of problems such as control method of many degrees of freedom and processing method of enormous sensor outputs. Realizing such robot hand, we have developed five-finger robot hand. In this paper, the detailed structure of developed robot hand is described. The robot hand we developed has five fingers of multi-joint that is equipped with joint torque sensors and tactile sensors. We report experimental results of a stiffness control with the developed robot hand. Those results show that it is possible to change the stiffness of joints. Moreover we propose an object recognition method with the tactile sensor. The validity of that method is assured by experimental results.

  4. Robotic Motion Learning Framework to Promote Social Engagement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rachael Burns

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Imitation is a powerful component of communication between people, and it poses an important implication in improving the quality of interaction in the field of human–robot interaction (HRI. This paper discusses a novel framework designed to improve human–robot interaction through robotic imitation of a participant’s gestures. In our experiment, a humanoid robotic agent socializes with and plays games with a participant. For the experimental group, the robot additionally imitates one of the participant’s novel gestures during a play session. We hypothesize that the robot’s use of imitation will increase the participant’s openness towards engaging with the robot. Experimental results from a user study of 12 subjects show that post-imitation, experimental subjects displayed a more positive emotional state, had higher instances of mood contagion towards the robot, and interpreted the robot to have a higher level of autonomy than their control group counterparts did. These results point to an increased participant interest in engagement fueled by personalized imitation during interaction.

  5. Balance Maintenance in High-Speed Motion of Humanoid Robot Arm-Based on the 6D Constraints of Momentum Change Rate

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Da-song Zhang

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Based on the 6D constraints of momentum change rate (CMCR, this paper puts forward a real-time and full balance maintenance method for the humanoid robot during high-speed movement of its 7-DOF arm. First, the total momentum formula for the robot’s two arms is given and the momentum change rate is defined by the time derivative of the total momentum. The author also illustrates the idea of full balance maintenance and analyzes the physical meaning of 6D CMCR and its fundamental relation to full balance maintenance. Moreover, discretization and optimization solution of CMCR has been provided with the motion constraint of the auxiliary arm’s joint, and the solving algorithm is optimized. The simulation results have shown the validity and generality of the proposed method on the full balance maintenance in the 6 DOFs of the robot body under 6D CMCR. This method ensures 6D dynamics balance performance and increases abundant ZMP stability margin. The resulting motion of the auxiliary arm has large abundance in joint space, and the angular velocity and the angular acceleration of these joints lie within the predefined limits. The proposed algorithm also has good real-time performance.

  6. Mechanical design for a hydraulically actuated quadruped robot

    OpenAIRE

    Erkekli, Koray

    2017-01-01

    Considerable amount of research efforts are spent on the field of legged robotics in the past 60 years. Studies in this area extend from running on one leg to humanoid robots, from four legged robots (quadruped) to multi-legged bug-inspired robots. The advantage of four legged structure is that it is more balanced compared structures with less legs. This feature makes four legged robots candidates rough terrain conditions and for dangerous tasks. Because of the high power-to-weight ratio and ...

  7. Eye-head stabilization mechanism for a humanoid robot tested on human inertial data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vannucci, Lorenzo; Falotico, Egidio; Tolu, Silvia

    2016-01-01

    they keep the image stationary on the retina. In this work we present the first complete model of eye-head stabilization based on the coordination of VCR and VOR. The model is provided with learning and adaptation capabilities based on internal models. Tests on a simulated humanoid platform replicating...

  8. Referral of sensation to an advanced humanoid robotic hand prosthesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosén, Birgitta; Ehrsson, H Henrik; Antfolk, Christian; Cipriani, Christian; Sebelius, Fredrik; Lundborg, Göran

    2009-01-01

    Hand prostheses that are currently available on the market are used by amputees to only a limited extent, partly because of lack of sensory feedback from the artificial hand. We report a pilot study that showed how amputees can experience a robot-like advanced hand prosthesis as part of their own body. We induced a perceptual illusion by which touch applied to the stump of the arm was experienced from the artificial hand. This illusion was elicited by applying synchronous tactile stimulation to the hidden amputation stump and the robotic hand prosthesis in full view. In five people who had had upper limb amputations this stimulation caused referral touch sensation from the stump to the artificial hand, and the prosthesis was experienced more like a real hand. We also showed that this illusion can work when the amputee controls the movements of the artificial hand by recordings of the arm muscle activity with electromyograms. These observations indicate that the previously described "rubber hand illusion" is also valid for an advanced hand prosthesis, even when it has a robotic-like appearance.

  9. Exploring cultural factors in human-robot interaction : A matter of personality?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Weiss, Astrid; Evers, Vanessa

    2011-01-01

    This paper proposes an experimental study to investigate task-dependence and cultural-background dependence of the personality trait attribution on humanoid robots. In Human-Robot Interaction, as well as in Human-Agent Interaction research, the attribution of personality traits towards intelligent

  10. FY 1998 Report on research and development project. Research and development of human-cooperative/coexisting robot systems; 1998 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system kenkyu kaihatsu seika hokokusho

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2000-03-01

    This R and D project is aimed at development of the human-cooperative/coexisting robot systems with high safety and reliability, capable of performing complicated works cooperatively and in a coexisting manner with humans in human working and living spaces, in order to help improve safety and efficiency in various industrial areas, improve services and convenience in manufacturing and service areas, and create new industries. The trend surveys cover humanoid robot systems, remote control systems and simulators, and the application surveys cover services for humans, basic humanoids and entertainment communication. The 1998 R and D efforts include research and development, fabrication and surveys for the following themes; (1) fabrication of robot platforms for supporting manual works, (2) development of surrounded visual display systems, (3) development of robot arm manipulation and force displaying systems, (4) development of a dynamic simulator, (5) development of a distributed software platform, (6) researches and development of computation algorithm for kinematic chain dynamics, (7) development of motion teaching system for multi-functional robots, (8) investigation of trends in robotics technology, and (9) researches and surveys of robot application. (NEDO)

  11. Robot Teachers

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nørgård, Rikke Toft; Ess, Charles Melvin; Bhroin, Niamh Ni

    The world's first robot teacher, Saya, was introduced to a classroom in Japan in 2009. Saya, had the appearance of a young female teacher. She could express six basic emotions, take the register and shout orders like 'be quiet' (The Guardian, 2009). Since 2009, humanoid robot technologies have...... developed. It is now suggested that robot teachers may become regular features in educational settings, and may even 'take over' from human teachers in ten to fifteen years (cf. Amundsen, 2017 online; Gohd, 2017 online). Designed to look and act like a particular kind of human; robot teachers mediate human...... existence and roles, while also aiming to support education through sophisticated, automated, human-like interaction. Our paper explores the design and existential implications of ARTIE, a robot teacher at Oxford Brookes University (2017, online). Drawing on an initial empirical exploration we propose...

  12. Vision-Based Recognition of Activities by a Humanoid Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mounîm A. El-Yacoubi

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available We present an autonomous assistive robotic system for human activity recognition from video sequences. Due to the large variability inherent to video capture from a non-fixed robot (as opposed to a fixed camera, as well as the robot's limited computing resources, implementation has been guided by robustness to this variability and by memory and computing speed efficiency. To accommodate motion speed variability across users, we encode motion using dense interest point trajectories. Our recognition model harnesses the dense interest point bag-of-words representation through an intersection kernel-based SVM that better accommodates the large intra-class variability stemming from a robot operating in different locations and conditions. To contextually assess the engine as implemented in the robot, we compare it with the most recent approaches of human action recognition performed on public datasets (non-robot-based, including a novel approach of our own that is based on a two-layer SVM-hidden conditional random field sequential recognition model. The latter's performance is among the best within the recent state of the art. We show that our robot-based recognition engine, while less accurate than the sequential model, nonetheless shows good performances, especially given the adverse test conditions of the robot, relative to those of a fixed camera.

  13. Fable: Design of a Modular Robotic Playware Platform

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pacheco, Moises; Moghadam, Mikael; Magnússon, Arnþór

    2013-01-01

    -based system composed of reconfigurable heterogeneous modules with a reliable and scalable connector. Furthermore, this paper describes tests where the connector design is tested with children, and presents examples of a moving snake and a quadruped robot, as well as an interactive upper humanoid torso.......We are developing the Fable modular robotic system as a playware platform that will enable non-expert users to develop robots ranging from advanced robotic toys to robotic solutions to problems encountered in their daily lives. This paper presents the mechanical design of Fable: a chain...

  14. A Fast Vision System for Soccer Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tianwu Yang

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper proposes a fast colour-based object recognition and localization for soccer robots. The traditional HSL colour model is modified for better colour segmentation and edge detection in a colour coded environment. The object recognition is based on only the edge pixels to speed up the computation. The edge pixels are detected by intelligently scanning a small part of whole image pixels which is distributed over the image. A fast method for line and circle centre detection is also discussed. For object localization, 26 key points are defined on the soccer field. While two or more key points can be seen from the robot camera view, the three rotation angles are adjusted to achieve a precise localization of robots and other objects. If no key point is detected, the robot position is estimated according to the history of robot movement and the feedback from the motors and sensors. The experiments on NAO and RoboErectus teen-size humanoid robots show that the proposed vision system is robust and accurate under different lighting conditions and can effectively and precisely locate robots and other objects.

  15. Understanding the Uncanny: Both Atypical Features and Category Ambiguity Provoke Aversion toward Humanlike Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Megan K. Strait

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available Robots intended for social contexts are often designed with explicit humanlike attributes in order to facilitate their reception by (and communication with people. However, observation of an “uncanny valley”—a phenomenon in which highly humanlike entities provoke aversion in human observers—has lead some to caution against this practice. Both of these contrasting perspectives on the anthropomorphic design of social robots find some support in empirical investigations to date. Yet, owing to outstanding empirical limitations and theoretical disputes, the uncanny valley and its implications for human-robot interaction remains poorly understood. We thus explored the relationship between human similarity and people's aversion toward humanlike robots via manipulation of the agents' appearances. To that end, we employed a picture-viewing task (Nagents = 60 to conduct an experimental test (Nparticipants = 72 of the uncanny valley's existence and the visual features that cause certain humanlike robots to be unnerving. Across the levels of human similarity, we further manipulated agent appearance on two dimensions, typicality (prototypic, atypical, and ambiguous and agent identity (robot, person, and measured participants' aversion using both subjective and behavioral indices. Our findings were as follows: (1 Further substantiating its existence, the data show a clear and consistent uncanny valley in the current design space of humanoid robots. (2 Both category ambiguity, and more so, atypicalities provoke aversive responding, thus shedding light on the visual factors that drive people's discomfort. (3 Use of the Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale did not reveal any significant relationships between people's pre-existing attitudes toward humanlike robots and their aversive responding—suggesting positive exposure and/or additional experience with robots is unlikely to affect the occurrence of an uncanny valley effect in humanoid robotics

  16. Understanding the Uncanny: Both Atypical Features and Category Ambiguity Provoke Aversion toward Humanlike Robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strait, Megan K; Floerke, Victoria A; Ju, Wendy; Maddox, Keith; Remedios, Jessica D; Jung, Malte F; Urry, Heather L

    2017-01-01

    Robots intended for social contexts are often designed with explicit humanlike attributes in order to facilitate their reception by (and communication with) people. However, observation of an "uncanny valley"-a phenomenon in which highly humanlike entities provoke aversion in human observers-has lead some to caution against this practice. Both of these contrasting perspectives on the anthropomorphic design of social robots find some support in empirical investigations to date. Yet, owing to outstanding empirical limitations and theoretical disputes, the uncanny valley and its implications for human-robot interaction remains poorly understood. We thus explored the relationship between human similarity and people's aversion toward humanlike robots via manipulation of the agents' appearances. To that end, we employed a picture-viewing task ( N agents = 60) to conduct an experimental test ( N participants = 72) of the uncanny valley's existence and the visual features that cause certain humanlike robots to be unnerving. Across the levels of human similarity, we further manipulated agent appearance on two dimensions, typicality (prototypic, atypical, and ambiguous) and agent identity (robot, person), and measured participants' aversion using both subjective and behavioral indices. Our findings were as follows: (1) Further substantiating its existence, the data show a clear and consistent uncanny valley in the current design space of humanoid robots. (2) Both category ambiguity, and more so, atypicalities provoke aversive responding, thus shedding light on the visual factors that drive people's discomfort. (3) Use of the Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale did not reveal any significant relationships between people's pre-existing attitudes toward humanlike robots and their aversive responding-suggesting positive exposure and/or additional experience with robots is unlikely to affect the occurrence of an uncanny valley effect in humanoid robotics. This work furthers

  17. On Humanoids, Avatars and the Rest of Us - gender and the designing of our new Others

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Søndergaard, Dorte Marie

    2017-01-01

    by robot companies; in the video games featuring avatars, which again intertwine the imaginaries and conceptualizations of humans and their humanoid designs; and in the imaginaries, ambitions and ideas in fiction, not least in science fiction, which for years has inspired robot designers. I will bring......Human-like robots are still relatively simple technological devices. However, the ambitions and imaginaries, as well as the economy, feeding the production of robots point in directions, which scope and character are hard to determine. Designers, researchers, politicians and different kinds...... examples from all three areas into my reflections. The focus is in particular directed to the norms, hopes, and ideas about the human, which are built into these products and representations, and which not only form a range of claims about humanness, but also influence human social and subjective becoming...

  18. A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Stance on Human-Robot Interactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chaminade Thierry

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Robotic devices, thanks to the controlled variations in their appearance and behaviors, provide useful tools to test hypotheses pertaining to social interactions. These agents were used to investigate one theoretical framework, resonance, which is defined, at the behavioral and neural levels, as an overlap between first- and third- person representations of mental states such as motor intentions or emotions. Behaviorally, we found a reduced, but significant, resonance towards a humanoid robot displaying biological motion, compared to a human. Using neuroimaging, we've reported that while perceptual processes in the human occipital and temporal lobe are more strongly engaged when perceiving a humanoid robot than a human action, activity in areas involved in motor resonance depends on attentional modulation for artificial agent more strongly than for human agents. Altogether, these studies using artificial agents offer valuable insights into the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes in the perception of artificial agents.

  19. Android Robotics and the Conceptualization of Human Beings

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nørskov, Marco; Platz, Anemone

    Japan has for decades been a first-mover and pacemaker with respect to the development of humanoid and android robots [1]. In this conceptual paper, we aim to demonstrate how certain android robotic projects can be embedded and interpreted within a Japanese notion of nature, where the artificial...... is not opposed to nature and where conventionalized idealizations in general are cherished over original state of the latter [2]. Furthermore, we will discuss how android robots epitomize challenges to the macro and micro levels of society. [1] J. Robertson, Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family...

  20. Vision-Based Robot Following Using PID Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chandra Sekhar Pati

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Applications like robots which are employed for shopping, porter services, assistive robotics, etc., require a robot to continuously follow a human or another robot. This paper presents a mobile robot following another tele-operated mobile robot based on a PID (Proportional–Integral-Differential controller. Here, we use two differential wheel drive robots; one is a master robot and the other is a follower robot. The master robot is manually controlled and the follower robot is programmed to follow the master robot. For the master robot, a Bluetooth module receives the user’s command from an android application which is processed by the master robot’s controller, which is used to move the robot. The follower robot receives the image from the Kinect sensor mounted on it and recognizes the master robot. The follower robot identifies the x, y positions by employing the camera and the depth by using the Kinect depth sensor. By identifying the x, y, and z locations of the master robot, the follower robot finds the angle and distance between the master and follower robot, which is given as the error term of a PID controller. Using this, the follower robot follows the master robot. A PID controller is based on feedback and tries to minimize the error. Experiments are conducted for two indigenously developed robots; one depicting a humanoid and the other a small mobile robot. It was observed that the follower robot was easily able to follow the master robot using well-tuned PID parameters.

  1. 1st Iberian Robotics Conference

    CERN Document Server

    Sanfeliu, Alberto; Ferre, Manuel; ROBOT2013; Advances in robotics

    2014-01-01

    This book contains the proceedings of the ROBOT 2013: FIRST IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE and it can be said that included both state of the art and more practical presentations dealing with implementation problems, support technologies and future applications. A growing interest in Assistive Robotics, Agricultural Robotics, Field Robotics, Grasping and Dexterous Manipulation, Humanoid Robots, Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Marine Robotics, has been demonstrated by the very relevant number of contributions. Moreover, ROBOT2013 incorporates a special session on Legal and Ethical Aspects in Robotics that is becoming a topic of key relevance. This Conference was held in Madrid (28-29 November 2013), organised by the Sociedad Española para la Investigación y Desarrollo en Robótica (SEIDROB) and by the Centre for Automation and Robotics - CAR (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)), along with the co-operation of Grupo Temático de Robótica CEA-GT...

  2. Control de movimiento de un robot humanoide por medio de visión de máquina y réplica de movimientos humanos

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robinson Jiménez Moreno

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available En este artículo se presenta el desarrollo e implementación de un sistema de captura de movimiento antropomórfico mediante técnicas de visión de máquina basado en el dispositivo Kinect, con el fin de realizar el control de movimiento imitativo de un agente robótico Bioloid en el Grupo de Aplicaciones Virtuales (GAV del Programa de Ingeniería en Mecatrónica de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada (UMNG. Dados los múltiples grados de libertad de un brazo humano, se busca simplificar una interfaz de control que permita replicar los movimientos de este en un robot humanoide. En este artículo se presentan las técnicas usadas para mejorar el nivel de precisión de los datos entregados por el Kinect y los métodos personalizados de transmisión y codificación de las órdenes enviadas al robot. Los resultados obtenidos derivan en un sistema que cumple con las exigencias básicas de estabilidad, precisión y velocidad de repuesta en la imitación.

  3. Robots de servicio

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rafael Aracil

    2008-04-01

    Full Text Available Resumen: El término Robots de Servicio apareció a finales de los años 80 como una necesidad de desarrollar máquinas y sistemas capaces de trabajar en entornos diferentes a los fabriles. Los Robots de Servicio tenían que poder trabajar en entornos noestructurados, en condiciones ambientales cambiantes y con una estrecha interacción con los humanos. En 1995 fue creado por la IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, el Technical Committee on Service Robots, y este comité definió en el año 2000 las áreas de aplicación de los Robots de Servicios, que se pueden dividir en dos grandes grupos: 1 sectores productivos no manufactureros tales como edificación, agricultura, naval, minería, medicina, etc. y 2 sectores de servicios propiamente dichos: asistencia personal, limpieza, vigilancia, educación, entretenimiento, etc. En este trabajo se hace una breve revisión de los principales conceptos y aplicaciones de los robots de servicio. Palabras clave: Robots de servicio, robots autónomos, robots de exteriores, robots de educación y entretenimiento, robots caminantes y escaladores, robots humanoides

  4. Affective Body Movements (for Robots) Across Cultures

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rehm, Matthias

    2018-01-01

    Humans are very good in expressing and interpreting emotions from a variety of different sources like voice, facial expression, or body movements. In this article, we concentrate on body movements and show that those are not only a source of affective information but might also have a different i...... with a study on creating an affective knocking movement for a humanoid robot and give details about a co-creation experiment for collecting a cross-cultural database on affective body movements and about the probabilistic model derived from this data....... interpretation in different cultures. To cope with these multiple viewpoints in generating and interpreting body movements in robots, we suggest a methodological approach that takes the cultural background of the developer and the user into account during the development process. We exemplify this approach...

  5. Interactive language learning by robots: the transition from babbling to word forms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lyon, Caroline; Nehaniv, Chrystopher L; Saunders, Joe

    2012-01-01

    The advent of humanoid robots has enabled a new approach to investigating the acquisition of language, and we report on the development of robots able to acquire rudimentary linguistic skills. Our work focuses on early stages analogous to some characteristics of a human child of about 6 to 14 months, the transition from babbling to first word forms. We investigate one mechanism among many that may contribute to this process, a key factor being the sensitivity of learners to the statistical distribution of linguistic elements. As well as being necessary for learning word meanings, the acquisition of anchor word forms facilitates the segmentation of an acoustic stream through other mechanisms. In our experiments some salient one-syllable word forms are learnt by a humanoid robot in real-time interactions with naive participants. Words emerge from random syllabic babble through a learning process based on a dialogue between the robot and the human participant, whose speech is perceived by the robot as a stream of phonemes. Numerous ways of representing the speech as syllabic segments are possible. Furthermore, the pronunciation of many words in spontaneous speech is variable. However, in line with research elsewhere, we observe that salient content words are more likely than function words to have consistent canonical representations; thus their relative frequency increases, as does their influence on the learner. Variable pronunciation may contribute to early word form acquisition. The importance of contingent interaction in real-time between teacher and learner is reflected by a reinforcement process, with variable success. The examination of individual cases may be more informative than group results. Nevertheless, word forms are usually produced by the robot after a few minutes of dialogue, employing a simple, real-time, frequency dependent mechanism. This work shows the potential of human-robot interaction systems in studies of the dynamics of early language

  6. Challenges in Building Robots that Imitate People

    Science.gov (United States)

    2000-01-01

    pages 25 40, 1998. R. Brooks, C. Breazeal (Ferrell), R. Irie, C. Kemp, M. Marjanovic , B. Scassellati, & M. Williamson. Alternative essences of...Breazeal (Ferrell), M. Marjanovic , B. Scassellati, and M. Williamson. The Cog project: building a humanoid robot. In C. Nehaniv, editor, Computationjbr

  7. Cognitive Tools for Humanoid Robots in Space

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Sofge, Donald; Perzanowski, Dennis; Skubic, Marjorie; Bugajska, Magdalena; Trafton, J. G; Cassimatis, Nicholas; Brock, Derek; Adams, William; Schultz, Alan

    2004-01-01

    ...) to collaborate with a human. The capabilities required of the robot include voice recognition, natural language understanding, gesture recognition, spatial reasoning, and cognitive modeling with perspective-taking...

  8. Achievement report for fiscal 2000 on operational research of human cooperative and coexisting (humanoid) robot system. Development of energy usage rationalizing technology; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system un'yo kenkyu seika hokokusho. Energy shiyo gorika gijutsu kaihatsu

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-03-01

    This paper reports the achievements in fiscal 2000 in the operational research on the human cooperative and coexisting (humanoid) robot system to rationalize energy usage. Operational method and maintenance were studied on the platform hardware that has been developed in the previous fiscal year. Checks were given periodically on the robot platform hardware, and no anomalies were verified in all operation. Verifications were made on the fasteners, additional tightening, fitting of the connectors, battery checks, zero position and step response checks, and output checks on the force component sensor, gyro sensor and G sensor. For the virtual robot platform, discussions were given on the basic movement library for the geography complying three-dimensional walking. Such configurations were constituted that integrated use is possible with the simulator system by connecting the networks, and the user can instruct the CORBA server with the generation of walking movements according to the GUI by using the general purpose WWW browser to connect it to the HTTP server, whose result can be verified by three-dimensional graphics. A method to stabilize the all-axis movement servo model was made open to public. (NEDO)

  9. Achievement report for fiscal 2000 on operational research of human cooperative and coexisting (humanoid) robot system. Development for practical application of new power generation technology; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system un'yo kenkyu seika hokokusho. Shinhatsuden gijutsu jitsuyoka kaihatsu

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-03-01

    This paper reports the achievements in fiscal 2000 in the development for practical application of a new power generation technology for the human cooperative and coexisting (humanoid) robot system. Carrying out the development smoothly and efficiently requires accumulation of the system operational know-how, as well as the periodical check and maintenance to maintain the functions and performances of the robot platform having been developed in the previous fiscal year. Checks were given on the robot platform hardware, and no anomalies were verified in all operation. For the remote operation platform, normal operations were identified in the visual and audio information presenting and communication systems, including such components as the PCI, noise removing card, three-dimensional microphone, and SGI320. Operations were confirmed on the movement and operation sensing and presenting system, whereas no change has been found in the operation for the period of one year, and sufficient performance was maintained. For the virtual robot platform, the operation was made open to public on the basic operation library network interface. No operational defects, damages, wear, and electrical failures were found in the master hand for the remote control by hands, force sense presentation, finger and wrist position detection, and contact angle presentation. (NEDO)

  10. Motor contagion during human-human and human-robot interaction.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ambra Bisio

    Full Text Available Motor resonance mechanisms are known to affect humans' ability to interact with others, yielding the kind of "mutual understanding" that is the basis of social interaction. However, it remains unclear how the partner's action features combine or compete to promote or prevent motor resonance during interaction. To clarify this point, the present study tested whether and how the nature of the visual stimulus and the properties of the observed actions influence observer's motor response, being motor contagion one of the behavioral manifestations of motor resonance. Participants observed a humanoid robot and a human agent move their hands into a pre-specified final position or put an object into a container at various velocities. Their movements, both in the object- and non-object- directed conditions, were characterized by either a smooth/curvilinear or a jerky/segmented trajectory. These trajectories were covered with biological or non-biological kinematics (the latter only by the humanoid robot. After action observation, participants were requested to either reach the indicated final position or to transport a similar object into another container. Results showed that motor contagion appeared for both the interactive partner except when the humanoid robot violated the biological laws of motion. These findings suggest that the observer may transiently match his/her own motor repertoire to that of the observed agent. This matching might mediate the activation of motor resonance, and modulate the spontaneity and the pleasantness of the interaction, whatever the nature of the communication partner.

  11. Motor contagion during human-human and human-robot interaction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bisio, Ambra; Sciutti, Alessandra; Nori, Francesco; Metta, Giorgio; Fadiga, Luciano; Sandini, Giulio; Pozzo, Thierry

    2014-01-01

    Motor resonance mechanisms are known to affect humans' ability to interact with others, yielding the kind of "mutual understanding" that is the basis of social interaction. However, it remains unclear how the partner's action features combine or compete to promote or prevent motor resonance during interaction. To clarify this point, the present study tested whether and how the nature of the visual stimulus and the properties of the observed actions influence observer's motor response, being motor contagion one of the behavioral manifestations of motor resonance. Participants observed a humanoid robot and a human agent move their hands into a pre-specified final position or put an object into a container at various velocities. Their movements, both in the object- and non-object- directed conditions, were characterized by either a smooth/curvilinear or a jerky/segmented trajectory. These trajectories were covered with biological or non-biological kinematics (the latter only by the humanoid robot). After action observation, participants were requested to either reach the indicated final position or to transport a similar object into another container. Results showed that motor contagion appeared for both the interactive partner except when the humanoid robot violated the biological laws of motion. These findings suggest that the observer may transiently match his/her own motor repertoire to that of the observed agent. This matching might mediate the activation of motor resonance, and modulate the spontaneity and the pleasantness of the interaction, whatever the nature of the communication partner.

  12. Humanoids Learning to Walk: A Natural CPG-Actor-Critic Architecture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Cai; Lowe, Robert; Ziemke, Tom

    2013-01-01

    The identification of learning mechanisms for locomotion has been the subject of much research for some time but many challenges remain. Dynamic systems theory (DST) offers a novel approach to humanoid learning through environmental interaction. Reinforcement learning (RL) has offered a promising method to adaptively link the dynamic system to the environment it interacts with via a reward-based value system. In this paper, we propose a model that integrates the above perspectives and applies it to the case of a humanoid (NAO) robot learning to walk the ability of which emerges from its value-based interaction with the environment. In the model, a simplified central pattern generator (CPG) architecture inspired by neuroscientific research and DST is integrated with an actor-critic approach to RL (cpg-actor-critic). In the cpg-actor-critic architecture, least-square-temporal-difference based learning converges to the optimal solution quickly by using natural gradient learning and balancing exploration and exploitation. Futhermore, rather than using a traditional (designer-specified) reward it uses a dynamic value function as a stability indicator that adapts to the environment. The results obtained are analyzed using a novel DST-based embodied cognition approach. Learning to walk, from this perspective, is a process of integrating levels of sensorimotor activity and value.

  13. Humanoids Learning to Walk: a Natural CPG-Actor-Critic Architecture

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    CAI eLI

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available The identification of learning mechanisms for locomotion has been the subject of much researchfor some time but many challenges remain. Dynamic systems theory (DST offers a novel approach to humanoid learning through environmental interaction. Reinforcement learning (RL has offered a promising method to adaptively link the dynamic system to the environment it interacts with via a reward-based value system.In this paper, we propose a model that integrates the above perspectives and applies it to the case of a humanoid (NAO robot learning to walk the ability of which emerges from its value-based interaction with the environment. In the model,a simplified central pattern generator (CPG architecture inspired by neuroscientific research and DST is integrated with an actor-critic approach to RL (cpg-actor-critic. In the cpg-actor-critic architecture, least-square-temporal-difference (LSTD based learning converges to the optimal solution quickly by using natural gradient and balancing exploration and exploitation. Futhermore, rather than using a traditional (designer-specified reward it uses a dynamic value function as a stability indicator (SI that adapts to the environment.The results obtained are analyzed and explained by using a novel DST embodied cognition approach. Learning to walk, from this perspective, is a process of integrating sensorimotor levels and value.

  14. The Walk-Man Robot Software Architecture

    OpenAIRE

    Mirko Ferrati; Alessandro Settimi; Alessandro Settimi; Luca Muratore; Alberto Cardellino; Alessio Rocchi; Enrico Mingo Hoffman; Corrado Pavan; Dimitrios Kanoulas; Nikos G. Tsagarakis; Lorenzo Natale; Lucia Pallottino

    2016-01-01

    A software and control architecture for a humanoid robot is a complex and large project, which involves a team of developers/researchers to be coordinated and requires many hard design choices. If such project has to be done in a very limited time, i.e., less than 1 year, more constraints are added and concepts, such as modular design, code reusability, and API definition, need to be used as much as possible. In this work, we describe the software architecture developed for Walk-Man, a robot ...

  15. The Rise of Robots and the Implications for Military Organizations

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-09-01

    12  Figure 5.  Boston Dynamics’ BigDog (From Marcott, 2009). .............................. 13  Figure 6.  Google’s Driverless Car...maneuvering through rough terrain autonomously (Boston Dynamics, 2013). While not a military robot, Google’s driverless car, as shown in Figure 6...can potentially be adapted for military applications. Figure 6. Google’s Driverless Car (From Markoff, 2010). 14 Humanoid robots, such as

  16. A psychology based approach for longitudinal development in cognitive robotics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    James eLaw

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available A major challenge in robotics is the ability to learn, from novel experiences, new behaviour that is useful for achieving new goals and skills. Autonomous systems must be able to learn solely through the environment, thus ruling out a priori task knowledge, tuning, extensive training, or other forms of pre-programming. Learning must also be cumulative and incremental, as complex skills are built on top of primitive skills. Additionally, it must be driven by intrinsic motivation because formative experience is gained through autonomous activity, even in the absence of extrinsic goals or tasks. This paper presents an approach to these issues through robotic implementations inspired by the learning behaviour of human infants. We describe an approach to developmental learning and present results from a demonstration of longitudinal development on an iCub humanoid robot. The results cover the rapid emergence of staged behaviour, the role of constraints in development, the effect of bootstrapping between stages, and the use of a schema memory of experiential fragments in learning new skills. The context is a longitudinalexperiment in which the robot advanced from uncontrolled motor babbling to skilled hand/eyeintegrated reaching and basic manipulation of objects. This approach offers promise for furtherfast and effective sensory-motor learning techniques for robotic learning.

  17. The Potential of Peer Robots to Assist Human Creativity in Finding Problems and Problem Solving

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okita, Sandra

    2015-01-01

    Many technological artifacts (e.g., humanoid robots, computer agents) consist of biologically inspired features of human-like appearance and behaviors that elicit a social response. The strong social components of technology permit people to share information and ideas with these artifacts. As robots cross the boundaries between humans and…

  18. Modelling of dynamically stable AR-601M robot locomotion in Simulink

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Khusainov Ramil

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robots will gradually play an important role in our daily lives. Currently, research on anthropomorphic robots and biped locomotion is one of the most important problems in the field of mobile robotics, and the development of reliable control algorithms for them is a challenging task. In this research two algorithms for stable walking of Russian anthropomorphic robot AR-601M with 41 Degrees of Freedom (DoF are investigated. To achieve a human-like dynamically stable locomotion 6 DoF in each robot leg are controlled with Virtual Height Inverted Pendulum and Preview control methods.

  19. Interacting With Robots to Investigate the Bases of Social Interaction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sciutti, Alessandra; Sandini, Giulio

    2017-12-01

    Humans show a great natural ability at interacting with each other. Such efficiency in joint actions depends on a synergy between planned collaboration and emergent coordination, a subconscious mechanism based on a tight link between action execution and perception. This link supports phenomena as mutual adaptation, synchronization, and anticipation, which cut drastically the delays in the interaction and the need of complex verbal instructions and result in the establishment of joint intentions, the backbone of social interaction. From a neurophysiological perspective, this is possible, because the same neural system supporting action execution is responsible of the understanding and the anticipation of the observed action of others. Defining which human motion features allow for such emergent coordination with another agent would be crucial to establish more natural and efficient interaction paradigms with artificial devices, ranging from assistive and rehabilitative technology to companion robots. However, investigating the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting natural interaction poses substantial problems. In particular, the unconscious processes at the basis of emergent coordination (e.g., unintentional movements or gazing) are very difficult-if not impossible-to restrain or control in a quantitative way for a human agent. Moreover, during an interaction, participants influence each other continuously in a complex way, resulting in behaviors that go beyond experimental control. In this paper, we propose robotics technology as a potential solution to this methodological problem. Robots indeed can establish an interaction with a human partner, contingently reacting to his actions without losing the controllability of the experiment or the naturalness of the interactive scenario. A robot could represent an "interactive probe" to assess the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying human-human interaction. We discuss this proposal with examples from our

  20. What makes a robot 'social'?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Raya A

    2017-08-01

    Rhetorical moves that construct humanoid robots as social agents disclose tensions at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and social robotics. The discourse of robotics often constructs robots that are like us (and therefore unlike dumb artefacts). In the discourse of STS, descriptions of how people assimilate robots into their activities are presented directly or indirectly against the backdrop of actor-network theory, which prompts attributing agency to mundane artefacts. In contradistinction to both social robotics and STS, it is suggested here that to view a capacity to partake in dialogical action (to have a 'voice') is necessary for regarding an artefact as authentically social. The theme is explored partly through a critical reinterpretation of an episode that Morana Alač reported and analysed towards demonstrating her bodies-in-interaction concept. This paper turns to 'body' with particular reference to Gibsonian affordances theory so as to identify the level of analysis at which dialogicality enters social interactions.

  1. 4th IFToMM International Symposium on Robotics and Mechatronics

    CERN Document Server

    Laribi, Med; Gazeau, Jean-Pierre

    2016-01-01

    This volume contains papers that have been selected after review for oral presentation at ISRM 2015, the Fourth IFToMM International Symposium on Robotics and Mechatronics held in Poitiers, France 23-24 June 2015. These papers  provide a vision of the evolution of the disciplines of robotics and mechatronics, including but not limited to: mechanism design; modeling and simulation; kinematics and dynamics of multibody systems; control methods; navigation and motion planning; sensors and actuators; bio-robotics; micro/nano-robotics; complex robotic systems; walking machines, humanoids-parallel kinematic structures: analysis and synthesis; smart devices; new design; application and prototypes. The book can be used by researchers and engineers in the relevant areas of robotics and mechatronics.

  2. Analysis of balance control methods based on inverted pendulum for legged robots

    OpenAIRE

    Denisov, A.; Iakovlev, R.; Mamaev, I.; Pavliuk, N.

    2017-01-01

    Methods of balance control for a legged robot, the model of which is presented as a two-section inverted pendulum, are considered. The following balance methods for humanoid robots are analysed: the parallel algorithm of the network operator method; the method of natural synergies; the method of fuzzy control, the spherical inverted pendulum mode, a dual length linear inverted pendulum method. The best of these methods will be used in the development of the Russian anthropomorphic robot Antares.

  3. Personality Perception of Robot Avatar Teleoperators in Solo and Dyadic Tasks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul Adam Bremner

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Humanoid robot avatars are a potential new telecommunication tool, whereby a user is remotely represented by a robot that replicates their arm, head, and possible face movements. They have been shown to have a number of benefits over more traditional media such as phones or video calls. However, using a teleoperated humanoid as a communication medium inherently changes the appearance of the operator, and appearance-based stereotypes are used in interpersonal judgments (whether consciously or unconsciously. One such judgment that plays a key role in how people interact is personality. Hence, we have been motivated to investigate if and how using a robot avatar alters the perceived personality of teleoperators. To do so, we carried out two studies where participants performed 3 communication tasks, solo in study one and dyadic in study two, and were recorded on video both with and without robot mediation. Judges recruited using online crowdsourcing services then made personality judgments of the participants in the video clips. We observed that judges were able to make internally consistent trait judgments in both communication conditions. However, judge agreement was affected by robot mediation, although which traits were affected was highly task dependent. Our most important finding was that in dyadic tasks personality trait perception was shifted to incorporate cues relating to the robot’s appearance when it was used to communicate. Our findings have important implications for telepresence robot design and personality expression in autonomous robots.

  4. Designing the Mind of a Social Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicole Lazzeri

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Humans have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize surrounding entities and have always been fascinated by the creation of machines endowed with human-inspired capabilities and traits. In the last few decades, this has become a reality with enormous advances in hardware performance, computer graphics, robotics technology, and artificial intelligence. New interdisciplinary research fields have brought forth cognitive robotics aimed at building a new generation of control systems and providing robots with social, empathetic and affective capabilities. This paper presents the design, implementation, and test of a human-inspired cognitive architecture for social robots. State-of-the-art design approaches and methods are thoroughly analyzed and discussed, cases where the developed system has been successfully used are reported. The tests demonstrated the system’s ability to endow a social humanoid robot with human social behaviors and with in-silico robotic emotions.

  5. Handling uncertainty and networked structure in robot control

    CERN Document Server

    Tamás, Levente

    2015-01-01

    This book focuses on two challenges posed in robot control by the increasing adoption of robots in the everyday human environment: uncertainty and networked communication. Part I of the book describes learning control to address environmental uncertainty. Part II discusses state estimation, active sensing, and complex scenario perception to tackle sensing uncertainty. Part III completes the book with control of networked robots and multi-robot teams. Each chapter features in-depth technical coverage and case studies highlighting the applicability of the techniques, with real robots or in simulation. Platforms include mobile ground, aerial, and underwater robots, as well as humanoid robots and robot arms. Source code and experimental data are available at http://extras.springer.com. The text gathers contributions from academic and industry experts, and offers a valuable resource for researchers or graduate students in robot control and perception. It also benefits researchers in related areas, such as computer...

  6. Adaptive gaze stabilization through cerebellar internal models in a humanoid robot

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vannucci, Lorenzo; Tolu, Silvia; Falotico, Egidio

    2016-01-01

    Two main classes of reflexes relying on the vestibular system are involved in the stabilization of the human gaze: The vestibulocollic reflex (VCR), which stabilizes the head in space and the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), which stabilizes the visual axis to minimize retinal image motion. The VOR...... on the coordination of VCR and VOR and OKR. The model, inspired on neuroscientific cerebellar theories, is provided with learning and adaptation capabilities based on internal models. Tests on a simulated humanoid platform confirm the effectiveness of our approach....... works in conjunction with the opto-kinetic reflex (OKR), which is a visual feedback mechanism for moving the eye at the same speed as the observed scene. Together they keep the image stationary on the retina. In this work we present the first complete model of gaze stabilization based...

  7. Task Refinement for Autonomous Robots using Complementary Corrective Human Feedback

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cetin Mericli

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available A robot can perform a given task through a policy that maps its sensed state to appropriate actions. We assume that a hand-coded controller can achieve such a mapping only for the basic cases of the task. Refining the controller becomes harder and gets more tedious and error prone as the complexity of the task increases. In this paper, we present a new learning from demonstration approach to improve the robot's performance through the use of corrective human feedback as a complement to an existing hand-coded algorithm. The human teacher observes the robot as it performs the task using the hand-coded algorithm and takes over the control to correct the behavior when the robot selects a wrong action to be executed. Corrections are captured as new state-action pairs and the default controller output is replaced by the demonstrated corrections during autonomous execution when the current state of the robot is decided to be similar to a previously corrected state in the correction database. The proposed approach is applied to a complex ball dribbling task performed against stationary defender robots in a robot soccer scenario, where physical Aldebaran Nao humanoid robots are used. The results of our experiments show an improvement in the robot's performance when the default hand-coded controller is augmented with corrective human demonstration.

  8. Analysis of balance control methods based on inverted pendulum for legged robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Denisov Alexander

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Methods of balance control for a legged robot, the model of which is presented as a two-section inverted pendulum, are considered. The following balance methods for humanoid robots are analysed: the parallel algorithm of the network operator method; the method of natural synergies; the method of fuzzy control, the spherical inverted pendulum mode, a dual length linear inverted pendulum method. The best of these methods will be used in the development of the Russian anthropomorphic robot Antares.

  9. Humanoid Walking Robot: Modeling, Inverse Dynamics, and Gain Scheduling Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elvedin Kljuno

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available This article presents reference-model-based control design for a 10 degree-of-freedom bipedal walking robot, using nonlinear gain scheduling. The main goal is to show concentrated mass models can be used for prediction of the required joint torques for a bipedal walking robot. Relatively complicated architecture, high DOF, and balancing requirements make the control task of these robots difficult. Although linear control techniques can be used to control bipedal robots, nonlinear control is necessary for better performance. The emphasis of this work is to show that the reference model can be a bipedal walking model with concentrated mass at the center of gravity, which removes the problems related to design of a pseudo-inverse system. Another significance of this approach is the reduced calculation requirements due to the simplified procedure of nominal joint torques calculation. Kinematic and dynamic analysis is discussed including results for joint torques and ground force necessary to implement a prescribed walking motion. This analysis is accompanied by a comparison with experimental data. An inverse plant and a tracking error linearization-based controller design approach is described. We propose a novel combination of a nonlinear gain scheduling with a concentrated mass model for the MIMO bipedal robot system.

  10. Fiscal 2000 report on result of R and D on robot system cooperating and coexisting with human beings. Development of energy conservation technology; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system kenkyu kaihatsu seika hokokusho. Energy shiyo gorika gijutsu kaihatsu

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-06-01

    Introduction of a number of robots and consumption of a large amount of energy are unavoidable if a complicated process operation is to be carried out by robots in an extensive work site. Great energy conservation is contrived by developing robots applicable to manufacturing in performing a variety of operations in place of human beings and thereby reducing the number of robots to work. This paper explains the fiscal 2000 results. For dual-handed cooperative tasks, a function was examined capable of gripping an object without giving a humanoid robot an instruction of an exact gripping position. A method was designed to prepare a command for the other arm through a command for one arm, with torque impedance control employed for the purpose of avoiding damage due to collision. A study was conducted on a three-dimensional shape detecting model using a visual device of a robot. In grasping problems of balance control of a humanoid robot, the behavior of a robot consisting of multi-links was considered as behavior of inverted pendulum, with possibility checked for the stabilization of the balance. For the purpose of putting the virtual robot platform previously developed to practical use, a three-dimensional operation tool of run-time user interface was developed, with research conducted on the sophistication of robot application. (NEDO)

  11. Designing a Robot for Cultural Brokering in Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Yanghee

    2016-01-01

    The increasing number of English language learning children in U.S. classrooms and the need for effective programs that support these children present a great challenge to the current educational paradigm. The challenge may be met, at least in part, by an innovative humanoid robot serving as a cultural broker that mediates collaborative…

  12. Multi-function robots with speech interaction and emotion feedback

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Hongyu; Lou, Guanting; Ma, Mengchao

    2018-03-01

    Nowadays, the service robots have been applied in many public circumstances; however, most of them still don’t have the function of speech interaction, especially the function of speech-emotion interaction feedback. To make the robot more humanoid, Arduino microcontroller was used in this study for the speech recognition module and servo motor control module to achieve the functions of the robot’s speech interaction and emotion feedback. In addition, W5100 was adopted for network connection to achieve information transmission via Internet, providing broad application prospects for the robot in the area of Internet of Things (IoT).

  13. 25th Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region

    CERN Document Server

    Borangiu, Theodor

    2017-01-01

    This book presents the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2016 held in Belgrade, Serbia, on June 30th–July 2nd, 2016. In keeping with the tradition of the event, RAAD 2016 covered all the important areas of research and innovation in new robot designs and intelligent robot control, with papers including Intelligent robot motion control; Robot vision and sensory processing; Novel design of robot manipulators and grippers; Robot applications in manufacturing and services; Autonomous systems, humanoid and walking robots; Human–robot interaction and collaboration; Cognitive robots and emotional intelligence; Medical, human-assistive robots and prosthetic design; Robots in construction and arts, and Evolution, education, legal and social issues of robotics. For the first time in RAAD history, the themes cloud robots, legal and ethical issues in robotics as well as robots in arts were included in the technical program. The book is a valuable resource f...

  14. Towards Behavior Control for Evolutionary Robot Based on RL with ENN

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jingan Yang

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available This paper proposes a behavior-switching control strategy of anevolutionary robotics based on Artificial NeuralNetwork (ANN and Genetic Algorithms (GA. This method is able not only to construct thereinforcement learning models for autonomous robots and evolutionary robot modules thatcontrol behaviors and reinforcement learning environments, and but also to perform thebehavior-switching control and obstacle avoidance of an evolutionary robotics (ER intime-varying environments with static and moving obstacles by combining ANN and GA.The experimental results on thebasic behaviors and behavior-switching control have demonstrated that ourmethod can perform the decision-making strategy and parameters set opimization ofFNN and GA by learning and can escape successfully from the trap of a localminima and avoid \\emph{"motion deadlock" status} of humanoid soccer robotics agents,and reduce the oscillation of the planned trajectory betweenthe multiple obstacles by crossover and mutation. Some results of the proposed algorithmhave been successfully applied to our simulation humanoid robotics soccer team CIT3Dwhich won \\emph{the 1st prize} of RoboCup Championship and ChinaOpen2010 (July 2010 and \\emph{the $2^{nd}$ place}of the official RoboCup World Championship on 5-11 July, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey.As compared with the conventional behavior network and the adaptive behavior method,the genetic encoding complexity of our algorithm is simplified, and the networkperformance and the {\\em convergence rate $\\rho$} have been greatlyimproved.

  15. Experimental Robot Model Adjustments Based on Force–Torque Sensor Information

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Santiago Martinez

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available The computational complexity of humanoid robot balance control is reduced through the application of simplified kinematics and dynamics models. However, these simplifications lead to the introduction of errors that add to other inherent electro-mechanic inaccuracies and affect the robotic system. Linear control systems deal with these inaccuracies if they operate around a specific working point but are less precise if they do not. This work presents a model improvement based on the Linear Inverted Pendulum Model (LIPM to be applied in a non-linear control system. The aim is to minimize the control error and reduce robot oscillations for multiple working points. The new model, named the Dynamic LIPM (DLIPM, is used to plan the robot behavior with respect to changes in the balance status denoted by the zero moment point (ZMP. Thanks to the use of information from force–torque sensors, an experimental procedure has been applied to characterize the inaccuracies and introduce them into the new model. The experiments consist of balance perturbations similar to those of push-recovery trials, in which step-shaped ZMP variations are produced. The results show that the responses of the robot with respect to balance perturbations are more precise and the mechanical oscillations are reduced without comprising robot dynamics.

  16. Optimization-Based Controllers for Robotics Applications (OCRA: The Case of iCub’s Whole-Body Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorhabib G. Eljaik

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available OCRA stands for Optimization-based Control for Robotics Applications. It consists of a set of platform-independent libraries which facilitates the development of optimization-based controllers for articulated robots. Hierarchical, weighted, and hybrid control strategies can easily be implemented using these tools. The generic interfaces provided by OCRA allow different robots to use the exact same controllers. OCRA also allows users to specify high-level objectives via tasks. These tasks provide an intuitive way of generating complex behaviors and can be specified in XML format. To illustrate the use of OCRA, an implementation of interest to this research topic for the humanoid robot iCub is presented. OCRA stands for Optimization-based Control for Robotics Applications. It consists of a set of platform-independent libraries which facilitates the development of optimization-based controllers for articulated robots. Hierarchical, weighted, and hybrid control strategies can easily be implemented using these tools. The generic interfaces provided by OCRA allow different robots to use the exact same controllers. OCRA also allows users to specify high-level objectives via tasks. These tasks provide an intuitive way of generating complex behaviors and can be specified in XML format. To illustrate the use of OCRA, an implementation of interest to this research topic for the humanoid robot iCub is presented.

  17. Localización probabilística del humanoide Nao en el campo de la RoboCup

    OpenAIRE

    García Sierra, Juan Felipe; Fernández Llamas, Camino; Matellán Olivera, Vicente; Rodríguez Lera, Francisco Javier

    2010-01-01

    Una de las habilidades fundamentales que debe poseer un robot para definirse como autónomo es la de autolocalizarse en un entorno dado. En este artículo abordaremos el problema de la localización aplicando técnicas probabilísticas combinando representaciones topológicas y métricas sobre un terreno acotado como es el campo de fútbol de la RoboCup. El artículo presenta también el funcionamiento y resultados obtenidos sobre un conjunto de pruebas simuladas y reales utilizando el humanoide Nao...

  18. Multimodal Robots As Educational Tools In Primary And Lower Secondary Education

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Majgaard, Gunver

    2015-01-01

    Multimodal humanoid robots have been used as educational tools in primary and lower secondary schools. The pupils involved were between 11 and 16 years old. The learning goals included: programming, language learning, ethics, technology and mathematics, e.g. practised by 7th grade pupils who...

  19. Social Robotic Experience and Media Communication Practices: An Exploration on the Emotional and Ritualized Human-technology-relations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christine Linke

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available This article approaches the subject of social robots by focusing on the emotional relations people establish with media and information and communication technology (ICTs in their everyday life. It examines human-technology-relation from a social studies point of view, seeking to raise questions that enable us to make a connection between the research on human relationships and the topic of human-technology relation, especially human-humanoid-relation. In order to explore the human-technology-relations, theoretical ideas of a mediatization of communication and of a ritual interaction order are applied. Ritual theory is particularly used to enable a focus on emotion as a significant dimension in analyzing social technologies. This explorative article refers to empirical findings regarding media communication practices in close relationships. It argues that following the developed approach regarding mediatized and ritualized relational practices, useful insights for a conceptualization of the human-social robot relation can be achieved. The article concludes with remarks regarding the challenge of an empirical approach to human-social robot-relations.

  20. Can Robotic Systems Promote Self-Disclosure in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder? A Pilot Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hirokazu Kumazaki

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Research suggests that many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD often demonstrate challenges providing appropriate levels of information during conversational interchanges. Considering the preference of individuals with ASD, and recent rapid technological advances, robotic systems may yield promise in promoting certain aspects of conversation and interaction such as self-disclosure of appropriate personal information. In the current work, we evaluated personal disclosures of events with specific emotional content across two differing robotic systems (android and simplistic humanoid and human interactions. Nineteen participants were enrolled in this study: 11 (2 women and 9 men adolescents with ASD and 8 (4 women and 4 men adolescents with TD. Each participant completed a sequence of three interactions in a random order. Results indicated differences regarding comfort level and length of disclosures between adolescents with ASD and typically developing (TD controls in relation to system interactions. Specifically, adolescents with ASD showed a preference for interacting with the robotic systems compared to TD controls and demonstrated lengthier disclosures when interacting with the visually simple humanoid robot compared to interacting with human interviewer. The findings suggest that robotic systems may be useful in eliciting and promoting aspects of social communication such as self-disclosure for some individuals with ASD.

  1. Primate Anatomy, Kinematics, and Principles for Humanoid Design

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ambrose, Robert O.; Ambrose, Catherine G.

    2004-01-01

    The primate order of animals is investigated for clues in the design of Humanoid Robots. The pursuit is directed with a theory that kinematics, musculature, perception, and cognition can be optimized for specific tasks by varying the proportions of limbs, and in particular, the points of branching in kinematic trees such as the primate skeleton. Called the Bifurcated Chain Hypothesis, the theory is that the branching proportions found in humans may be superior to other animals and primates for the tasks of dexterous manipulation and other human specialties. The primate taxa are defined, contemporary primate evolution hypotheses are critiqued, and variations within the order are noted. The kinematic branching points of the torso, limbs and fingers are studied for differences in proportions across the order, and associated with family and genus capabilities and behaviors. The human configuration of a long waist, long neck, and short arms is graded using a kinematic workspace analysis and a set of design axioms for mobile manipulation robots. It scores well. The re emergence of the human waist, seen in early Prosimians and Monkeys for arboreal balance, but lost in the terrestrial Pongidae, is postulated as benefiting human dexterity. The human combination of an articulated waist and neck will be shown to enable the use of smaller arms, achieving greater regions of workspace dexterity than the larger limbs of Gorillas and other Hominoidea.

  2. A pilot study for robot appearance preferences among high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder: Implications for therapeutic use.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hirokazu Kumazaki

    Full Text Available Recent rapid technological advances have enabled robots to fulfill a variety of human-like functions, leading researchers to propose the use of such technology for the development and subsequent validation of interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD. Although a variety of robots have been proposed as possible therapeutic tools, the physical appearances of humanoid robots currently used in therapy with these patients are highly varied. Very little is known about how these varied designs are experienced by individuals with ASD. In this study, we systematically evaluated preferences regarding robot appearance in a group of 16 individuals with ASD (ages 10-17. Our data suggest that there may be important differences in preference for different types of robots that vary according to interaction type for individuals with ASD. Specifically, within our pilot sample, children with higher-levels of reported ASD symptomatology reported a preference for specific humanoid robots to those perceived as more mechanical or mascot-like. The findings of this pilot study suggest that preferences and reactions to robotic interactions may vary tremendously across individuals with ASD. Future work should evaluate how such differences may be systematically measured and potentially harnessed to facilitate meaningful interactive and intervention paradigms.

  3. A Multimodal Robot Game for Seniors

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hansen, Søren Tranberg; Krogsager, Anders; Fredslund, Jakob

    2017-01-01

    This paper describes the initial findings of a multimodal game which has been implemented on a humanoid robot platform and tested with seniors suffering from dementia. Physical and cognitive activities can improve the overall wellbeing of seniors, but it is often difficult to motivate seniors...... feedback and includes animated gestures and sounds. The game has been tested in a nursing home with four seniors suffering from moderate to severe dementia....

  4. Human motion characteristics in relation to feeling familiar or frightened during an announced short interaction with a proactive humanoid.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baddoura, Ritta; Venture, Gentiane

    2014-01-01

    During an unannounced encounter between two humans and a proactive humanoid (NAO, Aldebaran Robotics), we study the dependencies between the human partners' affective experience (measured via the answers to a questionnaire) particularly regarding feeling familiar and feeling frightened, and their arm and head motion [frequency and smoothness using Inertial Measurement Units (IMU)]. NAO starts and ends its interaction with its partners by non-verbally greeting them hello (bowing) and goodbye (moving its arm). The robot is invested with a real and useful task to perform: handing each participant an envelope containing a questionnaire they need to answer. NAO's behavior varies from one partner to the other (Smooth with X vs. Resisting with Y). The results show high positive correlations between feeling familiar while interacting with the robot and: the frequency and smoothness of the human arm movement when waving back goodbye, as well as the smoothness of the head during the whole encounter. Results also show a negative dependency between feeling frightened and the frequency of the human arm movement when waving back goodbye. The principal component analysis (PCA) suggests that, in regards to the various motion measures examined in this paper, the head smoothness and the goodbye gesture frequency are the most reliable measures when it comes to considering the familiar experienced by the participants. The PCA also points out the irrelevance of the goodbye motion frequency when investigating the participants' experience of fear in its relation to their motion characteristics. The results are discussed in light of the major findings of studies on body movements and postures accompanying specific emotions.

  5. Walking in the uncanny valley: importance of the attractiveness on the acceptance of a robot as a working partner

    Science.gov (United States)

    Destephe, Matthieu; Brandao, Martim; Kishi, Tatsuhiro; Zecca, Massimiliano; Hashimoto, Kenji; Takanishi, Atsuo

    2015-01-01

    The Uncanny valley hypothesis, which tells us that almost-human characteristics in a robot or a device could cause uneasiness in human observers, is an important research theme in the Human Robot Interaction (HRI) field. Yet, that phenomenon is still not well-understood. Many have investigated the external design of humanoid robot faces and bodies but only a few studies have focused on the influence of robot movements on our perception and feelings of the Uncanny valley. Moreover, no research has investigated the possible relation between our uneasiness feeling and whether or not we would accept robots having a job in an office, a hospital or elsewhere. To better understand the Uncanny valley, we explore several factors which might have an influence on our perception of robots, be it related to the subjects, such as culture or attitude toward robots, or related to the robot such as emotions and emotional intensity displayed in its motion. We asked 69 subjects (N = 69) to rate the motions of a humanoid robot (Perceived Humanity, Eeriness, and Attractiveness) and state where they would rather see the robot performing a task. Our results suggest that, among the factors we chose to test, the attitude toward robots is the main influence on the perception of the robot related to the Uncanny valley. Robot occupation acceptability was affected only by Attractiveness, mitigating any Uncanny valley effect. We discuss the implications of these findings for the Uncanny valley and the acceptability of a robotic worker in our society. PMID:25762967

  6. The ultimatum game as measurement tool for anthropomorphism in human-robot interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Torta, E.; Dijk, van E.T.; Ruijten, P.A.M.; Cuijpers, R.H.; Herrmann, G.; Pearson, M.J.; Lenz, A.; et al., xx

    2013-01-01

    Anthropomorphism is the tendency to attribute human characteristics to non–human entities. This paper presents exploratory work to evaluate how human responses during the ultimatum game vary according to the level of anthropomorphism of the opponent, which was either a human, a humanoid robot or a

  7. Reaction Null Space of a multibody system with applications in robotics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. N. Nenchev

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available This paper provides an overview of implementation examples based on the Reaction Null Space formalism, developed initially to tackle the problem of satellite-base disturbance of a free-floating space robot, when the robot arm is activated. The method has been applied throughout the years to other unfixed-base systems, e.g. flexible-base and macro/mini robot systems, as well as to the balance control problem of humanoid robots. The paper also includes most recent results about complete dynamical decoupling of the end-link of a fixed-base robot, wherein the end-link is regarded as the unfixed-base. This interpretation is shown to be useful with regard to motion/force control scenarios. Respective implementation results are provided.

  8. Model of the humanoid body for self collision detection based on elliptical capsules

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Dube, C

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available . The humanoid body is modeled using elliptical capsules, while the moving segments, i.e. arms and legs, of the humanoid are modeled using circular capsules. This collision detection model provides a good fit to the humanoid body shape while being simple...

  9. A Comparison between Two Force-Position Controllers with Gravity Compensation Simulated on a Humanoid Arm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Giovanni Gerardo Muscolo

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The authors propose a comparison between two force-position controllers with gravity compensation simulated on the DEXTER bioinspired robotic arm. The two controllers are both constituted by an internal proportional-derivative (PD closed-loop for the position control. The force control of the two systems is composed of an external proportional (P closed-loop for one system (P system and an external proportional-integrative (PI closed-loop for the other system (PI system. The simulation tests performed with the two systems on a planar representation of the DEXTER, an eight-DOF bioinspired arm, showed that by varying the stiffness of the environment, with a correct setting of parameters, both systems ensure the achievement of the desired force regime and with great precision the desired position. The two controllers do not have large differences in performance when interacting with a lower stiffness environment. In case of an environment with greater rigidity, the PI system is more stable. The subsequent implementation of these control systems on the DEXTER robotic bioinspired arm gives guidance on the design and control optimisation of the arms of the humanoid robot named SABIAN.

  10. Posture affects how robots and infants map words to objects.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anthony F Morse

    Full Text Available For infants, the first problem in learning a word is to map the word to its referent; a second problem is to remember that mapping when the word and/or referent are again encountered. Recent infant studies suggest that spatial location plays a key role in how infants solve both problems. Here we provide a new theoretical model and new empirical evidence on how the body - and its momentary posture - may be central to these processes. The present study uses a name-object mapping task in which names are either encountered in the absence of their target (experiments 1-3, 6 & 7, or when their target is present but in a location previously associated with a foil (experiments 4, 5, 8 & 9. A humanoid robot model (experiments 1-5 is used to instantiate and test the hypothesis that body-centric spatial location, and thus the bodies' momentary posture, is used to centrally bind the multimodal features of heard names and visual objects. The robot model is shown to replicate existing infant data and then to generate novel predictions, which are tested in new infant studies (experiments 6-9. Despite spatial location being task-irrelevant in this second set of experiments, infants use body-centric spatial contingency over temporal contingency to map the name to object. Both infants and the robot remember the name-object mapping even in new spatial locations. However, the robot model shows how this memory can emerge -not from separating bodily information from the word-object mapping as proposed in previous models of the role of space in word-object mapping - but through the body's momentary disposition in space.

  11. Decoupled Closed-Form Solution for Humanoid Lower Limb Kinematics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alejandro Said

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an explicit, omnidirectional, analytical, and decoupled closed-form solution for the lower limb kinematics of the humanoid robot NAO. The paper starts by decoupling the position and orientation analysis from the overall Denavit-Hartenberg (DH transformation matrices. Here, the joint activation sequence for the DH matrices is based on the geometry of a triangle. Furthermore, the implementation of a forward and a reversed kinematic analysis for the support and swing phase equations is developed to avoid matrix inversion. The allocation of constant transformations allows the position and orientation end-coordinate systems to be aligned with each other. Also, the redefinition of the DH transformations and the use of constraints allow decoupling the shared DOF between the legs and the torso. Finally, a geometric approach to avoid the singularities during the walking process is indicated. Numerical data is presented along with an experimental implementation to prove the validity of the analytical results.

  12. Compact and low-cost humanoid hand powered by nylon artificial muscles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Lianjun; Jung de Andrade, Monica; Saharan, Lokesh Kumar; Rome, Richard Steven; Baughman, Ray H; Tadesse, Yonas

    2017-02-03

    This paper focuses on design, fabrication and characterization of a biomimetic, compact, low-cost and lightweight 3D printed humanoid hand (TCP Hand) that is actuated by twisted and coiled polymeric (TCP) artificial muscles. The TCP muscles were recently introduced and provided unprecedented strain, mechanical work, and lifecycle (Haines et al 2014 Science 343 868-72). The five-fingered humanoid hand is under-actuated and has 16 degrees of freedom (DOF) in total (15 for fingers and 1 at the palm). In the under-actuated hand designs, a single actuator provides coupled motions at the phalanges of each finger. Two different designs are presented along with the essential elements consisting of actuators, springs, tendons and guide systems. Experiments were conducted to investigate the performance of the TCP muscles in response to the power input (power magnitude, type of wave form such as pulsed or square wave, and pulse duration) and the resulting actuation stroke and force generation. A kinematic model of the flexor tendons was developed to simulate the flexion motion and compare with experimental results. For fast finger movements, short high-power pulses were employed. Finally, we demonstrated the grasping of various objects using the humanoid TCP hand showing an array of functions similar to a natural hand.

  13. iSpike: a spiking neural interface for the iCub robot

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gamez, D; Fidjeland, A K; Lazdins, E

    2012-01-01

    This paper presents iSpike: a C++ library that interfaces between spiking neural network simulators and the iCub humanoid robot. It uses a biologically inspired approach to convert the robot’s sensory information into spikes that are passed to the neural network simulator, and it decodes output spikes from the network into motor signals that are sent to control the robot. Applications of iSpike range from embodied models of the brain to the development of intelligent robots using biologically inspired spiking neural networks. iSpike is an open source library that is available for free download under the terms of the GPL. (paper)

  14. Multi-Destination Beaming: Apparently Being in Three Places at Once Through Robotic and Virtual Embodiment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sameer Kishore

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available It has been shown that an illusion of ownership over an artificial limb or even an entire body can be induced in people through multisensory stimulation providing evidence that the surrogate body is the person’s actual body. Such body ownership illusions have been shown to occur with virtual bodies, mannequins, as well as humanoid robots. In this study, we show the possibility of eliciting a full body ownership illusion over not one, but multiple artificial bodies concurrently. We demonstrate this by describing a system that allowed a participant to inhabit and fully control two different humanoid robots located in two distinct places and a virtual body in immersive virtual reality, using real-time full-body tracking and two-way audio communication, thereby giving them the illusion of ownership over each of them. We implemented this by allowing the participant be embodied in any one surrogate body at a given moment, and letting them instantaneously switch between them. While the participant was embodied in one of the bodies, a proxy system would track the locations currently unoccupied, and would control their remote representation in order to continue performing the tasks in those locations in a logical fashion. To test the efficacy of this system, an exploratory study was carried out with a fully functioning setup with three destinations and a simplified version of the proxy for use in a social interaction. The results indicate that the system was physically and psychologically comfortable, and was rated highly by participants in terms of usability. Additionally, feelings of body ownership illusion and agency were reported, which were not influenced by the robot type. The results provide us with clues regarding body ownership illusion with humanoid robots of different dimensions, along with insight about self-localization and multilocation.

  15. Measuring empathy for human and robot hand pain using electroencephalography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suzuki, Yutaka; Galli, Lisa; Ikeda, Ayaka; Itakura, Shoji; Kitazaki, Michiteru

    2015-11-03

    This study provides the first physiological evidence of humans' ability to empathize with robot pain and highlights the difference in empathy for humans and robots. We performed electroencephalography in 15 healthy adults who observed either human- or robot-hand pictures in painful or non-painful situations such as a finger cut by a knife. We found that the descending phase of the P3 component was larger for the painful stimuli than the non-painful stimuli, regardless of whether the hand belonged to a human or robot. In contrast, the ascending phase of the P3 component at the frontal-central electrodes was increased by painful human stimuli but not painful robot stimuli, though the interaction of ANOVA was not significant, but marginal. These results suggest that we empathize with humanoid robots in late top-down processing similarly to human others. However, the beginning of the top-down process of empathy is weaker for robots than for humans.

  16. Design and control of five fingered under-actuated robotic hand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sahoo, Biswojit; Parida, Pramod Kumar

    2018-04-01

    Now a day's research regarding humanoid robots and its application in different fields (industry, household, rehabilitation and exploratory) is going on entire the globe. Among which a challenging topic is to design a dexterous robotic hand which not only can perform as a hand of a robot but also can be used in re habilitation. The basic key concern is a dexterous robot hand which can be able to mimic the function of biological hand to perform different operations. This thesis work is regarding design and control of a under-actuated robotic hand consisting of four under actuated fingers (index finger, middle finger, little finger and ring finger ) , a thumb and a dexterous palm which can copy the motions and grasp type of human hand which having 21degrees of freedom instead of 25Degree Of Freedom.

  17. The Twente humanoid head

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Reilink, Rob; Visser, L.C.; Bennik, J.; Carloni, Raffaella; Brouwer, Dannis Michel; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2009-01-01

    This video shows the results of the project on the mechatronic development of the Twente humanoid head. The mechanical structure consists of a neck with four degrees of freedom (DOFs) and two eyes (a stereo pair system) which tilt on a common axis and rotate sideways freely providing a three more

  18. Socially grounded game strategy enhances bonding and perceived smartness of a humanoid robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barakova, E. I.; De Haas, M.; Kuijpers, W.; Irigoyen, N.; Betancourt, A.

    2018-01-01

    In search for better technological solutions for education, we adapted a principle from economic game theory, namely that giving a help will promote collaboration and eventually long-term relations between a robot and a child. This principle has been shown to be effective in games between humans and between humans and computer agents. We compared the social and cognitive engagement of children when playing checkers game combined with a social strategy against a robot or against a computer. We found that by combining the social and game strategy the children (average age of 8.3 years) had more empathy and social engagement with the robot since the children did not want to necessarily win against it. This finding is promising for using social strategies for the creation of long-term relations between robots and children and making educational tasks more engaging. An additional outcome of the study was the significant difference in the perception of the children about the difficulty of the game - the game with the robot was seen as more challenging and the robot - as a smarter opponent. This finding might be due to the higher perceived or expected intelligence from the robot, or because of the higher complexity of seeing patterns in three-dimensional world.

  19. Human-Inspired Eigenmovement Concept Provides Coupling-Free Sensorimotor Control in Humanoid Robot

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Alexandrov, A.V.; Lippi, V.; Mergner, T.; Frolov, A. A.; Hettich, G.; Húsek, Dušan

    2017-01-01

    Roč. 11, 25 April (2017), č. článku 22. ISSN 1662-5188 Institutional support: RVO:67985807 Keywords : human sensorimotor system * neuromechanics * biorobotics * motor control * eigenmovements Subject RIV: JD - Computer Applications, Robotics OBOR OECD: Robotics and automatic control Impact factor: 1.821, year: 2016

  20. DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Using Human-Machine Teamwork to Perform Disaster Response with a Humanoid Robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-02-01

    leverage our tools and skills to develop a system in which we can get the simulated government furnished equipment (GFE) robot to walk over various types...our control software to the constellation and made a small helper program that gave us the possibility to restart our control software should...avoided this way. - The time and bandwidth limits caused us to integrate helper tools based on computer vision and a microphone sensor into the robot

  1. Towards the Emergence of Procedural Memories from Lifelong Multi-Modal Streaming Memories for Cognitive Robots

    OpenAIRE

    Petit, M; Fischer, T; Demiris, Y

    2016-01-01

    Various research topics are emerging as the demand for intelligent lifelong interactions between robot and humans increases. Among them, we can find the examination of persistent storage, the continuous unsupervised annotation of memories and the usage of data at high-frequency over long periods of time. We recently proposed a lifelong autobiographical memory architecture tackling some of these challenges, allowing the iCub humanoid robot to 1) create new memories for both actions that are se...

  2. Development of a system based on 3D vision, interactive virtual environments, ergonometric signals and a humanoid for stroke rehabilitation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ibarra Zannatha, Juan Manuel; Tamayo, Alejandro Justo Malo; Sánchez, Angel David Gómez; Delgado, Jorge Enrique Lavín; Cheu, Luis Eduardo Rodríguez; Arévalo, Wilson Alexander Sierra

    2013-11-01

    This paper presents a stroke rehabilitation (SR) system for the upper limbs, developed as an interactive virtual environment (IVE) based on a commercial 3D vision system (a Microsoft Kinect), a humanoid robot (an Aldebaran's Nao), and devices producing ergonometric signals. In one environment, the rehabilitation routines, developed by specialists, are presented to the patient simultaneously by the humanoid and an avatar inside the IVE. The patient follows the rehabilitation task, while his avatar copies his gestures that are captured by the Kinect 3D vision system. The information of the patient movements, together with the signals obtained from the ergonometric measurement devices, is used also to supervise and to evaluate the rehabilitation progress. The IVE can also present an RGB image of the patient. In another environment, that uses the same base elements, four game routines--Touch the balls 1 and 2, Simon says, and Follow the point--are used for rehabilitation. These environments are designed to create a positive influence in the rehabilitation process, reduce costs, and engage the patient. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Transformed Pedagogical Environment: Humanoids for social skilling of mentally challenged children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rugayah Hashim

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of the paper is to describe the transformed pedagogical environment in Malaysia with regards to mentally challenged children. Through interviews with teachers and parents of children schooled at the special, integrative classes in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, the results indicated non-readiness for the teachers and the parents to embrace the assistive technology, the humanoids. Besides the high cost of purchasing the humanoid for each child to be placed at home, social skilling these special children requires human touch. Cultural, and religious aspects abound that negates the progress of pedagogy using humanoids.

  4. A Robot-Partner for Preschool Children Learning English Using Socio-Cognitive Conflict

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mazzoni, Elvis; Benvenuti, Martina

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents an exploratory study in which a humanoid robot (MecWilly) acted as a partner to preschool children, helping them to learn English words. In order to use the Socio-Cognitive Conflict paradigm to induce the knowledge acquisition process, we designed a playful activity in which children worked in pairs with another child or with…

  5. Affective and Engagement Issues in the Conception and Assessment of a Robot-Assisted Psychomotor Therapy for Persons with Dementia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Natacha Rouaix

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The interest in robot-assisted therapies (RAT for dementia care has grown steadily in recent years. However, RAT using humanoid robots is still a novel practice for which the adhesion mechanisms, indications and benefits remain unclear. Also, little is known about how the robot's behavioral and affective style might promote engagement of persons with dementia (PwD in RAT. The present study sought to investigate the use of a humanoid robot in a psychomotor therapy for PwD. We examined the robot's potential to engage participants in the intervention and its effect on their emotional state. A brief psychomotor therapy program involving the robot as the therapist's assistant was created. For this purpose, a corpus of social and physical behaviors for the robot and a “control software” for customizing the program and operating the robot were also designed. Particular attention was given to components of the RAT that could promote participant's engagement (robot's interaction style, personalization of contents. In the pilot assessment of the intervention nine PwD (7 women and 2 men, M age = 86 y/o hospitalized in a geriatrics unit participated in four individual therapy sessions: one classic therapy (CT session (patient- therapist and three RAT sessions (patient-therapist-robot. Outcome criteria for the evaluation of the intervention included: participant's engagement, emotional state and well-being; satisfaction of the intervention, appreciation of the robot, and empathy-related behaviors in human-robot interaction (HRI. Results showed a high constructive engagement in both CT and RAT sessions. More positive emotional responses in participants were observed in RAT compared to CT. RAT sessions were better appreciated than CT sessions. The use of a social robot as a mediating tool appeared to promote the involvement of PwD in the therapeutic intervention increasing their immediate wellbeing and satisfaction.

  6. Child’s perception of robot’s emotions: effects of platform, context and experience

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cohen, I.; Looije, R.; Neerincx, M.A.

    2014-01-01

    Social robots may comfort and support children who have to cope with chronic diseases like diabetes. In social interactions, it is important to be able to express recognizable emotions. Studies show that the iCat robot, with its humanoid facial features, has this capability. In this paper we look if

  7. Application of ultrasonic sensor for measuring distances in robotics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhmud, V. A.; Kondratiev, N. O.; Kuznetsov, K. A.; Trubin, V. G.; Dimitrov, L. V.

    2018-05-01

    Ultrasonic sensors allow us to equip robots with a means of perceiving surrounding objects, an alternative to technical vision. Humanoid robots, like robots of other types, are, first, equipped with sensory systems similar to the senses of a human. However, this approach is not enough. All possible types and kinds of sensors should be used, including those that are similar to those of other animals and creations (in particular, echolocation in dolphins and bats), as well as sensors that have no analogues in the wild. This paper discusses the main issues that arise when working with the HC-SR04 ultrasound rangefinder based on the STM32VLDISCOVERY evaluation board. The characteristics of similar modules for comparison are given. A subroutine for working with the sensor is given.

  8. Connecting Artificial Brains to Robots in a Comprehensive Simulation Framework: The Neurorobotics Platform.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Falotico, Egidio; Vannucci, Lorenzo; Ambrosano, Alessandro; Albanese, Ugo; Ulbrich, Stefan; Vasquez Tieck, Juan Camilo; Hinkel, Georg; Kaiser, Jacques; Peric, Igor; Denninger, Oliver; Cauli, Nino; Kirtay, Murat; Roennau, Arne; Klinker, Gudrun; Von Arnim, Axel; Guyot, Luc; Peppicelli, Daniel; Martínez-Cañada, Pablo; Ros, Eduardo; Maier, Patrick; Weber, Sandro; Huber, Manuel; Plecher, David; Röhrbein, Florian; Deser, Stefan; Roitberg, Alina; van der Smagt, Patrick; Dillman, Rüdiger; Levi, Paul; Laschi, Cecilia; Knoll, Alois C; Gewaltig, Marc-Oliver

    2017-01-01

    visual tracking embedding a retina model on the iCub humanoid robot. These use-cases allow to assess the applicability of the Neurorobotics Platform for robotic tasks as well as in neuroscientific experiments.

  9. Pleasant to the Touch: By Emulating Nature, Scientists Hope to Find Innovative New Uses for Soft Robotics in Health-Care Technology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cianchetti, Matteo; Laschi, Cecilia

    2016-01-01

    Open your Internet browser and search for videos showing the most advanced humanoid robots. Look at how they move and walk. Observe their motion and their interaction with the environment (the ground, users, target objects). Now, search for a video of your favorite sports player. Despite the undoubtedly great achievements of modern robotics, it will become quite evident that a lot of work still remains.

  10. International Conference on Computational Vision and Robotics

    CERN Document Server

    2015-01-01

    Computer Vision and Robotic is one of the most challenging areas of 21st century. Its application ranges from Agriculture to Medicine, Household applications to Humanoid, Deep-sea-application to Space application, and Industry applications to Man-less-plant. Today’s technologies demand to produce intelligent machine, which are enabling applications in various domains and services. Robotics is one such area which encompasses number of technology in it and its application is widespread. Computational vision or Machine vision is one of the most challenging tools for the robot to make it intelligent.   This volume covers chapters from various areas of Computational Vision such as Image and Video Coding and Analysis, Image Watermarking, Noise Reduction and Cancellation, Block Matching and Motion Estimation, Tracking of Deformable Object using Steerable Pyramid Wavelet Transformation, Medical Image Fusion, CT and MRI Image Fusion based on Stationary Wavelet Transform. The book also covers articles from applicati...

  11. Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mealier, Anne-Laure; Pointeau, Gregoire; Mirliaz, Solène; Ogawa, Kenji; Finlayson, Mark; Dominey, Peter F

    2017-01-01

    It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience-a situation model-and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated in

  12. Middle School Girls: Perceptions and Experiences with Robotics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hyun, Tricia

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate the impact a robotics curriculum might have on the experiences and perceptions of middle school girls in two California classrooms. The research found that middle school girls in two different California classrooms felt that their experiences with robotics were personalized experiences…

  13. A survey on dielectric elastomer actuators for soft robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Guo-Ying; Zhu, Jian; Zhu, Li-Min; Zhu, Xiangyang

    2017-01-23

    Conventional industrial robots with the rigid actuation technology have made great progress for humans in the fields of automation assembly and manufacturing. With an increasing number of robots needing to interact with humans and unstructured environments, there is a need for soft robots capable of sustaining large deformation while inducing little pressure or damage when maneuvering through confined spaces. The emergence of soft robotics offers the prospect of applying soft actuators as artificial muscles in robots, replacing traditional rigid actuators. Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are recognized as one of the most promising soft actuation technologies due to the facts that: i) dielectric elastomers are kind of soft, motion-generating materials that resemble natural muscle of humans in terms of force, strain (displacement per unit length or area) and actuation pressure/density; ii) dielectric elastomers can produce large voltage-induced deformation. In this survey, we first introduce the so-called DEAs emphasizing the key points of working principle, key components and electromechanical modeling approaches. Then, different DEA-driven soft robots, including wearable/humanoid robots, walking/serpentine robots, flying robots and swimming robots, are reviewed. Lastly, we summarize the challenges and opportunities for the further studies in terms of mechanism design, dynamics modeling and autonomous control.

  14. The Affordance Template ROS Package for Robot Task Programming

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hart, Stephen; Dinh, Paul; Hambuchen, Kimberly

    2015-01-01

    This paper introduces the Affordance Template ROS package for quickly programming, adjusting, and executing robot applications in the ROS RViz environment. This package extends the capabilities of RViz interactive markers by allowing an operator to specify multiple end-effector waypoint locations and grasp poses in object-centric coordinate frames and to adjust these waypoints in order to meet the run-time demands of the task (specifically, object scale and location). The Affordance Template package stores task specifications in a robot-agnostic XML description format such that it is trivial to apply a template to a new robot. As such, the Affordance Template package provides a robot-generic ROS tool appropriate for building semi-autonomous, manipulation-based applications. Affordance Templates were developed by the NASA-JSC DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) team and have since successfully been deployed on multiple platforms including the NASA Valkyrie and Robonaut 2 humanoids, the University of Texas Dreamer robot and the Willow Garage PR2. In this paper, the specification and implementation of the affordance template package is introduced and demonstrated through examples for wheel (valve) turning, pick-and-place, and drill grasping, evincing its utility and flexibility for a wide variety of robot applications.

  15. Robonaut: a robot designed to work with humans in space

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bluethmann, William; Ambrose, Robert; Diftler, Myron; Askew, Scott; Huber, Eric; Goza, Michael; Rehnmark, Fredrik; Lovchik, Chris; Magruder, Darby

    2003-01-01

    The Robotics Technology Branch at the NASA Johnson Space Center is developing robotic systems to assist astronauts in space. One such system, Robonaut, is a humanoid robot with the dexterity approaching that of a suited astronaut. Robonaut currently has two dexterous arms and hands, a three degree-of-freedom articulating waist, and a two degree-of-freedom neck used as a camera and sensor platform. In contrast to other space manipulator systems, Robonaut is designed to work within existing corridors and use the same tools as space walking astronauts. Robonaut is envisioned as working with astronauts, both autonomously and by teleoperation, performing a variety of tasks including, routine maintenance, setting up and breaking down worksites, assisting crew members while outside of spacecraft, and serving in a rapid response capacity.

  16. Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne-Laure Mealier

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience—a situation model—and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of

  17. Narrative Constructions for the Organization of Self Experience: Proof of Concept via Embodied Robotics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mealier, Anne-Laure; Pointeau, Gregoire; Mirliaz, Solène; Ogawa, Kenji; Finlayson, Mark; Dominey, Peter F.

    2017-01-01

    It has been proposed that starting from meaning that the child derives directly from shared experience with others, adult narrative enriches this meaning and its structure, providing causal links between unseen intentional states and actions. This would require a means for representing meaning from experience—a situation model—and a mechanism that allows information to be extracted from sentences and mapped onto the situation model that has been derived from experience, thus enriching that representation. We present a hypothesis and theory concerning how the language processing infrastructure for grammatical constructions can naturally be extended to narrative constructions to provide a mechanism for using language to enrich meaning derived from physical experience. Toward this aim, the grammatical construction models are augmented with additional structures for representing relations between events across sentences. Simulation results demonstrate proof of concept for how the narrative construction model supports multiple successive levels of meaning creation which allows the system to learn about the intentionality of mental states, and argument substitution which allows extensions to metaphorical language and analogical problem solving. Cross-linguistic validity of the system is demonstrated in Japanese. The narrative construction model is then integrated into the cognitive system of a humanoid robot that provides the memory systems and world-interaction required for representing meaning in a situation model. In this context proof of concept is demonstrated for how the system enriches meaning in the situation model that has been directly derived from experience. In terms of links to empirical data, the model predicts strong usage based effects: that is, that the narrative constructions used by children will be highly correlated with those that they experience. It also relies on the notion of narrative or discourse function words. Both of these are validated

  18. Self collision avoidance for humanoids using circular and elliptical capsule bounding volumes

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Dube, C

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available motion of the humanoid. Collisions are avoided by adjusting the joint angles of the colliding segments based on the collision distance and the location of the collision points. A case study of a humanoid dance is used to test the self collision avoidance...

  19. Muecas: A Multi-Sensor Robotic Head for Affective Human Robot Interaction and Imitation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Felipe Cid

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a multi-sensor humanoid robotic head for human robot interaction. The design of the robotic head, Muecas, is based on ongoing research on the mechanisms of perception and imitation of human expressions and emotions. These mechanisms allow direct interaction between the robot and its human companion through the different natural language modalities: speech, body language and facial expressions. The robotic head has 12 degrees of freedom, in a human-like configuration, including eyes, eyebrows, mouth and neck, and has been designed and built entirely by IADeX (Engineering, Automation and Design of Extremadura and RoboLab. A detailed description of its kinematics is provided along with the design of the most complex controllers. Muecas can be directly controlled by FACS (Facial Action Coding System, the de facto standard for facial expression recognition and synthesis. This feature facilitates its use by third party platforms and encourages the development of imitation and of goal-based systems. Imitation systems learn from the user, while goal-based ones use planning techniques to drive the user towards a final desired state. To show the flexibility and reliability of the robotic head, the paper presents a software architecture that is able to detect, recognize, classify and generate facial expressions in real time using FACS. This system has been implemented using the robotics framework, RoboComp, which provides hardware-independent access to the sensors in the head. Finally, the paper presents experimental results showing the real-time functioning of the whole system, including recognition and imitation of human facial expressions.

  20. Utilization of Human-Like Pelvic Rotation for Running Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Takuya eOtani

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available The spring loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP is used to model human running. It is based on a characteristic feature of human running, in which the linear-spring-like motion of the standing leg is produced by the joint stiffness of the knee and ankle. Although this model is widely used in robotics, it does not include human-like pelvic motion. In this study, we show that the pelvis actually contributes to the increase in jumping force and absorption of landing impact. On the basis of this finding, we propose a new model, SLIP2 (spring loaded inverted pendulum with pelvis, to improve running in humanoid robots. The model is composed of a body mass, a pelvis, and leg springs, and, it can control its springs while running by use of pelvic movement in the frontal plane. To achieve running motions, we developed a running control system that includes a pelvic oscillation controller to attain control over jumping power and a landing placement controller to adjust the running speed. We also developed a new running robot by using the SLIP2 model and performed hopping and running experiments to evaluate the model. The developed robot could accomplish hopping motions only by pelvic movement. The results also established that the difference between the pelvic rotational phase and the oscillation phase of the vertical mass displacement affects the jumping force. In addition, the robot demonstrated the ability to run with a foot placement controller depending on the reference running speed.

  1. A Novel Bioinspired Vision System: A Step toward Real-Time Human-Robot Interactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdul Rahman Hafiz

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Building a human-like robot that could be involved in our daily lives is a dream of many scientists. Achieving a sophisticated robot's vision system, which can enhance the robot's real-time interaction ability with the human, is one of the main keys toward realizing such an autonomous robot. In this work, we are suggesting a bioinspired vision system that helps to develop an advanced human-robot interaction in an autonomous humanoid robot. First, we enhance the robot's vision accuracy online by applying a novel dynamic edge detection algorithm abstracted from the rules that the horizontal cells play in the mammalian retina. Second, in order to support the first algorithm, we improve the robot's tracking ability by designing a variant photoreceptors distribution corresponding to what exists in the human vision system. The experimental results verified the validity of the model. The robot could have a clear vision in real time and build a mental map that assisted it to be aware of the frontal users and to develop a positive interaction with them.

  2. Experiences with a Barista Robot, FusionBot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Limbu, Dilip Kumar; Tan, Yeow Kee; Wong, Chern Yuen; Jiang, Ridong; Wu, Hengxin; Li, Liyuan; Kah, Eng Hoe; Yu, Xinguo; Li, Dong; Li, Haizhou

    In this paper, we describe the implemented service robot, called FusionBot. The goal of this research is to explore and demonstrate the utility of an interactive service robot in a smart home environment, thereby improving the quality of human life. The robot has four main features: 1) speech recognition, 2) object recognition, 3) object grabbing and fetching and 4) communication with a smart coffee machine. Its software architecture employs a multimodal dialogue system that integrates different components, including spoken dialog system, vision understanding, navigation and smart device gateway. In the experiments conducted during the TechFest 2008 event, the FusionBot successfully demonstrated that it could autonomously serve coffee to visitors on their request. Preliminary survey results indicate that the robot has potential to not only aid in the general robotics but also contribute towards the long term goal of intelligent service robotics in smart home environment.

  3. Recognition and Synthesis of Human Movements by Parametric HMMs

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Herzog, Dennis; Krüger, Volker

    2009-01-01

    The representation of human movements for recognition and synthesis is important in many application fields such as: surveillance, human-computer interaction, motion capture, and humanoid robots. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are a common statistical framework in this context, since...... on the recognition and synthesis of human arm movements. Furthermore, we will show in various experiments the use of PHMMs for the control of a humanoid robot by synthesizing movements for relocating objects at arbitrary positions. In vision-based interaction experiments, PHMM are used for the recognition...... of pointing movements, where the recognized parameterization conveys to a robot the important information which object to relocate and where to put it. Finally, we evaluate the accuracy of recognition and synthesis for pointing and grasping arm movements and discuss that the precision of the synthesis...

  4. Robotherapy with Dementia Patients

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francisco Martín

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Humanoids have increasingly become the focus of attention in robotics research in recent years, especially in service and personal assistance robotics. This paper presents the application developed for humanoid robots in the therapy of dementia patients as a cognitive stimulation tool. The behaviour of the robot during the therapy sessions is visually programmed in a session script that allows music to play, physical movements (dancing, exercises, etc., speech synthesis and interaction with the human monitor. The application includes the control software on board the robot and some tools like the visual script generator or a monitor to supervise the robot behaviour during the sessions. The robot application's impact on the patient's health has been studied. Experiments with real patients have been performed in collaboration with a centre of research in neurodegenerative diseases. Initial results show a slight or mild improvement in neuropsychiatric symptoms over other traditional therapy methods.

  5. Framework and Method for Controlling a Robotic System Using a Distributed Computer Network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sanders, Adam M. (Inventor); Barajas, Leandro G. (Inventor); Permenter, Frank Noble (Inventor); Strawser, Philip A. (Inventor)

    2015-01-01

    A robotic system for performing an autonomous task includes a humanoid robot having a plurality of compliant robotic joints, actuators, and other integrated system devices that are controllable in response to control data from various control points, and having sensors for measuring feedback data at the control points. The system includes a multi-level distributed control framework (DCF) for controlling the integrated system components over multiple high-speed communication networks. The DCF has a plurality of first controllers each embedded in a respective one of the integrated system components, e.g., the robotic joints, a second controller coordinating the components via the first controllers, and a third controller for transmitting a signal commanding performance of the autonomous task to the second controller. The DCF virtually centralizes all of the control data and the feedback data in a single location to facilitate control of the robot across the multiple communication networks.

  6. Robots and Cultural Heritage: New Museum Experiences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claudio Germak

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The introduction of new technologies to enhance the visiting museum experience is not a novelty. A large variety of interactive systems are nowadays available, including virtual tours, which makes cultural heritage accessible remotely. The theme of increase in accessibility and attractiveness has lately been faced with the employment of the service robotics, covering various types of applications. Regrettably, many of robotics solutions appear less successful in terms of utility and usability. On the basis of this awareness, a design for a new robotic solution for cultural heritage has been proposed. The project, developed at the royal residence of Racconigi Castle, consists of a telepresence robot designed as a tool to explore inaccessible areas of the heritage. The employed robot, called Virgil, was expressly designed for the project. The control of the robot is entrusted to the museum guides in order to enhance their work and enrich the cultural storytelling.

  7. Archaic man meets a marvellous automaton: posthumanism, social robots, archetypes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Raya

    2017-06-01

    Posthumanism is associated with critical explorations of how new technologies are rewriting our understanding of what it means to be human and how they might alter human existence itself. Intersections with analytical psychology vary depending on which technologies are held in focus. Social robotics promises to populate everyday settings with entities that have populated the imagination for millennia. A legend of A Marvellous Automaton appears as early as 350 B.C. in a book of Taoist teachings, and is joined by ancient and medieval legends of manmade humanoids coming to life, as well as the familiar robots of modern science fiction. However, while the robotics industry seems to be realizing an archetypal fantasy, the technology creates new social realities that generate distinctive issues of potential relevance for the theory and practice of analytical psychology. © 2017, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

  8. Acquiring neural signals for developing a perception and cognition model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Wei; Li, Yunyi; Chen, Genshe; Shen, Dan; Blasch, Erik; Pham, Khanh; Lynch, Robert

    2012-06-01

    The understanding of how humans process information, determine salience, and combine seemingly unrelated information is essential to automated processing of large amounts of information that is partially relevant, or of unknown relevance. Recent neurological science research in human perception, and in information science regarding contextbased modeling, provides us with a theoretical basis for using a bottom-up approach for automating the management of large amounts of information in ways directly useful for human operators. However, integration of human intelligence into a game theoretic framework for dynamic and adaptive decision support needs a perception and cognition model. For the purpose of cognitive modeling, we present a brain-computer-interface (BCI) based humanoid robot system to acquire brainwaves during human mental activities of imagining a humanoid robot-walking behavior. We use the neural signals to investigate relationships between complex humanoid robot behaviors and human mental activities for developing the perception and cognition model. The BCI system consists of a data acquisition unit with an electroencephalograph (EEG), a humanoid robot, and a charge couple CCD camera. An EEG electrode cup acquires brainwaves from the skin surface on scalp. The humanoid robot has 20 degrees of freedom (DOFs); 12 DOFs located on hips, knees, and ankles for humanoid robot walking, 6 DOFs on shoulders and arms for arms motion, and 2 DOFs for head yaw and pitch motion. The CCD camera takes video clips of the human subject's hand postures to identify mental activities that are correlated to the robot-walking behaviors. We use the neural signals to investigate relationships between complex humanoid robot behaviors and human mental activities for developing the perception and cognition model.

  9. New technologies in robotic surgery: the Korean experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tuliao, Patrick H; Kim, Sang W; Rha, Koon H

    2014-01-01

    The development of the robotic systems has made surgery an increasingly technology-driven field. Since the introduction of the first robotic platform in 2005, surgical practice in South Korea has also been caught up in the global robotic revolution. Consequently, a market focused on improving the robotic systems was created and Korea has emerged as one of its frontrunners. This article reviews the Korean experience in developing various robotic technologies and then Korea's most recent contributions to the development of new technologies in robotic surgery. The goal of new technologies in the field of robotic surgery has been to improve on the current platforms by eliminating their disadvantages. The pressing goal is to develop a platform that is less bulky, more ergonomic, and capable of providing force feedback to the surgeon. In Korea, the Lapabot and two new robotic systems for single-port laparoscopic surgery are the most recent advances that have been reported. Robotic surgery is rapidly evolving and Korea has stayed in the forefront of its development. These new advancements in technology will eventually produce better robotic platforms that will greatly improve the manner in which surgical care is delivered.

  10. Connecting Artificial Brains to Robots in a Comprehensive Simulation Framework: The Neurorobotics Platform

    Science.gov (United States)

    Falotico, Egidio; Vannucci, Lorenzo; Ambrosano, Alessandro; Albanese, Ugo; Ulbrich, Stefan; Vasquez Tieck, Juan Camilo; Hinkel, Georg; Kaiser, Jacques; Peric, Igor; Denninger, Oliver; Cauli, Nino; Kirtay, Murat; Roennau, Arne; Klinker, Gudrun; Von Arnim, Axel; Guyot, Luc; Peppicelli, Daniel; Martínez-Cañada, Pablo; Ros, Eduardo; Maier, Patrick; Weber, Sandro; Huber, Manuel; Plecher, David; Röhrbein, Florian; Deser, Stefan; Roitberg, Alina; van der Smagt, Patrick; Dillman, Rüdiger; Levi, Paul; Laschi, Cecilia; Knoll, Alois C.; Gewaltig, Marc-Oliver

    2017-01-01

    , and a visual tracking embedding a retina model on the iCub humanoid robot. These use-cases allow to assess the applicability of the Neurorobotics Platform for robotic tasks as well as in neuroscientific experiments. PMID:28179882

  11. Social robots in advanced dementia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meritxell eValentí Soler

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Aims: Testing the effect of the experimental robot-based therapeutic sessions for patients with dementia in: a controlled study of parallel groups of nursing home patients comparing the effects of therapy sessions utilizing a humanoid robot (NAO, an animal-shaped robot (PARO, or a trained dog (DOG, with conventional therapy (CONTROL on symptoms of dementia; and an experience for patients who attend a day care center, comparing symptom prevalence and severity before and after sessions utilizing NAO and PARO. Methods: In the nursing home, patients were randomly assigned by blocks, based on dementia severity, to one of the 3 therapeutic groups to compare: CONTROL, PARO and NAO (phase 1 and CONTROL, PARO and DOG (phase 2. In the day care center, all patients received therapy with NAO (phase 1 and PARO (phase 2. Therapy sessions were held 2 days/week for 3 months. Evaluation at baseline and follow-up was carried out by blind raters using: the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS, the Severe Mini Mental State Examination (sMMSE, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI, the Apathy Scale for Institutionalized Patients with Dementia Nursing Home version (APADEM-NH, the Apathy Inventory (AI and the Quality of Life Scale (QUALID. Statistical analysis included descriptive statistics and non parametric tests performed by a blinded investigator. Results: In the nursing home, 101 patients (phase 1 and 110 patients (phase 2 were included. There were no significant differences at baseline. The relevant changes at follow-up were: (phase 1 patients in the robot groups showed an improvement in apathy; patients in NAO group showed a decline in cognition as measured by the MMSE scores, but not the sMMSE; the robot groups showed no significant changes between them; (phase 2 QUALID scores increased in the PARO group. In the day care center, 20 patients (phase 1 and 17 patients (phase 2 were included. The main findings were: (phase 1 imp

  12. Iconic Gestures for Robot Avatars, Recognition and Integration with Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bremner, Paul; Leonards, Ute

    2016-01-01

    Co-verbal gestures are an important part of human communication, improving its efficiency and efficacy for information conveyance. One possible means by which such multi-modal communication might be realized remotely is through the use of a tele-operated humanoid robot avatar. Such avatars have been previously shown to enhance social presence and operator salience. We present a motion tracking based tele-operation system for the NAO robot platform that allows direct transmission of speech and gestures produced by the operator. To assess the capabilities of this system for transmitting multi-modal communication, we have conducted a user study that investigated if robot-produced iconic gestures are comprehensible, and are integrated with speech. Robot performed gesture outcomes were compared directly to those for gestures produced by a human actor, using a within participant experimental design. We show that iconic gestures produced by a tele-operated robot are understood by participants when presented alone, almost as well as when produced by a human. More importantly, we show that gestures are integrated with speech when presented as part of a multi-modal communication equally well for human and robot performances. PMID:26925010

  13. Iconic Gestures for Robot Avatars, Recognition and Integration with Speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul Adam Bremner

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Co-verbal gestures are an important part of human communication, improving its efficiency and efficacy for information conveyance. One possible means by which such multi-modal communication might be realised remotely is through the use of a tele-operated humanoid robot avatar. Such avatars have been previously shown to enhance social presence and operator salience. We present a motion tracking based tele-operation system for the NAO robot platform that allows direct transmission of speech and gestures produced by the operator. To assess the capabilities of this system for transmitting multi-modal communication, we have conducted a user study that investigated if robot-produced iconic gestures are comprehensible, and are integrated with speech. Robot performed gesture outcomes were compared directly to those for gestures produced by a human actor, using a within participant experimental design. We show that iconic gestures produced by a tele-operated robot are understood by participants when presented alone, almost as well as when produced by a human. More importantly, we show that gestures are integrated with speech when presented as part of a multi-modal communication equally well for human and robot performances.

  14. The Age of Human-Robot Collaboration: Deep Sea Exploration

    KAUST Repository

    Khatib, Oussama

    2018-01-18

    The promise of oceanic discovery has intrigued scientists and explorers for centuries, whether to study underwater ecology and climate change, or to uncover natural resources and historic secrets buried deep at archaeological sites. Reaching these depth is imperative since factors such as pollution and deep-sea trawling increasingly threaten ecology and archaeological sites. These needs demand a system deploying human-level expertise at the depths, and yet remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are inadequate for the task. To meet the challenge of dexterous operation at oceanic depths, in collaboration with KAUSTメs Red Sea Research Center and MEKA Robotics, Oussama Khatib and the team developed Ocean One, a bimanual humanoid robot that brings immediate and intuitive haptic interaction to oceanic environments. Introducing Ocean One, the haptic robotic avatar During this lecture, Oussama Khatib will talk about how teaming with the French Ministry of Cultureメs Underwater Archaeology Research Department, they deployed Ocean One in an expedition in the Mediterranean to Louis XIVメs flagship Lune, lying off the coast of Toulon at ninety-one meters. In the spring of 2016, Ocean One became the first robotic avatar to embody a humanメs presence at the seabed. Ocean Oneメs journey in the Mediterranean marks a new level of marine exploration: Much as past technological innovations have impacted society, Ocean Oneメs ability to distance humans physically from dangerous and unreachable work spaces while connecting their skills, intuition, and experience to the task promises to fundamentally alter remote work. Robotic avatars will search for and acquire materials, support equipment, build infrastructure, and perform disaster prevention and recovery operations - be it deep in oceans and mines, at mountain tops, or in space.

  15. Progress in EEG-Based Brain Robot Interaction Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaoqian Mao

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The most popular noninvasive Brain Robot Interaction (BRI technology uses the electroencephalogram- (EEG- based Brain Computer Interface (BCI, to serve as an additional communication channel, for robot control via brainwaves. This technology is promising for elderly or disabled patient assistance with daily life. The key issue of a BRI system is to identify human mental activities, by decoding brainwaves, acquired with an EEG device. Compared with other BCI applications, such as word speller, the development of these applications may be more challenging since control of robot systems via brainwaves must consider surrounding environment feedback in real-time, robot mechanical kinematics, and dynamics, as well as robot control architecture and behavior. This article reviews the major techniques needed for developing BRI systems. In this review article, we first briefly introduce the background and development of mind-controlled robot technologies. Second, we discuss the EEG-based brain signal models with respect to generating principles, evoking mechanisms, and experimental paradigms. Subsequently, we review in detail commonly used methods for decoding brain signals, namely, preprocessing, feature extraction, and feature classification, and summarize several typical application examples. Next, we describe a few BRI applications, including wheelchairs, manipulators, drones, and humanoid robots with respect to synchronous and asynchronous BCI-based techniques. Finally, we address some existing problems and challenges with future BRI techniques.

  16. Vision Guided Intelligent Robot Design And Experiments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slutzky, G. D.; Hall, E. L.

    1988-02-01

    The concept of an intelligent robot is an important topic combining sensors, manipulators, and artificial intelligence to design a useful machine. Vision systems, tactile sensors, proximity switches and other sensors provide the elements necessary for simple game playing as well as industrial applications. These sensors permit adaption to a changing environment. The AI techniques permit advanced forms of decision making, adaptive responses, and learning while the manipulator provides the ability to perform various tasks. Computer languages such as LISP and OPS5, have been utilized to achieve expert systems approaches in solving real world problems. The purpose of this paper is to describe several examples of visually guided intelligent robots including both stationary and mobile robots. Demonstrations will be presented of a system for constructing and solving a popular peg game, a robot lawn mower, and a box stacking robot. The experience gained from these and other systems provide insight into what may be realistically expected from the next generation of intelligent machines.

  17. Experiences in Developing an Experimental Robotics Course Program for Undergraduate Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jung, Seul

    2013-01-01

    An interdisciplinary undergraduate-level robotics course offers students the chance to integrate their engineering knowledge learned throughout their college years by building a robotic system. Robotics is thus a core course in system and control-related engineering education. This paper summarizes the experience of developing robotics courses…

  18. Long-term LEGO therapy with humanoid robot for children with ASD

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Barakova, E.I.; Bajracharya, P.; Willemsen, M.H.J.; Lourens, T.; Huskens, B.

    2015-01-01

    To utilise the knowledge gained from highly specialised domains as autism therapy to robot-based interactive training platforms, an innovative design approach is needed. We present the process of content creation and co-design of LEGO therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders performed by

  19. HexaMob—A Hybrid Modular Robotic Design for Implementing Biomimetic Structures

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sasanka Sankhar Reddy CH.

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Modular robots are capable of forming primitive shapes such as lattice and chain structures with the additional flexibility of distributed sensing. The biomimetic structures developed using such modular units provides ease of replacement and reconfiguration in co-ordinated structures, transportation etc. in real life scenarios. Though the research in the employment of modular robotic units in formation of biological organisms is in the nascent stage, modular robotic units are already capable of forming such sophisticated structures. The modular robotic designs proposed so far in modular robotics research vary significantly in external structures, sensor-actuator mechanisms interfaces for docking and undocking, techniques for providing mobility, coordinated structures, locomotions etc. and each robotic design attempted to address various challenges faced in the domain of modular robotics by employing different strategies. This paper presents a novel modular wheeled robotic design - HexaMob facilitating four degrees of freedom (2 degrees for mobility and 2 degrees for structural reconfiguration on a single module with minimal usage of sensor-actuator assemblies. The crucial features of modular robotics such as back-driving restriction, docking, and navigation are addressed in the process of HexaMob design. The proposed docking mechanism is enabled using vision sensor, enhancing the capabilities in docking as well as navigation in co-ordinated structures such as humanoid robots.

  20. Rhythm Patterns Interaction - Synchronization Behavior for Human-Robot Joint Action

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mörtl, Alexander; Lorenz, Tamara; Hirche, Sandra

    2014-01-01

    Interactive behavior among humans is governed by the dynamics of movement synchronization in a variety of repetitive tasks. This requires the interaction partners to perform for example rhythmic limb swinging or even goal-directed arm movements. Inspired by that essential feature of human interaction, we present a novel concept and design methodology to synthesize goal-directed synchronization behavior for robotic agents in repetitive joint action tasks. The agents’ tasks are described by closed movement trajectories and interpreted as limit cycles, for which instantaneous phase variables are derived based on oscillator theory. Events segmenting the trajectories into multiple primitives are introduced as anchoring points for enhanced synchronization modes. Utilizing both continuous phases and discrete events in a unifying view, we design a continuous dynamical process synchronizing the derived modes. Inverse to the derivation of phases, we also address the generation of goal-directed movements from the behavioral dynamics. The developed concept is implemented to an anthropomorphic robot. For evaluation of the concept an experiment is designed and conducted in which the robot performs a prototypical pick-and-place task jointly with human partners. The effectiveness of the designed behavior is successfully evidenced by objective measures of phase and event synchronization. Feedback gathered from the participants of our exploratory study suggests a subjectively pleasant sense of interaction created by the interactive behavior. The results highlight potential applications of the synchronization concept both in motor coordination among robotic agents and in enhanced social interaction between humanoid agents and humans. PMID:24752212

  1. A remote lab for experiments with a team of mobile robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Casini, Marco; Garulli, Andrea; Giannitrapani, Antonio; Vicino, Antonio

    2014-09-04

    In this paper, a remote lab for experimenting with a team of mobile robots is presented. Robots are built with the LEGO Mindstorms technology and user-defined control laws can be directly coded in the Matlab programming language and validated on the real system. The lab is versatile enough to be used for both teaching and research purposes. Students can easily go through a number of predefined mobile robotics experiences without having to worry about robot hardware or low-level programming languages. More advanced experiments can also be carried out by uploading custom controllers. The capability to have full control of the vehicles, together with the possibility to define arbitrarily complex environments through the definition of virtual obstacles, makes the proposed facility well suited to quickly test and compare different control laws in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the user can simulate the presence of different types of exteroceptive sensors on board of the robots or a specific communication architecture among the agents, so that decentralized control strategies and motion coordination algorithms can be easily implemented and tested. A number of possible applications and real experiments are presented in order to illustrate the main features of the proposed mobile robotics remote lab.

  2. A Remote Lab for Experiments with a Team of Mobile Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marco Casini

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, a remote lab for experimenting with a team of mobile robots is presented. Robots are built with the LEGO Mindstorms technology and user-defined control laws can be directly coded in the Matlab programming language and validated on the real system. The lab is versatile enough to be used for both teaching and research purposes. Students can easily go through a number of predefined mobile robotics experiences without having to worry about robot hardware or low-level programming languages. More advanced experiments can also be carried out by uploading custom controllers. The capability to have full control of the vehicles, together with the possibility to define arbitrarily complex environments through the definition of virtual obstacles, makes the proposed facility well suited to quickly test and compare different control laws in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the user can simulate the presence of different types of exteroceptive sensors on board of the robots or a specific communication architecture among the agents, so that decentralized control strategies and motion coordination algorithms can be easily implemented and tested. A number of possible applications and real experiments are presented in order to illustrate the main features of the proposed mobile robotics remote lab.

  3. Interdisciplinary Construction and Implementation of a Human sized Humanoid Robot by master students

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Helbo, Jan; Svendsen, Mads Sølver

    2009-01-01

    With limited funding it seemed a very good idea to encourage master students to design and construct their own human size biped robot.  Because this task is huge and very interdisciplinary different expertises were covered by students from different departments who in turn took over results from...... former students. In the last three years three student groups from respectively Department of Mechanical Engineering and Electronic Systems have been working on the project.  The robot AAU-BOT1 is designed, manufactured, assembled, instrumented and the time for walking should be possible in the near...

  4. Mechatronic design of a fast and long range 4 degrees of freedom humanoid neck

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwer, Dannis Michel; Bennik, J.; Leideman, J.; Soemers, Herman; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes the mechatronic design of a humanoid neck. To research human machine interaction, the head and neck combination should be able to approach the human behavior as much as possible. We present a novel humanoid neck concept that is both fast, and has a long range of motion in 4

  5. Developing a robotic pancreas program: the Dutch experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nota, Carolijn L; Zwart, Maurice J; Fong, Yuman; Hagendoorn, Jeroen; Hogg, Melissa E; Koerkamp, Bas Groot; Besselink, Marc G; Molenaar, I Quintus

    2017-01-01

    Robot-assisted surgery has been developed to overcome limitations of conventional laparoscopy aiming to further optimize minimally invasive surgery. Despite the fact that robotics already have been widely adopted in urology, gynecology, and several gastro-intestinal procedures, like colorectal surgery, pancreatic surgery lags behind. Due to the complex nature of the procedure, surgeons probably have been hesitant to apply minimally invasive techniques in pancreatic surgery. Nevertheless, the past few years pancreatic surgery has been catching up. An increasing number of procedures are being performed laparoscopically and robotically, despite it being a highly complex procedure with high morbidity and mortality rates. Since the complex nature and extensiveness of the procedure, the start of a robotic pancreatic program should be properly prepared and should comply with several conditions within high-volume centers. Robotic training plays a significant role in the preparation. In this review we discuss the different aspects of preparation when working towards the start of a robotic pancreas program against the background of our nationwide experience in the Netherlands.

  6. Mechatronic design of the Twente humanoid head

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Reilink, Rob; Visser, L.C.; Brouwer, Dannis Michel; Carloni, Raffaella; Stramigioli, Stefano

    This paper describes the mechatronic design of the Twente humanoid head, which has been realized in the purpose of having a research platform for human-machine interaction. The design features a fast, four degree of freedom neck, with long range of motion, and a vision system with three degrees of

  7. The iCub Software Architecture: evolution and lessons learned

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lorenzo eNatale

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available The complexity of humanoid robots is increasing with the availability of new sensors, embedded CPUs and actuators. This wealth of technologies allows researchers to investigate new problems like whole-body force control, multi-modal human-robot interaction and sensory fusion. Under the hood of these robots, the software architecture has an important role: it allows researchers to get access to the robot functionalities focusing primarily on their research problems, it supports code reuse to minimize development and debugging, especially when new hardware becomes available. But more importantly it allows increasing the complexity of the experiments that can be implemented before system integration becomes unmanageable and debugging draws more resources than research itself.In this paper we illustrate the software architecture of the iCub humanoid robot and the software engineering best practices that have emerged driven by the needs of our research community. We describe the latest developments at the level of the middleware supporting interface definition and automatic code generation, logging, ROS compatibility and channel prioritization. We show the robot abstraction layer and how it has been modified to better address the requirements of the users and to support new hardware as it became available. We also describe the testing framework we have recently adopted for developing code using a test driven methodology. We conclude the paper discussing the lessons we have learned during the past eleven years of software development on the iCub humanoid robot.

  8. Middleware Interoperability for Robotics: A ROS-YARP Framework

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Plinio Moreno

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Middlewares are fundamental tools for progress in research and applications in robotics. They enable the integration of multiple heterogeneous sensing and actuation devices, as well as providing general purpose modules for key robotics functions (kinematics, navigation, planning. However, no existing middleware yet provides a complete set of functionalities for all robotics applications, and many robots may need to rely on more than one framework. This paper focuses on the interoperability between two of the most prevalent middleware in robotics: YARP and ROS. Interoperability between middlewares should ideally allow users to execute existing software without the necessity of: (i changing the existing code, and (ii writing hand-coded ``bridges'' for each use-case. We propose a framework enabling the communication between existing YARP modules and ROS nodes for robotics applications in an automated way. Our approach generates the ``bridging gap'' code from a configuration file, connecting YARP ports and ROS topics through code-generated YARP Bottles. %%The configuration file must describe: (i the sender entities, (ii the way to group and convert the information read from the sender, (iii the structure of the output message and (iv the receiving entity. Our choice for the many inputs to one output is the most common use-case in robotics applications, where examples include filtering, decision making and visualization. %We support YARP/ROS and ROS/YARP sender/receiver configurations, which are demonstrated in a humanoid on wheels robot that uses YARP for upper body motor control and visual perception, and ROS for mobile base control and navigation algorithms.

  9. Open source hardware and software platform for robotics and artificial intelligence applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liang, S. Ng; Tan, K. O.; Lai Clement, T. H.; Ng, S. K.; Mohammed, A. H. Ali; Mailah, Musa; Azhar Yussof, Wan; Hamedon, Zamzuri; Yussof, Zulkifli

    2016-02-01

    Recent developments in open source hardware and software platforms (Android, Arduino, Linux, OpenCV etc.) have enabled rapid development of previously expensive and sophisticated system within a lower budget and flatter learning curves for developers. Using these platform, we designed and developed a Java-based 3D robotic simulation system, with graph database, which is integrated in online and offline modes with an Android-Arduino based rubbish picking remote control car. The combination of the open source hardware and software system created a flexible and expandable platform for further developments in the future, both in the software and hardware areas, in particular in combination with graph database for artificial intelligence, as well as more sophisticated hardware, such as legged or humanoid robots.

  10. Open source hardware and software platform for robotics and artificial intelligence applications

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Liang, S Ng; Tan, K O; Clement, T H Lai; Ng, S K; Mohammed, A H Ali; Mailah, Musa; Yussof, Wan Azhar; Hamedon, Zamzuri; Yussof, Zulkifli

    2016-01-01

    Recent developments in open source hardware and software platforms (Android, Arduino, Linux, OpenCV etc.) have enabled rapid development of previously expensive and sophisticated system within a lower budget and flatter learning curves for developers. Using these platform, we designed and developed a Java-based 3D robotic simulation system, with graph database, which is integrated in online and offline modes with an Android-Arduino based rubbish picking remote control car. The combination of the open source hardware and software system created a flexible and expandable platform for further developments in the future, both in the software and hardware areas, in particular in combination with graph database for artificial intelligence, as well as more sophisticated hardware, such as legged or humanoid robots. (paper)

  11. Combining psychological and engineering approaches to utilizing social robots with children with autism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dickstein-Fischer, Laurie; Fischer, Gregory S

    2014-01-01

    It is estimated that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects 1 in 68 children. Early identification of an ASD is exceedingly important to the introduction of an intervention. We are developing a robot-assisted approach that will serve as an improved diagnostic and early intervention tool for children with autism. The robot, named PABI® (Penguin for Autism Behavioral Interventions), is a compact humanoid robot taking on an expressive cartoon-like embodiment. The robot is affordable, durable, and portable so that it can be used in various settings including schools, clinics, and the home. Thus enabling significantly enhanced and more readily available diagnosis and continuation of care. Through facial expressions, body motion, verbal cues, stereo vision-based tracking, and a tablet computer, the robot is capable of interacting meaningfully with an autistic child. Initial implementations of the robot, as part of a comprehensive treatment model (CTM), include Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy where the child interacts with a tablet computer wirelessly interfaced with the robot. At the same time, the robot makes meaningful expressions and utterances and uses stereo cameras in eyes to track the child, maintain eye contact, and collect data such as affect and gaze direction for charting of progress. In this paper we present the clinical justification, anticipated usage with corresponding requirements, prototype development of the robotic system, and demonstration of a sample application for robot-assisted ABA therapy.

  12. Exploring the Possibility of Using Humanoid Robots as Instructional Tools for Teaching a Second Language in Primary School

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Chih-Wei; Lee, Jih-Hsien; Chao, Po-Yao; Wang, Chin-Yeh; Chen, Gwo-Dong

    2010-01-01

    As robot technologies develop, many researchers have tried to use robots to support education. Studies have shown that robots can help students develop problem-solving abilities and learn computer programming, mathematics, and science. However, few studies discuss the use of robots to facilitate the teaching of second languages. We discuss whether…

  13. Liquid-handling Lego robots and experiments for STEM education and research.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lukas C Gerber

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Liquid-handling robots have many applications for biotechnology and the life sciences, with increasing impact on everyday life. While playful robotics such as Lego Mindstorms significantly support education initiatives in mechatronics and programming, equivalent connections to the life sciences do not currently exist. To close this gap, we developed Lego-based pipetting robots that reliably handle liquid volumes from 1 ml down to the sub-μl range and that operate on standard laboratory plasticware, such as cuvettes and multiwell plates. These robots can support a range of science and chemistry experiments for education and even research. Using standard, low-cost household consumables, programming pipetting routines, and modifying robot designs, we enabled a rich activity space. We successfully tested these activities in afterschool settings with elementary, middle, and high school students. The simplest robot can be directly built from the widely used Lego Education EV3 core set alone, and this publication includes building and experiment instructions to set the stage for dissemination and further development in education and research.

  14. Liquid-handling Lego robots and experiments for STEM education and research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gerber, Lukas C; Calasanz-Kaiser, Agnes; Hyman, Luke; Voitiuk, Kateryna; Patil, Uday; Riedel-Kruse, Ingmar H

    2017-03-01

    Liquid-handling robots have many applications for biotechnology and the life sciences, with increasing impact on everyday life. While playful robotics such as Lego Mindstorms significantly support education initiatives in mechatronics and programming, equivalent connections to the life sciences do not currently exist. To close this gap, we developed Lego-based pipetting robots that reliably handle liquid volumes from 1 ml down to the sub-μl range and that operate on standard laboratory plasticware, such as cuvettes and multiwell plates. These robots can support a range of science and chemistry experiments for education and even research. Using standard, low-cost household consumables, programming pipetting routines, and modifying robot designs, we enabled a rich activity space. We successfully tested these activities in afterschool settings with elementary, middle, and high school students. The simplest robot can be directly built from the widely used Lego Education EV3 core set alone, and this publication includes building and experiment instructions to set the stage for dissemination and further development in education and research.

  15. Application of robotics in general surgery: initial experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Ninh T; Hinojosa, Marcelo W; Finley, David; Stevens, Melinda; Paya, Mahbod

    2004-10-01

    Robotic surgery was recently approved for clinical use in general abdominal surgery. The aim of this study was to review our experience with the da Vinci surgical system during laparoscopic general surgical procedures. Eighteen patients underwent robotically assisted laparoscopic abdominal surgery between June 2002 and March 2003. Main outcome measures were operative time, room setup time, robotic arm-positioning and surgical time, blood loss, conversion to laparoscopy, length of stay, and morbidity. The types of robotically assisted laparoscopic procedures were excision of gastric leiomyoma (n = 1), Heller myotomy (n = 1), cholecystectomy (n = 2), gastric banding (n = 2), Nissen fundoplication (n = 4), and gastric bypass (n = 8). The mean room setup time was 63 +/- 14 minutes, and the mean robotic arm-positioning time was 16 +/- 7 minutes. Conversion to laparoscopy occurred in two (11%) of 18 cases because of equipment difficulty (n = 1) and technical difficulty (n = 1). Estimated blood loss was 91 +/- 71 mL. The mean operative time was 156 +/- 42 minutes, and the robotic operative time was 27% of the total operative time. The mean length of hospital stay was 2.2 +/- 1.5 days. There was one postoperative wound infection and one anastomotic stricture. Robotically assisted laparoscopic abdominal surgery is feasible and safe; however, the theoretical advantages of the da Vinci surgical system were not clinically apparent.

  16. Examples of design and achievement of vision systems for mobile robotics applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bonnin, Patrick J.; Cabaret, Laurent; Raulet, Ludovic; Hugel, Vincent; Blazevic, Pierre; M'Sirdi, Nacer K.; Coiffet, Philippe

    2000-10-01

    Our goal is to design and to achieve a multiple purpose vision system for various robotics applications : wheeled robots (like cars for autonomous driving), legged robots (six, four (SONY's AIBO) legged robots, and humanoid), flying robots (to inspect bridges for example) in various conditions : indoor or outdoor. Considering that the constraints depend on the application, we propose an edge segmentation implemented either in software, or in hardware using CPLDs (ASICs or FPGAs could be used too). After discussing the criteria of our choice, we propose a chain of image processing operators constituting an edge segmentation. Although this chain is quite simple and very fast to perform, results appear satisfactory. We proposed a software implementation of it. Its temporal optimization is based on : its implementation under the pixel data flow programming model, the gathering of local processing when it is possible, the simplification of computations, and the use of fast access data structures. Then, we describe a first dedicated hardware implementation of the first part, which requires 9CPLS in this low cost version. It is technically possible, but more expensive, to implement these algorithms using only a signle FPGA.

  17. Design and control of the Twente humanoid head

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Visser, L.C.; Carloni, Raffaella; Stramigioli, Stefano

    2009-01-01

    The Twente humanoid head features a four degree of freedom neck and two eyes that are implemented by using cameras. The cameras tilt on a common axis, but can rotate sideways independently, thus implementing another three degrees of freedom. A vision processing algorithm has been developed that

  18. Development of sensor system built into a robot hand toward environmental monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kaneko, Kenji; Ueshiba, Toshio; Yoshimi, Takashi; Kawai, Yoshihiro; Morisawa, Mitsuharu; Kanehiro, Fumio; Yokoi, Kazuhito

    2015-01-01

    The development of sensor system that is built into a hand of a humanoid robot toward environmental monitoring is presented in this paper. The developed system consists of a color C-MOS camera, a laser projector with a lens distributing a laser light, and a LED projector. The sensor system can activate/disable these components according to the purpose. This paper introduces the design process, pre-experimental results for evaluating components, and the specifications of the developed sensor system together with experimental results. (author)

  19. Robotic Inguinal Hernia Repair: Technique and Early Experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arcerito, Massimo; Changchien, Eric; Bernal, Oscar; Konkoly-Thege, Adam; Moon, John

    2016-10-01

    Laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair has been shown to have multiple advantages compared with open repair such as less postoperative pain and earlier resume of daily activities with a comparable recurrence rate. We speculate robotic inguinal hernia repair may yield equivalent benefits, while providing the surgeon added dexterity. One hundred consecutive robotic inguinal hernia repairs with mesh were performed with a mean age of 56 years (25-96). Fifty-six unilateral hernias and 22 bilateral hernias were repaired amongst 62 males and 16 females. Polypropylene mesh was used for reconstruction. All but, two patients were completed robotically. Mean operative time was 52 minutes per hernia repair (45-67). Five patients were admitted overnight based on their advanced age. Regular diet was resumed immediately. Postoperative pain was minimal and regular activity was achieved after an average of four days. One patient recurred after three months in our earlier experience and he was repaired robotically. Mean follow-up time was 12 months. These data, compared with laparoscopic approach, suggest similar recurrence rates and postoperative pain. We believe comparative studies with laparoscopic approach need to be performed to assess the role robotic surgery has in the treatment of inguinal hernia repair.

  20. Humanoid Robot: A Review of the Architecture, Applications and Future Trend

    OpenAIRE

    Chen-Hunt Ting; Wei-Hong Yeo; Yeong-Jin King; Yea-Dat Chuah; Jer-Vui Lee; Wil-Bond Khaw

    2014-01-01

    With the advancement in the area of robotics, exoskeleton technology has come a long way since its beginnings in the late 60’s. Researchers over the world have developed their own exoskeleton prototypes and some of the well known exoskeleton includes the BLEEX, MIT exoskeleton, HAL, LOPES, ALEX and many more. Although technologies have since improved from the 60’s, challenges still exist in exoskeleton design. In this study, we are going to review different exoskeleton technologies as well as...

  1. Multimodal Hierarchical Dirichlet Process-Based Active Perception by a Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tadahiro Taniguchi

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we propose an active perception method for recognizing object categories based on the multimodal hierarchical Dirichlet process (MHDP. The MHDP enables a robot to form object categories using multimodal information, e.g., visual, auditory, and haptic information, which can be observed by performing actions on an object. However, performing many actions on a target object requires a long time. In a real-time scenario, i.e., when the time is limited, the robot has to determine the set of actions that is most effective for recognizing a target object. We propose an active perception for MHDP method that uses the information gain (IG maximization criterion and lazy greedy algorithm. We show that the IG maximization criterion is optimal in the sense that the criterion is equivalent to a minimization of the expected Kullback–Leibler divergence between a final recognition state and the recognition state after the next set of actions. However, a straightforward calculation of IG is practically impossible. Therefore, we derive a Monte Carlo approximation method for IG by making use of a property of the MHDP. We also show that the IG has submodular and non-decreasing properties as a set function because of the structure of the graphical model of the MHDP. Therefore, the IG maximization problem is reduced to a submodular maximization problem. This means that greedy and lazy greedy algorithms are effective and have a theoretical justification for their performance. We conducted an experiment using an upper-torso humanoid robot and a second one using synthetic data. The experimental results show that the method enables the robot to select a set of actions that allow it to recognize target objects quickly and accurately. The numerical experiment using the synthetic data shows that the proposed method can work appropriately even when the number of actions is large and a set of target objects involves objects categorized into multiple classes

  2. Getting started with robotics in general surgery with cholecystectomy: the Canadian experience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jayaraman, Shiva; Davies, Ward; Schlachta, Christopher M.

    2009-01-01

    Background The value of robotics in general surgery may be for advanced minimally invasive procedures. Unlike other specialties, formal fellowship training opportunities for robotic general surgery are few. As a result, most surgeons currently develop robotic skills in practice. Our goal was to determine whether robotic cholecystectomy is a safe and effective bridge to advanced robotics in general surgery. Methods Before performing advanced robotic procedures, 2 surgeons completed the Intuitive Surgical da Vinci training course and agreed to work together on all procedures. Clinical surgery began with da Vinci cholecystectomy with a plan to begin advanced procedures after at least 10 cholecystectomies. We performed a retrospective review of our pilot series of robotic cholecystectomies and compared them with contemporaneous laparoscopic controls. The primary outcome was safety, and the secondary outcome was learning curve. Results There were 16 procedures in the robotics arm and 20 in the laparoscopic arm. Two complications (da Vinci port-site hernia, transient elevation of liver enzymes) occurred in the robotic arm, whereas only 1 laparoscopic patient (slow to awaken from anesthetic) experienced a complication. None was significant. The mean time required to perform robotic cholecystectomy was significantly longer than laparoscopic surgery (91 v. 41 min, p robotic procedures (14 v. 11 min, p = 0.015). We observed a trend showing longer mean anesthesia time for robotic procedures (23 v. 15 min). Regarding learning curve, the mean operative time needed for the first 3 robotic procedures was longer than for the last 3 (101 v. 80 min); however, this difference was not significant. Since this experience, the team has confidently gone on to perform robotic biliary, pancreatic, gastresophageal, intestinal and colorectal operations. Conclusion Robotic cholecystectomy can be performed reliably; however, owing to the significant increase in operating room resources, it

  3. Getting started with robotics in general surgery with cholecystectomy: the Canadian experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jayaraman, Shiva; Davies, Ward; Schlachta, Christopher M

    2009-10-01

    The value of robotics in general surgery may be for advanced minimally invasive procedures. Unlike other specialties, formal fellowship training opportunities for robotic general surgery are few. As a result, most surgeons currently develop robotic skills in practice. Our goal was to determine whether robotic cholecystectomy is a safe and effective bridge to advanced robotics in general surgery. Before performing advanced robotic procedures, 2 surgeons completed the Intuitive Surgical da Vinci training course and agreed to work together on all procedures. Clinical surgery began with da Vinci cholecystectomy with a plan to begin advanced procedures after at least 10 cholecystectomies. We performed a retrospective review of our pilot series of robotic cholecystectomies and compared them with contemporaneous laparoscopic controls. The primary outcome was safety, and the secondary outcome was learning curve. There were 16 procedures in the robotics arm and 20 in the laparoscopic arm. Two complications (da Vinci port-site hernia, transient elevation of liver enzymes) occurred in the robotic arm, whereas only 1 laparoscopic patient (slow to awaken from anesthetic) experienced a complication. None was significant. The mean time required to perform robotic cholecystectomy was significantly longer than laparoscopic surgery (91 v. 41 min, p robotic procedures (14 v. 11 min, p = 0.015). We observed a trend showing longer mean anesthesia time for robotic procedures (23 v. 15 min). Regarding learning curve, the mean operative time needed for the first 3 robotic procedures was longer than for the last 3 (101 v. 80 min); however, this difference was not significant. Since this experience, the team has confidently gone on to perform robotic biliary, pancreatic, gastresophageal, intestinal and colorectal operations. Robotic cholecystectomy can be performed reliably; however, owing to the significant increase in operating room resources, it cannot be justified for routine use. Our

  4. Da Vinci robot-assisted system for thymectomy: experience of 55 patients in China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jun, Yi; Hao, Li; Demin, Li; Guohua, Dong; Hua, Jing; Yi, Shen

    2014-09-01

    Da Vinci robot-assisted thymectomy has been used in the past several years in China, however, practical experience in performing this approach in China remains limited. Thus, the study aimed to evaluate the experience of da Vinci robot-assisted thymectomy in China. From June 2010 to December 2012, 55 patients with diseases of the thymus underwent thymectomy using the da Vinci surgical HD robotic system. The clinical data of the da Vinci robot-assisted thymectomies were compared with the data of video-assisted thoracoscopic thymectomies in the same period. All da Vinci robot operations were successful. This is a retrospective analysis which demonstrated that compared with video-assisted thoracoscopic thymectomy in the same period, the clinical outcomes of da Vinci robot-assisted thymectomy were not significantly different. The da Vinci robot-assisted thymectomy is a safe, minimally invasive, and convenient operation, and shows promise for general thoracic surgery in China. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  5. Robotics and artificial intelligence: Jewish ethical perspectives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rappaport, Z H

    2006-01-01

    In 16th Century Prague, Rabbi Loew created a Golem, a humanoid made of clay, to protect his community. When the Golem became too dangerous to his surroundings, he was dismantled. This Jewish theme illustrates some of the guiding principles in its approach to the moral dilemmas inherent in future technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Man is viewed as having received the power to improve upon creation and develop technologies to achieve them, with the proviso that appropriate safeguards are taken. Ethically, not-harming is viewed as taking precedence over promoting good. Jewish ethical thinking approaches these novel technological possibilities with a cautious optimism that mankind will derive their benefits without coming to harm.

  6. Visually and force controlled opening and closing of doors by means of a mobile robot arm

    OpenAIRE

    Milighetti, G.; Hoffmann, E.; Fetzner, Angelika; Kuntze, Helge-Björn

    2012-01-01

    A multi-sensory discrete-continuous control concept has been developed to realize interactive basic skills for humanoid and mobile service robots. In the upper hierarchy level a discrete task control structure enables the flexible execution of primitive skill sequences. In the lower continuous level a suitable controller is chosen with control parameters adapted to the current primitive skill. The basic skill for the frequently occurring task of unlocking and opening a door by means of a mobi...

  7. Multilevel Cognitive Machine-Learning-Based Concept for Artificial Awareness: Application to Humanoid Robot Awareness Using Visual Saliency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kurosh Madani

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available As part of “intelligence,” the “awareness” is the state or ability to perceive, feel, or be mindful of events, objects, or sensory patterns: in other words, to be conscious of the surrounding environment and its interactions. Inspired by early-ages human skills developments and especially by early-ages awareness maturation, the present paper accosts the robots intelligence from a different slant directing the attention to combining both “cognitive” and “perceptual” abilities. Within such a slant, the machine (robot shrewdness is constructed on the basis of a multilevel cognitive concept attempting to handle complex artificial behaviors. The intended complex behavior is the autonomous discovering of objects by robot exploring an unknown environment: in other words, proffering the robot autonomy and awareness in and about unknown backdrop.

  8. Fiscal 1998 R and D report on the human coordination/coexistence robot system (development of practical technology for rational energy use); 1998 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system no kenkyu kaihatsu (energy shiyo gorika kankei gijutsu jitsuyoka kaihatsu) seika hokokusho

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1999-03-01

    This report reports the R and D on the human coordination/coexistence robot system possible to perform various works instead of people. As for an intelligent robot hand, 4-finger hand and arm hardware were developed and fabricated, and operation of the assembled system of them was tested. As for a robot platform, a remote control platform, and the interface specifications of command communication and data communication were studied. As for 3-D walk adaptive to land shapes, an analysis environment for a control algorithm and an easy-to-use environment for a virtual platform simulator were prepared. By using this analysis environment, the central part of the walk control algorithm, and a module for forming walk patterns were developed. In the application research on energy saving, various problems on dangerous and harsh conditions in construction and disaster restoration works were analyzed, and the needs of a humanoid robot for such works were studied. (NEDO)

  9. DANCING AROUND THE SUBJECT WITH ROBOTS: ETHICAL COMMUNICATION AS A “TRIPLE AUDIOVISUAL REALITY”

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eleanor Sandry

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Communication is often thought of as a bridge between self and other, supported by what they have in common, and pursued with the aim of further developing this commonality. However, theorists such as John Durham Peters and Amit Pinchevski argue that this conception, connected as it is with the need to resolve and remove difference, is inherently ‘violent’ to the other and therefore unethical. To encourage ethical communication, they suggest that theory should instead support acts of communication for which the differences between self and other are not only retained, but also valued for the possibilities they offer. As a means of moving towards a more ethical stance, this paper stresses the importance of understanding communication as more than the transmission of information in spoken and written language. In particular, it draws on Fernando Poyatos’ research into simultaneous translation, which suggests that communication is a “triple audiovisual reality” consisting of language, paralanguage and kinesics. This perspective is then extended by considering the way in which Alan Fogel’s dynamic systems model also stresses the place of nonverbal signs. The paper explores and illustrates these theories by considering human-robot interactions because analysis of such interactions, with both humanoid and non-humanoid robots, helps to draw out the importance of paralanguage and kinesics as elements of communication. The human-robot encounters discussed here also highlight the way in which these theories position both reason and emotion as valuable in communication. The resulting argument – that communication occurs as a dynamic process, relying on a triple audiovisual reality drawn from both reason and emotion – supports a theoretical position that values difference, rather than promoting commonality as a requirement for successful communicative events. In conclusion, this paper extends this theory and suggests that it can form a basis

  10. The merits of a robot: a Dutch experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mobach, Mark P

    2006-01-01

    To determine the merits of a robot at the community pharmacy in a quasi-experiment. The applied methods for data-collection were barcode-time measurements, direct observations, time-interval studies, and tally at a Dutch community pharmacy. The topics consisted of workload, waiting times, congestion, slack, general work, counter work, and work at the consultation room. The topics were studied in pre-test and post-test stages, each stage during six weeks. By using these topics and some additional data from the pharmacy, the economics of the robot were also assessed. The workload decreased with 15 prescriptions per person per day. The waiting times decreased with one minute and 18 seconds per dispensing process, reducing the wait until counter contact. The day congestion decreased with one hour 27 minutes and 36 seconds, and the day slack increased with 28 minutes. The analysis of the general work showed no appreciable difference in the bulk of the care-related activities and the other activities. However, some work was re-shuffled: 7% increase at counter work and 7% decrease at logistics. Moreover, statistically significant increases were observed at counter work (5%) and robot work (4%), and significant decreases at telephone (3%) and filling work in presence of the patient (4%). The counter tally study showed a rise in care-related activities with 8%. Moreover, it also illuminated a statistically significant decrease at no information (11%) and an increase at only social (2%). The consultation room was never used during the study. The pharmacy economics of the robot showed that the robot had high estimated costs for purchase, depreciation, and maintenance: EUR 187,024 in the first year. Moreover, the robot had positive impact on waiting times, congestion, staffing, logistics, and care-related work, which was estimated on EUR 91,198 in the first year. The estimated payback time of the robot was three years. An introduction of the robot may indeed have the often

  11. Recent trends in robot-assisted therapy environments to improve real-life functional performance after stroke.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, Michelle J

    2006-12-18

    Upper and lower limb robotic tools for neuro-rehabilitation are effective in reducing motor impairment but they are limited in their ability to improve real world function. There is a need to improve functional outcomes after robot-assisted therapy. Improvements in the effectiveness of these environments may be achieved by incorporating into their design and control strategies important elements key to inducing motor learning and cerebral plasticity such as mass-practice, feedback, task-engagement, and complex problem solving. This special issue presents nine articles. Novel strategies covered in this issue encourage more natural movements through the use of virtual reality and real objects and faster motor learning through the use of error feedback to guide acquisition of natural movements that are salient to real activities. In addition, several articles describe novel systems and techniques that use of custom and commercial games combined with new low-cost robot systems and a humanoid robot to embody the " supervisory presence" of the therapy as possible solutions to exercise compliance in under-supervised environments such as the home.

  12. Recent trends in robot-assisted therapy environments to improve real-life functional performance after stroke

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Johnson Michelle J

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Upper and lower limb robotic tools for neuro-rehabilitation are effective in reducing motor impairment but they are limited in their ability to improve real world function. There is a need to improve functional outcomes after robot-assisted therapy. Improvements in the effectiveness of these environments may be achieved by incorporating into their design and control strategies important elements key to inducing motor learning and cerebral plasticity such as mass-practice, feedback, task-engagement, and complex problem solving. This special issue presents nine articles. Novel strategies covered in this issue encourage more natural movements through the use of virtual reality and real objects and faster motor learning through the use of error feedback to guide acquisition of natural movements that are salient to real activities. In addition, several articles describe novel systems and techniques that use of custom and commercial games combined with new low-cost robot systems and a humanoid robot to embody the " supervisory presence" of the therapy as possible solutions to exercise compliance in under-supervised environments such as the home.

  13. Emotional Expression in Simple Line Drawings of a Robot's Face Leads to Higher Offers in the Ultimatum Game.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Terada, Kazunori; Takeuchi, Chikara

    2017-01-01

    In the present study, we investigated whether expressing emotional states using a simple line drawing to represent a robot's face can serve to elicit altruistic behavior from humans. An experimental investigation was conducted in which human participants interacted with a humanoid robot whose facial expression was shown on an LCD monitor that was mounted as its head (Study 1). Participants were asked to play the ultimatum game, which is usually used to measure human altruistic behavior. All participants were assigned to be the proposer and were instructed to decide their offer within 1 min by controlling a slider bar. The corners of the robot's mouth, as indicated by the line drawing, simply moved upward, or downward depending on the position of the slider bar. The results suggest that the change in the facial expression depicted by a simple line drawing of a face significantly affected the participant's final offer in the ultimatum game. The offers were increased by 13% when subjects were shown contingent changes of facial expression. The results were compared with an experiment in a teleoperation setting in which participants interacted with another person through a computer display showing the same line drawings used in Study 1 (Study 2). The results showed that offers were 15% higher if participants were shown a contingent facial expression change. Together, Studies 1 and 2 indicate that emotional expression in simple line drawings of a robot's face elicits the same higher offer from humans as a human telepresence does.

  14. Does previous open surgical experience have any influence on robotic surgery simulation exercises?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cumpanas, Alin Adrian; Bardan, Razvan; Ferician, Ovidiu Catalin; Latcu, Silviu Constantin; Duta, Ciprian; Lazar, Fulger Octavian

    2017-12-01

    Within the last years, there has been a trend in many hospitals to switch their surgical activity from open/laparoscopic procedures to robotic surgery. Some open surgeons have been shifting their activity to robotic surgery. It is still unclear whether there is a transfer of open surgical skills to robotic ones. To evaluate whether such transfer of skills occurs and to identify which specific skills are more significantly transferred from the operative table to the console. Twenty-five volunteers were included in the study, divided into 2 groups: group A (15 participants) - medical students (without any surgical experience in open, laparoscopic or robotic surgery); and group B (10 participants) - surgeons with exclusively open surgical experience, without any previous laparoscopic or robotic experience. Participants were asked to complete 3 robotic simulator console exercises structured from the easiest one (Peg Board) to the toughest one (Sponge Suture). Overall scores for each exercise as well as specific metrics were compared between the two groups. There were no significant differences between overall scores of the two groups for the easiest task. Overall scores were better for group B as the exercises got more complex. For the intermediate and high-difficulty level exercises, most of the specific metrics were better for group B, with the exception of the working master space item. Our results suggest that the open surgical skills transfer to robotic skills, at least for the very beginning of the training process.

  15. Performance and Usability of Various Robotic Arm Control Modes from Human Force Signals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sébastien Mick

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Elaborating an efficient and usable mapping between input commands and output movements is still a key challenge for the design of robotic arm prostheses. In order to address this issue, we present and compare three different control modes, by assessing them in terms of performance as well as general usability. Using an isometric force transducer as the command device, these modes convert the force input signal into either a position or a velocity vector, whose magnitude is linearly or quadratically related to force input magnitude. With the robotic arm from the open source 3D-printed Poppy Humanoid platform simulating a mobile prosthesis, an experiment was carried out with eighteen able-bodied subjects performing a 3-D target-reaching task using each of the three modes. The subjects were given questionnaires to evaluate the quality of their experience with each mode, providing an assessment of their global usability in the context of the task. According to performance metrics and questionnaire results, velocity control modes were found to perform better than position control mode in terms of accuracy and quality of control as well as user satisfaction and comfort. Subjects also seemed to favor quadratic velocity control over linear (proportional velocity control, even if these two modes did not clearly distinguish from one another when it comes to performance and usability assessment. These results highlight the need to take into account user experience as one of the key criteria for the design of control modes intended to operate limb prostheses.

  16. Robust Sound Localization: An Application of an Auditory Perception System for a Humanoid Robot

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Irie, Robert E

    1995-01-01

    Localizing sounds with different frequency and time domain characteristics in a dynamic listening environment is a challenging task that has not been explored in the field of robotics as much as other perceptual tasks...

  17. Could robots become authentic companions in nursing care?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Metzler, Theodore A; Lewis, Lundy M; Pope, Linda C

    2016-01-01

    Creating android and humanoid robots to furnish companionship in the nursing care of older people continues to attract substantial development capital and research. Some people object, though, that machines of this kind furnish human-robot interaction characterized by inauthentic relationships. In particular, robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been charged with substituting mindless mimicry of human behaviour for the real presence of conscious caring offered by human nurses. When thus viewed as deceptive, the robots also have prompted corresponding concerns regarding their potential psychological, moral, and spiritual implications for people who will be interacting socially with these machines. The foregoing objections and concerns can be assessed quite differently, depending upon ambient religious beliefs or metaphysical presuppositions. The complaints may be set aside as unnecessary, for example, within religious traditions for which even current robots can be viewed as presenting spiritual aspects. Elsewhere, technological cultures may reject the complaints as expression of outdated superstition, holding that the machines eventually will enjoy a consciousness described entirely in materialist and behaviourist terms. While recognizing such assessments, the authors of this essay propose that the heart of the foregoing objections and concerns may be evaluated, in part, scientifically - albeit with a conclusion recommending fundamental revisions in AI modelling of human mental life. Specifically, considerations now favour introduction of AI models using interactive classical and quantum computation. Without this change, the answer to the essay's title question arguably is 'no' - with it, the answer plausibly becomes 'maybe'. Either outcome holds very interesting implications for nurses. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  18. Using the visitor experiences for mapping the possibilities of implementing a robotic guide in outdoor sites

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Karreman, Daphne Eleonora; van Dijk, Elisabeth M.A.G.; Evers, Vanessa

    2012-01-01

    FROG (Fun Robotic Outdoor Guide) is a project that aims to develop an outdoor robotic guide that enriches the visitor experience in touristic sites. This paper is a first step toward a guide robot and presents a case study on how to analyze the visitors’ experience and examine opportunities for a

  19. Development of robotic program: an Asian experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sahabudin, R M; Arni, T; Ashani, N; Arumuga, K; Rajenthran, S; Murali, S; Patel, V; Hemal, A; Menon, M

    2006-06-01

    Robotic surgery was started in the Department of Urology, Hospital Kuala Lumpur, in April 2004. We present our experience in developing the program and report the results of our first 50 cases of robotic radical prostatectomy. A three-arm da Vinci robotic system was installed in our hospital in March 2004. Prior to installation, the surgeons underwent training at various centers in the United States and Paris. The operating theatre was renovated to house the system. Subsequently, the initial few cases were done with the help of proctors. Data were prospectively collected on all patients who underwent robot-assisted radical prostatectomy for localized carcinoma of the prostate. Fifty patients underwent robot assisted radical prostatectomy from March 2004 to June 2005. Their ages ranged from 52 to 75 years, (average age 60.2 years). PSA levels ranged from 2.5 to 35 ng/ml (mean 10.6 ng/ml). Prostate volume ranged from 18 to 130 cc (average 32.4 cc). Average operating time for the first 20 cases was 4 h and for the next 30 cases was 2.5 h. Patients were discharged 1-3 days post-operatively. Catheters were removed on the fifth day following a cystogram. The positive margin rate as defined by the presence of cancer cells at the inked margin was 30%. Twenty-one patients had T1c disease and one had T1b on clinical staging. Of these, two were apical margin positive. Twenty-six patients had T2 disease and eight of them were apical margin positive. Two patients had T3 disease, one of whom was apical margin positive. Five patients (10%) had PSA recurrence. Five patients had a poorly differentiated carcinoma and the rest had Gleason 6 or 7. Eighty percent of the patients were continent on follow-up at 3 months. Of those who were potent before the surgery, 50% were potent at 3-6 months. The robotic surgery program was successfully implemented at our center on the lines of a structured program, developed at Vattikuti Urology Institute (VUI). We succeeded in creating a team and

  20. Initial Clinical Experience With Surgical Technique of Robot-assisted Transperitoneal Laparoscopic Partial Nephrectomy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cheng-Kuang Yang

    2009-12-01

    Conclusion: Robot-assisted LPN is feasible and may be a viable alternative to open or LPN in selected patients with small exophytic renal tumors. Compared with standard LPN, the robotic assisted LPN approach with precise renal reconstruction under a safe warm ischemia time is feasible and can be easily adopted by those with experience in robot-assisted surgery.

  1. The merits of a robot : A Dutch experience

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mobach, M.P.

    2006-01-01

    Purpose: To determine the merits of a robot at the community pharmacy in a quasi-experiment. Method: The applied methods for data-collection were barcode-time measurements, direct observations, time-interval studies, and tally at a Dutch community pharmacy. The topics consisted of workload, waiting

  2. Experiments on co-operating robot arms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Arthaya, B.; De Schutter, J.

    1994-01-01

    When two robots manipulate a common object or perform a single task together, a closed-kinematic chain is formed. If both robots are controlled under position control only, at a certain phase during the manipulation, the interaction forces may become unacceptably high. The interaction forces are caused by the kinematic as well as the dynamic errors in the robot position controller. In order to avoid this problem, a synchronized motion between both robots has to be generated, not only by controlling the position (velocity) of the two end-effectors, but also by controlling the interaction forces between them. In order to generate a synchronized motion, the first robot controller continuously modifies the task frame velocity corresponding to the velocity of the other robot. This implies that the velocity of the other robot is used as feed-forward information in order to anticipate its motion. This approach results in a better tracking behaviour

  3. Experiments on mobile robot stereo vision system calibration under hardware imperfection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Safin Ramil

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Calibration is essential for any robot vision system for achieving high accuracy in deriving objects metric information. One of typical requirements for a stereo vison system in order to obtain better calibration results is to guarantee that both cameras keep the same vertical level. However, cameras may be displaced due to severe conditions of a robot operating or some other circumstances. This paper presents our experimental approach to the problem of a mobile robot stereo vision system calibration under a hardware imperfection. In our experiments, we used crawler-type mobile robot «Servosila Engineer». Stereo system cameras of the robot were displaced relative to each other, causing loss of surrounding environment information. We implemented and verified checkerboard and circle grid based calibration methods. The two methods comparison demonstrated that a circle grid based calibration should be preferred over a classical checkerboard calibration approach.

  4. From self-observation to imitation: visuomotor association on a robotic hand.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chaminade, Thierry; Oztop, Erhan; Cheng, Gordon; Kawato, Mitsuo

    2008-04-15

    Being at the crux of human cognition and behaviour, imitation has become the target of investigations ranging from experimental psychology and neurophysiology to computational sciences and robotics. It is often assumed that the imitation is innate, but it has more recently been argued, both theoretically and experimentally, that basic forms of imitation could emerge as a result of self-observation. Here, we tested this proposal on a realistic experimental platform, comprising an associative network linking a 16 degrees of freedom robotic hand and a simple visual system. We report that this minimal visuomotor association is sufficient to bootstrap basic imitation. Our results indicate that crucial features of human imitation, such as generalization to new actions, may emerge from a connectionist associative network. Therefore, we suggest that a behaviour as complex as imitation could be, at the neuronal level, founded on basic mechanisms of associative learning, a notion supported by a recent proposal on the developmental origin of mirror neurons. Our approach can be applied to the development of realistic cognitive architectures for humanoid robots as well as to shed new light on the cognitive processes at play in early human cognitive development.

  5. Action observation and robotic agents: learning and anthropomorphism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Press, Clare

    2011-05-01

    The 'action observation network' (AON), which is thought to translate observed actions into motor codes required for their execution, is biologically tuned: it responds more to observation of human, than non-human, movement. This biological specificity has been taken to support the hypothesis that the AON underlies various social functions, such as theory of mind and action understanding, and that, when it is active during observation of non-human agents like humanoid robots, it is a sign of ascription of human mental states to these agents. This review will outline evidence for biological tuning in the AON, examining the features which generate it, and concluding that there is evidence for tuning to both the form and kinematic profile of observed movements, and little evidence for tuning to belief about stimulus identity. It will propose that a likely reason for biological tuning is that human actions, relative to non-biological movements, have been observed more frequently while executing corresponding actions. If the associative hypothesis of the AON is correct, and the network indeed supports social functioning, sensorimotor experience with non-human agents may help us to predict, and therefore interpret, their movements. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Filigree Robotics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tamke, Martin; Evers, Henrik Leander; Clausen Nørgaard, Esben

    2016-01-01

    Filigree Robotics experiments with the combination of traditional ceramic craft with robotic fabrication in order to generate a new narrative of fine three-dimensional ceramic ornament for architecture.......Filigree Robotics experiments with the combination of traditional ceramic craft with robotic fabrication in order to generate a new narrative of fine three-dimensional ceramic ornament for architecture....

  7. Why Are There Developmental Stages in Language Learning? A Developmental Robotics Model of Language Development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morse, Anthony F; Cangelosi, Angelo

    2017-02-01

    Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to "switch" between stages. We argue that by taking an embodied view, the interaction between learning mechanisms, the resulting behavior of the agent, and the opportunities for learning that the environment provides can account for the stage-wise development of cognitive abilities. We summarize work relevant to this hypothesis and suggest two simple mechanisms that account for some developmental transitions: neural readiness focuses on changes in the neural substrate resulting from ongoing learning, and perceptual readiness focuses on the perceptual requirements for learning new tasks. Previous work has demonstrated these mechanisms in replications of a wide variety of infant language experiments, spanning multiple developmental stages. Here we piece this work together as a single model of ongoing learning with no parameter changes at all. The model, an instance of the Epigenetic Robotics Architecture (Morse et al 2010) embodied on the iCub humanoid robot, exhibits ongoing multi-stage development while learning pre-linguistic and then basic language skills. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  8. In-channel experiments on vertical swimming with bacteria-like robots

    OpenAIRE

    Tabak, Ahmet Fatih; Yeşilyurt, Serhat; Yesilyurt, Serhat

    2013-01-01

    Bio-inspired micro-robots are of great importance as to implement versatile microsystems for a variety of in vivo and in vitro applications in medicine and biology. Accurate models are necessary to understand the swimming and rigidbody dynamics of such systems. In this study, a series of experiments are conducted with a two-link cm-scale bioinspired robot moving vertically without a tether, in siliconefilled narrow cylindrical glass channels. Swimming velocities are obtained for a set of v...

  9. Initial experience with robotic pancreatic surgery in Singapore: single institution experience with 30 consecutive cases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goh, Brian K P; Low, Tze-Yi; Lee, Ser-Yee; Chan, Chung-Yip; Chung, Alexander Y F; Ooi, London L P J

    2018-05-24

    Presently, the worldwide experience with robotic pancreatic surgery (RPS) is increasing although widespread adoption remains limited. In this study, we report our initial experience with RPS. This is a retrospective review of a single institution prospective database of 72 consecutive robotic hepatopancreatobiliary surgeries performed between 2013 and 2017. Of these, 30 patients who underwent RPS were included in this study of which 25 were performed by a single surgeon. The most common procedure was robotic distal pancreatectomy (RDP) which was performed in 20 patients. This included eight subtotal pancreatectomies, two extended pancreatecto-splenectomies (en bloc gastric resection) and 10 spleen-saving-RDP. Splenic preservation was successful in 10/11 attempted spleen-saving-RDP. Eight patients underwent pancreaticoduodenectomies (five hybrid with open reconstruction), one patient underwent a modified Puestow procedure and one enucleation of uncinate tumour. Four patients had extended resections including two RDP with gastric resection and two pancreaticoduodenectomies with vascular resection. There was one (3.3%) open conversion and seven (23.3%) major (>Grade II) morbidities. Overall, there were four (13.3%) clinically significant (Grade B) pancreatic fistulas of which three required percutaneous drainage. These occurred after three RDP and one robotic enucleation. There was one reoperation for port-site hernia and no 30-day/in-hospital mortalities. The median post-operative stay was 6.5 (range: 3-36) days and there were six (20%) 30-day readmissions. Our initial experience showed that RPS can be adopted safely with a low open conversion rate for a wide variety of procedures including pancreaticoduodenectomy. © 2018 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

  10. Laboratory experiments in mobile robot navigation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kar, Asim; Pal, Prabir K.

    1997-01-01

    Mobile robots have potential applications in remote surveillance and operation in hazardous areas. To be effective, they must have the ability to navigate on their own to desired locations. Several experimental navigational runs of a mobile robot developed have been conducted. The robot has three wheels of which the front wheel is steered and the hind wheels are driven. The robot is equipped with an ultrasonic range sensor, which is turned around to get range data in all directions. The range data is fed to the input of a neural net, whose output steers the robot towards the goal. The robot is powered by batteries (12V 10Ah). It has an onboard stepper motor controller for driving the wheels and the ultrasonic setup. It also has an onboard computer which runs the navigation program NAV. This program sends the range data and configuration parameters to the operator''s console program OCP, running on a stationary PC, through radio communication on a serial line. Through OCP, an operator can monitor the progress of the robot from a distant control room and intervene if necessary. In this paper the control modules of the mobile robot, its ways of operation and also results of some of the experimental runs recorded are reported. It is seen that the trained net guides the mobile robot through gaps of 1m and above to its destination with about 84% success measured over a small sample of 38 runs

  11. [Anesthesia experiences on laparoscopic nephrectomy with da Vinci S robotics].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mou, Ling; Lan, Zhixun

    2015-09-01

    To summarize the clinical anesthesia experiences in 20 patients who underwent laparoscopic nephrectomy with da Vinci S robotics.
 Anesthesia data of 20 patients from Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, who underwent laparoscopic nephrectomy with da Vinci S robotics from August 2014 to November 2014, were analyzed and summarized. The anesthesia time, operation time, CO(2) pneumoperitoneum time, PaCO(2) and PETCO(2) were recorded.
 All patients were anesthetized and underwent surgery with da Vinci S robotics. The anesthesia time was (220±14) min, the operation time was (187±11) min, and the CO(2) pneumoperitoneum time was (180±13) min. The PaCO(2) and PETCO(2) were significantly elevated at 1.5 h after operation compared with those at the baseline (before pneumoperitoneum) (Pda vinci S robotics. However, the duration of CO(2) pneumoperitoneum is significantly increased compared to that of other surgical procedures, resulting in high airway resistance and acid-base disturbance.

  12. Emotional Expression in Simple Line Drawings of a Robot's Face Leads to Higher Offers in the Ultimatum Game

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kazunori Terada

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available In the present study, we investigated whether expressing emotional states using a simple line drawing to represent a robot's face can serve to elicit altruistic behavior from humans. An experimental investigation was conducted in which human participants interacted with a humanoid robot whose facial expression was shown on an LCD monitor that was mounted as its head (Study 1. Participants were asked to play the ultimatum game, which is usually used to measure human altruistic behavior. All participants were assigned to be the proposer and were instructed to decide their offer within 1 min by controlling a slider bar. The corners of the robot's mouth, as indicated by the line drawing, simply moved upward, or downward depending on the position of the slider bar. The results suggest that the change in the facial expression depicted by a simple line drawing of a face significantly affected the participant's final offer in the ultimatum game. The offers were increased by 13% when subjects were shown contingent changes of facial expression. The results were compared with an experiment in a teleoperation setting in which participants interacted with another person through a computer display showing the same line drawings used in Study 1 (Study 2. The results showed that offers were 15% higher if participants were shown a contingent facial expression change. Together, Studies 1 and 2 indicate that emotional expression in simple line drawings of a robot's face elicits the same higher offer from humans as a human telepresence does.

  13. Walk-Startup of a Two-Legged Walking Mechanism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Babković, Kalman; Nagy, László; Krklješ, Damir; Borovac, Branislav

    There is a growing interest towards humanoid robots. One of their most important characteristic is the two-legged motion - walk. Starting and stopping of humanoid robots introduce substantial delays. In this paper, the goal is to explore the possibility of using a short unbalanced state of the biped robot to quickly gain speed and achieve the steady state velocity during a period shorter than half of the single support phase. The proposed method is verified by simulation. Maintainig a steady state, balanced gait is not considered in this paper.

  14. Robot-assisted radiofrequency ablation of primary and secondary liver tumours: early experience

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Abdullah, Basri Johan Jeet; Yeong, Chai Hong; Goh, Khean Lee; Yoong, Boon Koon; Ho, Gwo Fuang; Yim, Carolyn Chue Wai; Kulkarni, Anjali

    2014-01-01

    Computed tomography (CT)-compatible robots, both commercial and research-based, have been developed with the intention of increasing the accuracy of needle placement and potentially improving the outcomes of therapies in addition to reducing clinical staff and patient exposure to radiation during CT fluoroscopy. In the case of highly inaccessible lesions that require multiple plane angulations, robotically assisted needles may improve biopsy access and targeted drug delivery therapy by avoidance of the straight line path of normal linear needles. We report our preliminary experience of performing radiofrequency ablation of the liver using a robotic-assisted CT guidance system on 11 patients (17 lesions). Robotic-assisted planning and needle placement appears to have high accuracy, is technically easier than the non-robotic-assisted procedure, and involves a significantly lower radiation dose to both patient and support staff. (orig.)

  15. Robot-assisted radiofrequency ablation of primary and secondary liver tumours: early experience

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Abdullah, Basri Johan Jeet [University of Malaya, Department of Biomedical Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Yeong, Chai Hong [University of Malaya, University of Malaya Research Imaging Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Goh, Khean Lee [University of Malaya, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Yoong, Boon Koon [University of Malaya, Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Ho, Gwo Fuang [University of Malaya, Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Yim, Carolyn Chue Wai [University of Malaya, Department of Anesthesia, Faculty of Medicine, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); Kulkarni, Anjali [Perfint Healthcare Corporation, Florence, OR (United States)

    2014-01-15

    Computed tomography (CT)-compatible robots, both commercial and research-based, have been developed with the intention of increasing the accuracy of needle placement and potentially improving the outcomes of therapies in addition to reducing clinical staff and patient exposure to radiation during CT fluoroscopy. In the case of highly inaccessible lesions that require multiple plane angulations, robotically assisted needles may improve biopsy access and targeted drug delivery therapy by avoidance of the straight line path of normal linear needles. We report our preliminary experience of performing radiofrequency ablation of the liver using a robotic-assisted CT guidance system on 11 patients (17 lesions). Robotic-assisted planning and needle placement appears to have high accuracy, is technically easier than the non-robotic-assisted procedure, and involves a significantly lower radiation dose to both patient and support staff. (orig.)

  16. Future Challenges of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Nursing: What Can We Learn from Monsters in Popular Culture?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Erikson, Henrik; Salzmann-Erikson, Martin

    It is highly likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will be implemented in nursing robotics in various forms, both in medical and surgical robotic instruments, but also as different types of droids and humanoids, physical reinforcements, and also animal/pet robots. Exploring and discussing AI and robotics in nursing and health care before these tools become commonplace is of great importance. We propose that monsters in popular culture might be studied with the hope of learning about situations and relationships that generate empathic capacities in their monstrous existences. The aim of the article is to introduce the theoretical framework and assumptions behind this idea. Both robots and monsters are posthuman creations. The knowledge we present here gives ideas about how nursing science can address the postmodern, technologic, and global world to come. Monsters therefore serve as an entrance to explore technologic innovations such as AI. Analyzing when and why monsters step out of character can provide important insights into the conceptualization of caring and nursing as a science, which is important for discussing these empathic protocols, as well as more general insight into human knowledge. The relationship between caring, monsters, robotics, and AI is not as farfetched as it might seem at first glance.

  17. Robot con figura humana para la realización de tareas de mercadeo y publicidad

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gustavo Ruiz Duarte

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available Resumen:En el presente trabajo se describe una propuesta destinada a desarrollar un sistema robotizado con figura humana,especie de humanoide, capacitado para realizar diferentes tareas. Inicialmente, se preparara para la realizaciónde la tarea específica de mercadeo y publicidad en diferentes sectores de la población y para una variadagama de productos y servicios. Dentro del desarrollo del mismo se asegura el estudio científico de las diferentesfases de la robótica y las telecomunicaciones y sus interrelaciones con la ingeniería de sistemas, no solo comoun complemento de este programa, sino además como un énfasis de la misma. Se definen las posibles etapas ymétodos que se van a emplear en su desarrollo y las múltiples aplicaciones tecnológicas del trabajo.Palabras claves:Interrelaciones, microcontroles, tiempo real, Robótica, dispositivoAbstract:This job describes a proposal to develop a robotic system with a human image, like a humanoid, able to performdifferent tasks. First at all, be prepared to perform the specific task of marketing and advertising and for a widerange of products and services. Within the development, it ensures the scientific study of the different phases ofrobotics and telecommunications and their relationships with systems engineering, not only as a supplement to thisdiscipline also as a focus of it. Possible stages are defined and methods to be used in its development and the manytechnological applications of the job.Key Words:Interrelations, microcontrollers, real-time, robotic, device.

  18. Child's culture-related experiences with a social robot at diabetes camps

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Neerincx, A.; Sacchitelli, F.; Kaptein, R.; Pal, S. van der; Oleari, E.; Neerincx, M.A.

    2016-01-01

    This paper investigates the experiences of Italian and Dutch children while interacting with a social robot that is designed to support their diabetes self-management. Observations of children's behaviors and analyses of questionnaires at diabetes camps, showed positive experiences with variation

  19. Exploring the acquisition and production of grammatical constructions through human-robot interaction with echo state networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hinaut, Xavier; Petit, Maxime; Pointeau, Gregoire; Dominey, Peter Ford

    2014-01-01

    One of the principal functions of human language is to allow people to coordinate joint action. This includes the description of events, requests for action, and their organization in time. A crucial component of language acquisition is learning the grammatical structures that allow the expression of such complex meaning related to physical events. The current research investigates the learning of grammatical constructions and their temporal organization in the context of human-robot physical interaction with the embodied sensorimotor humanoid platform, the iCub. We demonstrate three noteworthy phenomena. First, a recurrent network model is used in conjunction with this robotic platform to learn the mappings between grammatical forms and predicate-argument representations of meanings related to events, and the robot's execution of these events in time. Second, this learning mechanism functions in the inverse sense, i.e., in a language production mode, where rather than executing commanded actions, the robot will describe the results of human generated actions. Finally, we collect data from naïve subjects who interact with the robot via spoken language, and demonstrate significant learning and generalization results. This allows us to conclude that such a neural language learning system not only helps to characterize and understand some aspects of human language acquisition, but also that it can be useful in adaptive human-robot interaction.

  20. Evolving self-assembly in autonomous homogeneous robots: experiments with two physical robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ampatzis, Christos; Tuci, Elio; Trianni, Vito; Christensen, Anders Lyhne; Dorigo, Marco

    2009-01-01

    This research work illustrates an approach to the design of controllers for self-assembling robots in which the self-assembly is initiated and regulated by perceptual cues that are brought forth by the physical robots through their dynamical interactions. More specifically, we present a homogeneous control system that can achieve assembly between two modules (two fully autonomous robots) of a mobile self-reconfigurable system without a priori introduced behavioral or morphological heterogeneities. The controllers are dynamic neural networks evolved in simulation that directly control all the actuators of the two robots. The neurocontrollers cause the dynamic specialization of the robots by allocating roles between them based solely on their interaction. We show that the best evolved controller proves to be successful when tested on a real hardware platform, the swarm-bot. The performance achieved is similar to the one achieved by existing modular or behavior-based approaches, also due to the effect of an emergent recovery mechanism that was neither explicitly rewarded by the fitness function, nor observed during the evolutionary simulation. Our results suggest that direct access to the orientations or intentions of the other agents is not a necessary condition for robot coordination: Our robots coordinate without direct or explicit communication, contrary to what is assumed by most research works in collective robotics. This work also contributes to strengthening the evidence that evolutionary robotics is a design methodology that can tackle real-world tasks demanding fine sensory-motor coordination.

  1. Two years of experience with robot-assisted anti-reflux surgery

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sanberg Jensen, Jonas; Kold Antonsen, Henning; Durup, Jesper

    2017-01-01

    Background and aims Robot-assisted anti-reflux surgery (RAAS) is an alternative to conventional laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery (CLAS). The purpose of this study was to evaluate initial Danish experiences with robot-assisted anti-reflux surgery compared to conventional laparoscopic anti-reflux...... significantly dependent on type of fundic wrap with reoperation of Nissen fundoplication being dysphagia and reoperation of Toupet being recurrent reflux (p = 0.008). There was no clearly determined learning curve. Conclusions RAAS was safe, feasible and with equal efficacy to CLAS. There were however...

  2. A low-cost, computer-controlled robotic flower system for behavioral experiments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuusela, Erno; Lämsä, Juho

    2016-04-01

    Human observations during behavioral studies are expensive, time-consuming, and error prone. For this reason, automatization of experiments is highly desirable, as it reduces the risk of human errors and workload. The robotic system we developed is simple and cheap to build and handles feeding and data collection automatically. The system was built using mostly off-the-shelf components and has a novel feeding mechanism that uses servos to perform refill operations. We used the robotic system in two separate behavioral studies with bumblebees (Bombus terrestris): The system was used both for training of the bees and for the experimental data collection. The robotic system was reliable, with no flight in our studies failing due to a technical malfunction. The data recorded were easy to apply for further analysis. The software and the hardware design are open source. The development of cheap open-source prototyping platforms during the recent years has opened up many possibilities in designing of experiments. Automatization not only reduces workload, but also potentially allows experimental designs never done before, such as dynamic experiments, where the system responds to, for example, learning of the animal. We present a complete system with hardware and software, and it can be used as such in various experiments requiring feeders and collection of visitation data. Use of the system is not limited to any particular experimental setup or even species.

  3. Dynamic Modeling and Fuzzy Self-Tuning Disturbance Decoupling Control for a 3-DOF Serial-Parallel Hybrid Humanoid Arm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yueling Wang

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available A unique fuzzy self-tuning disturbance decoupling controller (FSDDC is designed for a serial-parallel hybrid humanoid arm (HHA to implement the throwing trajectory-tracking mission. Firstly, the dynamic model of the HHA is established and the input signal of the throwing process is obtained by studying the throwing process of human's arm. Secondly, the FSDDC, incorporating the disturbance decoupling controller (DDC and the fuzzy logic controller (FLC, is designed to ensure trajectory tracking of the HHA in the presence of uncertainties and disturbances. With the FSDDC method, the HHA system can be decoupled by actively estimating and rejecting the effects of both the internal plant dynamics and external disturbances. The self-tuning parameters are adapted online to improve the performance of the FSDDC; thus, it does not require detailed system parameters of the presented FSDDC. Finally, the controller introduced is compared with a PD controller which is commonly used for the robot manipulators control in industry. The effectiveness of the designed FSDDC is illustrated by simulations.

  4. Robotic colorectal surgery: previous laparoscopic colorectal experience is not essential.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sian, Tanvir Singh; Tierney, G M; Park, H; Lund, J N; Speake, W J; Hurst, N G; Al Chalabi, H; Smith, K J; Tou, S

    2018-06-01

    A background in minimally invasive colorectal surgery (MICS) has been thought to be essential prior to robotic-assisted colorectal surgery (RACS). Our aim was to determine whether MICS is essential prior to starting RACS training based on results from our initial experience with RACS. Two surgeons from our centre received robotic training through the European Academy of Robotic Colorectal Surgery (EARCS). One surgeon had no prior formal MICS training. We reviewed the first 30 consecutive robotic colorectal procedures from a prospectively maintained database between November 2014 and January 2016 at our institution. Fourteen patients were male. Median age was 64.5 years (range 36-82) and BMI was 27.5 (range 20-32.5). Twelve procedures (40%) were performed by the non-MICS-trained surgeon: ten high anterior resections (one conversion), one low anterior resection and one abdomino-perineal resection of rectum (APER). The MICS-trained surgeon performed nine high and four low anterior resections, one APER and in addition three right hemicolectomies and one abdominal suture rectopexy. There were no intra-operative complications and two patients required re-operation. Median post-operative stay was five days (range 1-26). There were two 30-day re-admissions. All oncological resections had clear margins and median node harvest was 18 (range 9-39). Our case series demonstrates that a background in MICS is not essential prior to starting RACS training. Not having prior MICS training should not discourage surgeons from considering applying for a robotic training programme. Safe and successful robotic colorectal services can be established after completing a formal structured robotic training programme.

  5. Robotic surgery in complicated gynecologic diseases: Experience of Tri-Service General Hospital in Taiwan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shun-Jen Tan

    2012-03-01

    Conclusion: The present analyses include various complicated gynecologic conditions, which make the estimation of the effectiveness of robotic surgery in each situation individually not appropriate. However, our experiences do show that robotic surgery is feasible and safe for patients with complicated gynecologic diseases.

  6. Evolutionary Developmental Robotics: Improving Morphology and Control of Physical Robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vujovic, Vuk; Rosendo, Andre; Brodbeck, Luzius; Iida, Fumiya

    2017-01-01

    Evolutionary algorithms have previously been applied to the design of morphology and control of robots. The design space for such tasks can be very complex, which can prevent evolution from efficiently discovering fit solutions. In this article we introduce an evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) experiment with real-world robots. It allows robots to grow their leg size to simulate ontogenetic morphological changes, and this is the first time that such an experiment has been performed in the physical world. To test diverse robot morphologies, robot legs of variable shapes were generated during the evolutionary process and autonomously built using additive fabrication. We present two cases with evo-devo experiments and one with evolution, and we hypothesize that the addition of a developmental stage can be used within robotics to improve performance. Moreover, our results show that a nonlinear system-environment interaction exists, which explains the nontrivial locomotion patterns observed. In the future, robots will be present in our daily lives, and this work introduces for the first time physical robots that evolve and grow while interacting with the environment.

  7. Cross-Situational Learning with Bayesian Generative Models for Multimodal Category and Word Learning in Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Akira Taniguchi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we propose a Bayesian generative model that can form multiple categories based on each sensory-channel and can associate words with any of the four sensory-channels (action, position, object, and color. This paper focuses on cross-situational learning using the co-occurrence between words and information of sensory-channels in complex situations rather than conventional situations of cross-situational learning. We conducted a learning scenario using a simulator and a real humanoid iCub robot. In the scenario, a human tutor provided a sentence that describes an object of visual attention and an accompanying action to the robot. The scenario was set as follows: the number of words per sensory-channel was three or four, and the number of trials for learning was 20 and 40 for the simulator and 25 and 40 for the real robot. The experimental results showed that the proposed method was able to estimate the multiple categorizations and to learn the relationships between multiple sensory-channels and words accurately. In addition, we conducted an action generation task and an action description task based on word meanings learned in the cross-situational learning scenario. The experimental results showed that the robot could successfully use the word meanings learned by using the proposed method.

  8. Two-Armed, Mobile, Sensate Research Robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Engelberger, J. F.; Roberts, W. Nelson; Ryan, David J.; Silverthorne, Andrew

    2004-01-01

    The Anthropomorphic Robotic Testbed (ART) is an experimental prototype of a partly anthropomorphic, humanoid-size, mobile robot. The basic ART design concept provides for a combination of two-armed coordination, tactility, stereoscopic vision, mobility with navigation and avoidance of obstacles, and natural-language communication, so that the ART could emulate humans in many activities. The ART could be developed into a variety of highly capable robotic assistants for general or specific applications. There is especially great potential for the development of ART-based robots as substitutes for live-in health-care aides for home-bound persons who are aged, infirm, or physically handicapped; these robots could greatly reduce the cost of home health care and extend the term of independent living. The ART is a fully autonomous and untethered system. It includes a mobile base on which is mounted an extensible torso topped by a head, shoulders, and two arms. All subsystems of the ART are powered by a rechargeable, removable battery pack. The mobile base is a differentially- driven, nonholonomic vehicle capable of a speed >1 m/s and can handle a payload >100 kg. The base can be controlled manually, in forward/backward and/or simultaneous rotational motion, by use of a joystick. Alternatively, the motion of the base can be controlled autonomously by an onboard navigational computer. By retraction or extension of the torso, the head height of the ART can be adjusted from 5 ft (1.5 m) to 6 1/2 ft (2 m), so that the arms can reach either the floor or high shelves, or some ceilings. The arms are symmetrical. Each arm (including the wrist) has a total of six rotary axes like those of the human shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints. The arms are actuated by electric motors in combination with brakes and gas-spring assists on the shoulder and elbow joints. The arms are operated under closed-loop digital control. A receptacle for an end effector is mounted on the tip of the wrist and

  9. Towards EvoBot: A liquid-handling robot able to automatize and optimize experiments based on real-time feedback

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Faina, Andres; Nejatimoharrami, Farzad; Støy, Kasper

    The EVOBLISS project combines scientific approaches from robotics, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and microbiology and aims to capitalize on the state of the art in these disparate disciplines and combine them together into a coherent project to produce i) a generally useful, expandable...... for improved function. Scientifically, we will investigate the possibility of optimizing artificial chemical life, microbial ecosystems, and nanoparticles and their physiochemical, dynamic environments using robot facilitated, artificial evolution. This paper deals with the first goal of the EVOBLISS project......Bot robot which was used to show the feasibility of this approach [1]. This robot was able to perform proof of concept experiments, but was too fragile to conduct systematic scientific experiments in artificial chemical life. Furthermore, the EvoBot robot will increase the features of the SplotBot robot...

  10. Episodic reinforcement learning control approach for biped walking

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katić Duško

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a hybrid dynamic control approach to the realization of humanoid biped robotic walk, focusing on the policy gradient episodic reinforcement learning with fuzzy evaluative feedback. The proposed structure of controller involves two feedback loops: a conventional computed torque controller and an episodic reinforcement learning controller. The reinforcement learning part includes fuzzy information about Zero-Moment- Point errors. Simulation tests using a medium-size 36-DOF humanoid robot MEXONE were performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

  11. Robotic hand with locking mechanism using TCP muscles for applications in prosthetic hand and humanoids

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saharan, Lokesh; Tadesse, Yonas

    2016-04-01

    This paper presents a biomimetic, lightweight, 3D printed and customizable robotic hand with locking mechanism consisting of Twisted and Coiled Polymer (TCP) muscles based on nylon precursor fibers as artificial muscles. Previously, we have presented a small-sized biomimetic hand using nylon based artificial muscles and fishing line muscles as actuators. The current study focuses on an adult-sized prosthetic hand with improved design and a position/force locking system. Energy efficiency is always a matter of concern to make compact, lightweight, durable and cost effective devices. In natural human hand, if we keep holding objects for long time, we get tired because of continuous use of energy for keeping the fingers in certain positions. Similarly, in prosthetic hands we also need to provide energy continuously to artificial muscles to hold the object for a certain period of time, which is certainly not energy efficient. In this work we, describe the design of the robotic hand and locking mechanism along with the experimental results on the performance of the locking mechanism.

  12. Experiments in robotic sensorimotor control during grasp

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Stansfield, S.A.

    1993-01-01

    A series of experiments is presented, using a robot manipulator, which attempt to reproduce human sensorimotor control during grasping. The work utilizes a multifingered, dexterous robot hand equipped with a fingertip force sensor to explore dynamic grasp force adjustment during manipulation. The work is primarily concerned with the relationship between the weight of an object and the grasp force required to lift it. Too weak a grasp is unstable and the object will slip from the hand. Too strong a grasp may damage the object and/or the manipulator. An algorithm is presented which reproduces observed human behavior during grasp-and-lift tasks. The algorithm uses tactile information from the sensor to dynamically adjust the grasp force during lift. It is assumed that there is no a priori knowledge about the object to be manipulated. The effects of different arm/hand postures and object surfaces is explored. Finally, the use of sensory data to detect unexpected object motion and to signal transitions between manipulation phases--with the coincident triggering of new motor programs--is investigated

  13. Skill Learning for Intelligent Robot by Perception-Action Integration: A View from Hierarchical Temporal Memory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xinzheng Zhang

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Skill learning autonomously through interactions with the environment is a crucial ability for intelligent robot. A perception-action integration or sensorimotor cycle, as an important issue in imitation learning, is a natural mechanism without the complex program process. Recently, neurocomputing model and developmental intelligence method are considered as a new trend for implementing the robot skill learning. In this paper, based on research of the human brain neocortex model, we present a skill learning method by perception-action integration strategy from the perspective of hierarchical temporal memory (HTM theory. The sequential sensor data representing a certain skill from a RGB-D camera are received and then encoded as a sequence of Sparse Distributed Representation (SDR vectors. The sequential SDR vectors are treated as the inputs of the perception-action HTM. The HTM learns sequences of SDRs and makes predictions of what the next input SDR will be. It stores the transitions of the current perceived sensor data and next predicted actions. We evaluated the performance of this proposed framework for learning the shaking hands skill on a humanoid NAO robot. The experimental results manifest that the skill learning method designed in this paper is promising.

  14. Modelling and Experiment Based on a Navigation System for a Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgical Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xingguang Duan

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available In view of the characteristics of high risk and high accuracy in cranio-maxillofacial surgery, we present a novel surgical robot system that can be used in a variety of surgeries. The surgical robot system can assist surgeons in completing biopsy of skull base lesions, radiofrequency thermocoagulation of the trigeminal ganglion, and radioactive particle implantation of skull base malignant tumors. This paper focuses on modelling and experimental analyses of the robot system based on navigation technology. Firstly, the transformation relationship between the subsystems is realized based on the quaternion and the iterative closest point registration algorithm. The hand-eye coordination model based on optical navigation is established to control the end effector of the robot moving to the target position along the planning path. The closed-loop control method, “kinematics + optics” hybrid motion control method, is presented to improve the positioning accuracy of the system. Secondly, the accuracy of the system model was tested by model experiments. And the feasibility of the closed-loop control method was verified by comparing the positioning accuracy before and after the application of the method. Finally, the skull model experiments were performed to evaluate the function of the surgical robot system. The results validate its feasibility and are consistent with the preoperative surgical planning.

  15. Modelling and Experiment Based on a Navigation System for a Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgical Robot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duan, Xingguang; Gao, Liang; Li, Jianxi; Li, Haoyuan; Guo, Yanjun

    2018-01-01

    In view of the characteristics of high risk and high accuracy in cranio-maxillofacial surgery, we present a novel surgical robot system that can be used in a variety of surgeries. The surgical robot system can assist surgeons in completing biopsy of skull base lesions, radiofrequency thermocoagulation of the trigeminal ganglion, and radioactive particle implantation of skull base malignant tumors. This paper focuses on modelling and experimental analyses of the robot system based on navigation technology. Firstly, the transformation relationship between the subsystems is realized based on the quaternion and the iterative closest point registration algorithm. The hand-eye coordination model based on optical navigation is established to control the end effector of the robot moving to the target position along the planning path. The closed-loop control method, “kinematics + optics” hybrid motion control method, is presented to improve the positioning accuracy of the system. Secondly, the accuracy of the system model was tested by model experiments. And the feasibility of the closed-loop control method was verified by comparing the positioning accuracy before and after the application of the method. Finally, the skull model experiments were performed to evaluate the function of the surgical robot system. The results validate its feasibility and are consistent with the preoperative surgical planning. PMID:29599948

  16. Initial experience with the new da Vinci single-port robot-assisted platform.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ballestero Diego, R; Zubillaga Guerrero, S; Truan Cacho, D; Carrion Ballardo, C; Velilla Diez, G; Calleja Hermosa, P; Gutiérrez Baños, J L

    2017-06-01

    To describe our experience in the first cases of urological surgeries performed with the da Vinci single-port robot-assisted platform. We performed 5 single-port robot-assisted surgeries (R-LESS) between May and October 2014. We performed 3 ureteral reimplant surgeries, one ureteropyeloplasty in an inverted kidney and 1 partial nephrectomy. The perioperative and postoperative results were collected, as well as a report of the complications according to the Clavien classification system. Of the 5 procedures, 4 were performed completely by LESS, while 1 procedure was reconverted to multiport robot-assisted surgery. There were no intraoperative complications. We observed perioperative complications in 4 patients, all of which were grade 1 or 2. The mean surgical time was 262minutes (range, 230-300). In our initial experience with the da Vinci device, R-LESS surgery was feasible and safe. There are still a number of limitations in its use, which require new and improved R-LESS platforms. Copyright © 2016 AEU. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

  17. Information driven self-organization of complex robotic behaviors.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Georg Martius

    Full Text Available Information theory is a powerful tool to express principles to drive autonomous systems because it is domain invariant and allows for an intuitive interpretation. This paper studies the use of the predictive information (PI, also called excess entropy or effective measure complexity, of the sensorimotor process as a driving force to generate behavior. We study nonlinear and nonstationary systems and introduce the time-local predicting information (TiPI which allows us to derive exact results together with explicit update rules for the parameters of the controller in the dynamical systems framework. In this way the information principle, formulated at the level of behavior, is translated to the dynamics of the synapses. We underpin our results with a number of case studies with high-dimensional robotic systems. We show the spontaneous cooperativity in a complex physical system with decentralized control. Moreover, a jointly controlled humanoid robot develops a high behavioral variety depending on its physics and the environment it is dynamically embedded into. The behavior can be decomposed into a succession of low-dimensional modes that increasingly explore the behavior space. This is a promising way to avoid the curse of dimensionality which hinders learning systems to scale well.

  18. [Initial experience in robot-assisted colorectal surgery in Mexico].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Villanueva-Sáenz, Eduardo; Ramírez-Ramírez, Moisés Marino; Zubieta-O'Farrill, Gregorio; García-Hernández, Luis

    Colorectal surgery has advanced notably since the introduction of the mechanical suture and the minimally invasive approach. Robotic surgery began in order to satisfy the needs of the patient-doctor relationship, and migrated to the area of colorectal surgery. An initial report is presented on the experience of managing colorectal disease using robot-assisted surgery, as well as an analysis of the current role of this platform. A retrospective study was conducted in order to review five patients with colorectal disease operated using a robot-assisted technique over one year in the initial phase of the learning curve. Gender, age, diagnosis and surgical indication, surgery performed, surgical time, conversion, bleeding, post-operative complications, and hospital stay, were analysed and described. A literature review was performed on the role of robotic assisted surgery in colorectal disease and cancer. The study included 5 patients, 3 men and 2 women, with a mean age of 62.2 years. Two of them were low anterior resections with colorectal primary anastomoses, one of them extended with a loop protection ileostomy, a Frykman-Goldberg procedure, and two left hemicolectomies with primary anastomoses. The mean operating time was 6hours and robot-assisted 4hours 20minutes. There were no conversions and the mean hospital stay was 5 days. This technology is currently being used worldwide in different surgical centres because of its advantages that have been clinically demonstrated by various studies. We report the first colorectal surgical cases in Mexico, with promising results. There is enough evidence to support and recommend the use of this technology as a viable and safe option. Copyright © 2016 Academia Mexicana de Cirugía A.C. Publicado por Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.

  19. Detecting Biological Motion for Human–Robot Interaction: A Link between Perception and Action

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alessia Vignolo

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available One of the fundamental skills supporting safe and comfortable interaction between humans is their capability to understand intuitively each other’s actions and intentions. At the basis of this ability is a special-purpose visual processing that human brain has developed to comprehend human motion. Among the first “building blocks” enabling the bootstrapping of such visual processing is the ability to detect movements performed by biological agents in the scene, a skill mastered by human babies in the first days of their life. In this paper, we present a computational model based on the assumption that such visual ability must be based on local low-level visual motion features, which are independent of shape, such as the configuration of the body and perspective. Moreover, we implement it on the humanoid robot iCub, embedding it into a software architecture that leverages the regularities of biological motion also to control robot attention and oculomotor behaviors. In essence, we put forth a model in which the regularities of biological motion link perception and action enabling a robotic agent to follow a human-inspired sensory-motor behavior. We posit that this choice facilitates mutual understanding and goal prediction during collaboration, increasing the pleasantness and safety of the interaction.

  20. Technology and the Appearance of the Good: Carebots, Virtual Virtue, and the Best Possible Life

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Coeckelbergh, Mark

    2008-01-01

    Growth of the elderly population and nursing shortage place increased pressure on our health care systems. One possible response is to let care robots or carebots take over care tasks. Some of these robots appear human in some way (humanoid robots), or look and act like a pet (pet robots). As

  1. Humanoids Learning to Walk: A Natural CPG-Actor-Critic Architecture

    OpenAIRE

    Li, Cai; Lowe, Robert; Ziemke, Tom

    2013-01-01

    The identification of learning mechanisms for locomotion has been the subject of much research for some time but many challenges remain. Dynamic systems theory (DST) offers a novel approach to humanoid learning through environmental interaction. Reinforcement learning (RL) has offered a promising method to adaptively link the dynamic system to the environment it interacts with via a reward-based value system. In this paper, we propose a model that integrates the above perspectives and applies...

  2. Time-Shift Correlation Algorithm for P300 Event Related Potential Brain-Computer Interface Implementation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ju-Chi Liu

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available A high efficient time-shift correlation algorithm was proposed to deal with the peak time uncertainty of P300 evoked potential for a P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI. The time-shift correlation series data were collected as the input nodes of an artificial neural network (ANN, and the classification of four LED visual stimuli was selected as the output node. Two operating modes, including fast-recognition mode (FM and accuracy-recognition mode (AM, were realized. The proposed BCI system was implemented on an embedded system for commanding an adult-size humanoid robot to evaluate the performance from investigating the ground truth trajectories of the humanoid robot. When the humanoid robot walked in a spacious area, the FM was used to control the robot with a higher information transfer rate (ITR. When the robot walked in a crowded area, the AM was used for high accuracy of recognition to reduce the risk of collision. The experimental results showed that, in 100 trials, the accuracy rate of FM was 87.8% and the average ITR was 52.73 bits/min. In addition, the accuracy rate was improved to 92% for the AM, and the average ITR decreased to 31.27 bits/min. due to strict recognition constraints.

  3. Time-Shift Correlation Algorithm for P300 Event Related Potential Brain-Computer Interface Implementation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Ju-Chi; Chou, Hung-Chyun; Chen, Chien-Hsiu; Lin, Yi-Tseng; Kuo, Chung-Hsien

    2016-01-01

    A high efficient time-shift correlation algorithm was proposed to deal with the peak time uncertainty of P300 evoked potential for a P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI). The time-shift correlation series data were collected as the input nodes of an artificial neural network (ANN), and the classification of four LED visual stimuli was selected as the output node. Two operating modes, including fast-recognition mode (FM) and accuracy-recognition mode (AM), were realized. The proposed BCI system was implemented on an embedded system for commanding an adult-size humanoid robot to evaluate the performance from investigating the ground truth trajectories of the humanoid robot. When the humanoid robot walked in a spacious area, the FM was used to control the robot with a higher information transfer rate (ITR). When the robot walked in a crowded area, the AM was used for high accuracy of recognition to reduce the risk of collision. The experimental results showed that, in 100 trials, the accuracy rate of FM was 87.8% and the average ITR was 52.73 bits/min. In addition, the accuracy rate was improved to 92% for the AM, and the average ITR decreased to 31.27 bits/min. due to strict recognition constraints.

  4. Dynamics of underwater legged locomotion: modeling and experiments on an octopus-inspired robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Calisti, M; Corucci, F; Arienti, A; Laschi, C

    2015-07-30

    This paper studies underwater legged locomotion (ULL) by means of a robotic octopus-inspired prototype and its associated model. Two different types of propulsive actions are embedded into the robot model: reaction forces due to leg contact with the ground and hydrodynamic forces such as the drag arising from the sculling motion of the legs. Dynamic parameters of the model are estimated by means of evolutionary techniques and subsequently the model is exploited to highlight some distinctive features of ULL. Specifically, the separation between the center of buoyancy (CoB)/center of mass and density affect the stability and speed of the robot, whereas the sculling movements contribute to propelling the robot even when its legs are detached from the ground. The relevance of these effects is demonstrated through robotic experiments and model simulations; moreover, by slightly changing the position of the CoB in the presence of the same feed-forward activation, a number of different behaviors (i.e. forward and backward locomotion at different speeds) are achieved.

  5. Modular robotic tiles: experiments for children with autism

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lund, Henrik Hautop; Dam Pedersen, Martin; Beck, Richard

    2009-01-01

    rehabilitation), and with the proper radio communication mechanism they may give unique possibilities for documentation of the physical activity (e.g., therapeutic treatment). A major point of concern in modular robotics is the connection mechanism, so we investigated different solutions for the connection......We developed a modular robotic tile and a system composed of a number of these modular robotic tiles. The system composed of the modular robotic tiles engages the user in physical activities, e.g., physiotherapy, sports, fitness, and entertainment. The modular robotic tiles motivate the user...... to perform physical activities by providing immediate feedback based upon their physical interaction with the system. With the modular robotic tiles, the user is able to make new physical set-ups within less than a minute. The tiles are applicable for different forms of physical activities (e.g., therapeutic...

  6. Body posture measurement in a context of example-based teaching

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Benoit, Eric; Perrin, Stephane; Coquin, Didier

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents a measurement process of body postures operated in a context of humanoid robot learning. The basic measured quantities are the angle joints of a human skeleton and the angle joints of a humanoid robot. Due to the differences between the two mechanical structures, the measurement results are expressed into a common representation space by the way of fuzzy scales. This paper shows how the common representation space can be defined, and presents a method to match weakly defined postures with uncertain measurements of a human posture

  7. Poppy Project: Open-Source Fabrication of 3D Printed Humanoid Robot for Science, Education and Art

    OpenAIRE

    Lapeyre , Matthieu; Rouanet , Pierre; Grizou , Jonathan; Nguyen , Steve; Depraetre , Fabien; Le Falher , Alexandre; Oudeyer , Pierre-Yves

    2014-01-01

    International audience; Poppyisthefirstcompleteopen-source3Dprintedhumanoid platform. Robust and accessible, it allows scientists, students, geeks, en- gineers or artists to explore fast and easily the fabrication and program- ming of various robotic morphologies. Both hardware and software are open-source, and a web platform allows interdisciplinary contributions, sharing and collaborations.

  8. A Control Framework for Anthropomorphic Biped Walking Based on Stabilizing Feedforward Trajectories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rezazadeh, Siavash; Gregg, Robert D

    2016-10-01

    Although dynamic walking methods have had notable successes in control of bipedal robots in the recent years, still most of the humanoid robots rely on quasi-static Zero Moment Point controllers. This work is an attempt to design a highly stable controller for dynamic walking of a human-like model which can be used both for control of humanoid robots and prosthetic legs. The method is based on using time-based trajectories that can induce a highly stable limit cycle to the bipedal robot. The time-based nature of the controller motivates its use to entrain a model of an amputee walking, which can potentially lead to a better coordination of the interaction between the prosthesis and the human. The simulations demonstrate the stability of the controller and its robustness against external perturbations.

  9. In our own image? Emotional and neural processing differences when observing human-human vs human-robot interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Yin; Quadflieg, Susanne

    2015-11-01

    Notwithstanding the significant role that human-robot interactions (HRI) will play in the near future, limited research has explored the neural correlates of feeling eerie in response to social robots. To address this empirical lacuna, the current investigation examined brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging while a group of participants (n = 26) viewed a series of human-human interactions (HHI) and HRI. Although brain sites constituting the mentalizing network were found to respond to both types of interactions, systematic neural variation across sites signaled diverging social-cognitive strategies during HHI and HRI processing. Specifically, HHI elicited increased activity in the left temporal-parietal junction indicative of situation-specific mental state attributions, whereas HRI recruited the precuneus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) suggestive of script-based social reasoning. Activity in the VMPFC also tracked feelings of eeriness towards HRI in a parametric manner, revealing a potential neural correlate for a phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. By demonstrating how understanding social interactions depends on the kind of agents involved, this study highlights pivotal sub-routes of impression formation and identifies prominent challenges in the use of humanoid robots. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press.

  10. Experiments in teleoperator and autonomous control of space robotic vehicles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alexander, Harold L.

    1991-01-01

    A program of research embracing teleoperator and automatic navigational control of freely flying satellite robots is presented. Current research goals include: (1) developing visual operator interfaces for improved vehicle teleoperation; (2) determining the effects of different visual interface system designs on operator performance; and (3) achieving autonomous vision-based vehicle navigation and control. This research program combines virtual-environment teleoperation studies and neutral-buoyancy experiments using a space-robot simulator vehicle currently under development. Visual-interface design options under investigation include monoscopic versus stereoscopic displays and cameras, helmet-mounted versus panel-mounted display monitors, head-tracking versus fixed or manually steerable remote cameras, and the provision of vehicle-fixed visual cues, or markers, in the remote scene for improved sensing of vehicle position, orientation, and motion.

  11. Research the Gait Characteristics of Human Walking Based on a Robot Model and Experiment

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, H. J.; Zhang, D. N.; Yin, Z. W.; Shi, J. H.

    2017-02-01

    In order to research the gait characteristics of human walking in different walking ways, a robot model with a single degree of freedom is put up in this paper. The system control models of the robot are established through Matlab/Simulink toolbox. The gait characteristics of straight, uphill, turning, up the stairs, down the stairs up and down areanalyzed by the system control models. To verify the correctness of the theoretical analysis, an experiment was carried out. The comparison between theoretical results and experimental results shows that theoretical results are better agreement with the experimental ones. Analyze the reasons leading to amplitude error and phase error and give the improved methods. The robot model and experimental ways can provide foundation to further research the various gait characteristics of the exoskeleton robot.

  12. AAU-BOT1

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Svendsen, Mads Sølver; Helbo, Jan; Hansen, Michael Rygaard

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes the development of the humanoid robot AAU-BOT1. The purpose of the robot is to investigate human-like walking and in this connection, test prosthetic limbs. AAU-BOT1 has been designed with modularity in mind making it possible to replace, e.g. the lower leg to test transfemoral...... or transtibial prosthesis or orthosis. Recorded motion data from a male test person, along with approximated inertial and mass properties, were used to determine necessary joint torques in human walking which was used as design parameters for the robot. The robot has 19 degrees of freedom (DoF), 17 actuated...... at Aalborg University and supported by the Department of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). To further reduce the cost, the robot uses off-the-shelf hardware which also reduced the time from idea to practical implementation. The result is a low-cost humanoid robot fully assembled and equipped with sensors...

  13. The First Korean Experience of Telemanipulative Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy Using the da Vinci System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kang, Chang Moo; Chi, Hoon Sang; Hyeung, Woo Jin; Kim, Kyung Sik; Choi, Jin Sub; Kim, Byong Ro

    2007-01-01

    With the advancement of laparoscopic instruments and computer sciences, complex surgical procedures are expected to be safely performed by robot assisted telemanipulative laparoscopic surgery. The da Vinci system (Intuitive Surgical, Mountain View, CA, USA) became available at the many surgical fields. The wrist like movements of the instrument's tip, as well as 3-dimensional vision, could be expected to facilitate more complex laparoscopic procedure. Here, we present the first Korean experience of da Vinci robotic assisted laparoscopic cholecystectomy and discuss the introduction and perspectives of this robotic system. PMID:17594166

  14. "You gotta try it all": Parents' Experiences with Robotic Gait Training for their Children with Cerebral Palsy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beveridge, Briony; Feltracco, Deanna; Struyf, Jillian; Strauss, Emily; Dang, Saniya; Phelan, Shanon; Wright, F Virginia; Gibson, Barbara E

    2015-01-01

    Innovative robotic technologies hold strong promise for improving walking abilities of children with cerebral palsy (CP), but may create expectations for parents pursuing the "newest thing" in treatment. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore parents' values about walking in relation to their experiences with robotic gait training for their children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents of five ambulatory children with CP participating in a randomized trial investigating robotic gait training effectiveness. Parents valued walking, especially "correct" walking, as a key component of their children's present and future well-being. They continually sought the "next best thing" in therapy and viewed the robotic gait trainer as a potentially revolutionary technology despite mixed experiences. The results can help inform rehabilitation therapists' knowledge of parents' values and perspectives, and guide effective collaborations toward meeting the therapeutic needs of children with CP.

  15. Robotic resections in hepatobiliary oncology - initial experience with Xi da Vinci system in India.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chandarana, M; Patkar, S; Tamhankar, A; Garg, S; Bhandare, M; Goel, M

    2017-01-01

    Minimal invasive surgery has proven its advantages over open surgeries in the perioperative period. Food and Drug Administration approved da Vinci robot in 2000. The latest version, da Vinci Xi system has a mobile tower-based robot with several modifications to improve the functionality, versatility, and operative ease. None of the centers have reported exclusively on hepatobiliary oncology using the da Vinci Xi system. We report our initial experience. To study the feasibility, advantages, and discuss the operative technique of da Vinci Xi system in hepatobiliary oncology. Data were analyzed retrospectively from a prospectively maintained database from June 2015 to October 2016. Twenty-five patients with suspected or proven hepatobiliary malignancies were operated. Total robotic technique using da Vinci Xi system was used. Demographic details and perioperative outcomes were noted. Of the 25 surgeries, 14 patients had a suspected gallbladder malignancy, 11 patients had primary or metastatic liver tumor. Median age was 53 years. The average duration of surgery was 225 min with a median blood loss 150 ml. The median postoperative stay was 4 days. The median nodal yield for radical cholecystectomy was seven. Five patients required conversion. Two of these developed postoperative morbidity. Robotic surgery for hepatobiliary oncology is feasible and can be performed safely in experienced hands. Increasing experience in this field may equal or even prove advantageous over conventional or laparoscopic approach in future. A cautious approach with judicious patient selection is the key to establishing robotic surgery as a standard surgical approach.

  16. Experiência brasileira inicial em cirurgia da obesidade robô - assistida Brazilian experience in obesity surgery robot-assisted

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ricardo Zugaib Abdalla

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available RACIONAL: As técnicas minimamente invasivas associaram-se à cirurgia bariátrica propiciando redução na agressão aos órgãos e sistemas. A robótica é uma nova possibilidade dentro do conceito de mínima invasão. OBJETIVOS: Avaliar a experiência inicial da robótica em cirurgia da obesidade. MÉTODOS: Foram operados 27 pacientes no mesmo hospital, pela mesma equipe, com o mesmo sistema cirúrgico que foi Da Vinci S. RESULTADOS: Foram realizadas seis colocações de banda gástrica, cinco gastrectomias verticais e 16 septações gástricas com by-pass em Y-de-Roux. Ocorreu uma complicação importante e nenhum óbito. CONCLUSÕES: A via robótica mostrou-se segura durante experiência inicial, propiciando maior facilidade durante o procedimento em pacientes obesos.BACKGROUND: Minimally invasive techniques were associated with bariatric surgery, leading to a decrease in aggression to the organs and systems. Robotic surgery is a new possibility within the concept of minimal invasion. AIM: To evaluate the initial experience of robotic surgery for obesity. METHODS: Twenty seven patients were operated in the same hospital, by the same team with the same surgical system, Da Vinci S. RESULTS: Were performed six gastric band placement , five sleeve gastrectomies and 16 gastric bypasses. There was one major complication and no death in this series. CONCLUSIONS: The robotic surgery for obesity surgery was safe during the initial experience.

  17. Evaluation of a small socially-assistive humanoid robot in intelligent homes for the care of the elderly.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Torta, E.; Werner, F.; Johnson, D.O.; Juola, J.F.; Cuijpers, R.H.; Bazzani, M.; Oberzaucher, J.; Lemberger, J.

    2014-01-01

    The ageing population phenomenon is pushing the design of innovative solutions to provide assistance to the elderly. In this context a socially–assistive robot can act as a proactive interface in a smart-home environment, providing multimodal communication channels and generating positive feelings

  18. Experiments in augmented teleoperation for mobile robots: I

    Science.gov (United States)

    Witus, Gary; Hunt, Shawn; Ellis, R. Darrin

    2007-04-01

    Teleoperated mobile robots are beginning to be used for a variety of tasks that require movement in close quarters in the vicinity of moving and parked vehicles, buildings and other man-made structures, and the target object for inspection or manipulation. The robots must be close enough to deploy short-range sensors and manipulators, and must be able to maneuver without potentially damaging collisions. Teleoperation is fatiguing and stressful even without the requirement for close positioning. In cooperation with the TARDEC Robotic Mobility Laboratory (TRML), we are investigating approaches to reduce workload and improve performance through augmented teleoperation. Human-robot interfaces for teleoperation commonly provide two degrees-of-freedom (DoF) motion control with visual feedback from an on-board egocentric camera and no supplemental distance or orientation cueing. This paper reports on the results of preliminary experiments to assess the effects on man-machine task performance of several options for augmented teleoperation: (a) 3 DoF motion control (rotation and omni-directional translation) versus 2 DoF control (rotation and forward/reverse motion), (b) on-board egocentric camera versus fixed-position overwatch camera versus dual egocentric-and-overwatch cameras, and (c) presence or absence of distance and orientation visual cueing. We examined three dimensions of performance: completion time, spatial accuracy, and workspace area. We investigated effects on the expected completion time and on the variance in completion time. Spatial accuracy had three components: orientation, aimpoint, and distance. We collected performance under different task conditions: (a) three position-and-orientation tolerance or accuracy objectives, and (b) four travel distances between successive inspection points. We collected data from three subjects. We analyzed the main effects and conditional interaction effects among the teleoperation options and task conditions. We were

  19. Status and Prospects of Robotic Gastrectomy for Gastric Cancer: Our Experience and a Review of the Literature

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sejin Lee

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Since the first report of robotic gastrectomy, experienced laparoscopic surgeons have used surgical robots to treat gastric cancer and resolve problems associated with laparoscopic gastrectomy. However, compared with laparoscopic gastrectomy, the superiority of robotic procedures has not been clearly proven. There are several advantages to using robotic surgery for gastric cancer, such as reduced estimated blood loss during the operation, a shorter learning curve, and a larger number of examined lymph nodes than conventional laparoscopic gastrectomy. The increased operation time observed with a robotic system is decreasing because surgeons have accumulated experience using this procedure. While there is limited evidence, long-term oncologic outcomes appear to be similar between robotic and laparoscopic gastrectomy. Robotic procedures have a significantly greater financial cost than laparoscopic gastrectomy, which is a major drawback. Recent clinical studies tried to demonstrate that the benefits of robotic surgery outweighed the cost, but the overall results were disappointing. Ongoing studies are investigating the benefits of robotic gastrectomy in more complicated and challenging cases. Well-designed randomized control trials with large sample sizes are needed to investigate the benefits of robotic gastrectomy compared with laparoscopic surgery.

  20. Socially intelligent robots: dimensions of human-robot interaction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dautenhahn, Kerstin

    2007-04-29

    Social intelligence in robots has a quite recent history in artificial intelligence and robotics. However, it has become increasingly apparent that social and interactive skills are necessary requirements in many application areas and contexts where robots need to interact and collaborate with other robots or humans. Research on human-robot interaction (HRI) poses many challenges regarding the nature of interactivity and 'social behaviour' in robot and humans. The first part of this paper addresses dimensions of HRI, discussing requirements on social skills for robots and introducing the conceptual space of HRI studies. In order to illustrate these concepts, two examples of HRI research are presented. First, research is surveyed which investigates the development of a cognitive robot companion. The aim of this work is to develop social rules for robot behaviour (a 'robotiquette') that is comfortable and acceptable to humans. Second, robots are discussed as possible educational or therapeutic toys for children with autism. The concept of interactive emergence in human-child interactions is highlighted. Different types of play among children are discussed in the light of their potential investigation in human-robot experiments. The paper concludes by examining different paradigms regarding 'social relationships' of robots and people interacting with them.

  1. New frontiers in the rubber hand experiment: when a robotic hand becomes one's own.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caspar, Emilie A; De Beir, Albert; Magalhaes De Saldanha Da Gama, Pedro A; Yernaux, Florence; Cleeremans, Axel; Vanderborght, Bram

    2015-09-01

    The rubber hand illusion is an experimental paradigm in which participants consider a fake hand to be part of their body. This paradigm has been used in many domains of psychology (i.e., research on pain, body ownership, agency) and is of clinical importance. The classic rubber hand paradigm nevertheless suffers from limitations, such as the absence of active motion or the reliance on approximate measurements, which makes strict experimental conditions difficult to obtain. Here, we report on the development of a novel technology-a robotic, user- and computer-controllable hand-that addresses many of the limitations associated with the classic rubber hand paradigm. Because participants can actively control the robotic hand, the device affords higher realism and authenticity. Our robotic hand has a comparatively low cost and opens up novel and innovative methods. In order to validate the robotic hand, we have carried out three experiments. The first two studies were based on previous research using the rubber hand, while the third was specific to the robotic hand. We measured both sense of agency and ownership. Overall, results show that participants experienced a "robotic hand illusion" in the baseline conditions. Furthermore, we also replicated previous results about agency and ownership.

  2. Out-reach in-space technology experiments program: Control of flexible robot manipulators in zero gravity, experiment definition phase

    Science.gov (United States)

    Phillips, Warren F.

    1989-01-01

    The results obtained show that it is possible to control light-weight robots with flexible links in a manner that produces good response time and does not induce unacceptable link vibrations. However, deflections induced by gravity cause large static position errors with such a control system. For this reason, it is not possible to use this control system for controlling motion in the direction of gravity. The control system does, on the other hand, have potential for use in space. However, in-space experiments will be needed to verify its applicability to robots moving in three dimensions.

  3. Early Experience of Robotic Hysterectomy for Treatment of Benign Uterine Disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gutierrez, Ana Luiza; Binda, Márcia Luisa Montalvão Appel; Ramos, José Geraldo Lopes

    2016-09-01

    Objectives  To demonstrate the initial experience of robotic hysterectomy to treat benign uterine disease at a university hospital in Brazil. Methods  A cross-sectional study was conducted to review data from the first twenty patients undergoing robotic hysterectomy at our hospital. The surgeries were performed from November 2013 to August 2014, all of them by the same surgeon. The patients were reviewed for preoperative characteristics, including age, body mass index (BMI), indications for the hysterectomy and previous surgeries. Data of operative times, complications, postoperative pain and length of hospital stay were also collected. Results  The total operating room time was 252.9 minutes, while the operative time was 180.7 minutes and the console time was 136.6 minutes. Docking time was 4.2 minutes, and the average undocking time was 1.9 minutes. There was a strong correlation between the operative time and the patient's BMI ( r  = 0.670; p  = 0.001). The console time had significant correlation with the uterine weight and the patient's BMI ( r  = 0.468; p  = 0.037). A learning curve was observed during docking and undocking times. Conclusion  Despite its high cost, the robotic surgery is gaining more space in gynecological surgery. By the results obtained in our hospital, this surgical proposal proved to be feasible and safe. Our initial experience demonstrated a learning curve in some ways. Thieme Publicações Ltda Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

  4. Early experience with the da Vinci® surgical system robot in gynecological surgery at King Abdulaziz University Hospital

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sait KH

    2011-07-01

    Full Text Available Khalid H SaitObstetrics and Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Gynecology Oncology Unit, King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaBackground: The purpose of this study was to review our experience and the challenges of using the da Vinci® surgical system robot during gynecological surgery at King Abdulaziz University Hospital.Methods: A retrospective study was conducted to review all cases of robot-assisted gynecologic surgery performed at our institution between January 2008 and December 2010. The patients were reviewed for indications, complications, length of hospital stay, and conversion rate, as well as console and docking times.Results: Over the three-year period, we operated on 35 patients with benign or malignant conditions using the robot for a total of 62 surgical procedures. The docking times averaged seven minutes. The mean console times for simple hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, and bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy were 125, 47, and 62 minutes, respectively. In four patients, laparoscopic procedures were converted to open procedures, giving a conversion rate of 6.5%. All of the conversions were among the first 15 procedures performed. The average hospital stay was 3 days. Complications occurred in five patients (14%, and none were directly related to the robotic system.Conclusion: Our early experience with the robot show that with proper training of the robotic team, technical difficulty with the robotic system is limited. There is definitely a learning curve that requires performance of gynecological surgical procedures using the robot.Keywords: da Vinci robot, gynecological surgery, laparoscopy

  5. Euler-Lagrange modeling for a seven degree of freedom Manipulator

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Muñoz Arias, Mauricio; Scherpen, Jacquelien M.A.

    2011-01-01

    The Philips experimental robot arm is a kinematically redundant manipulator which is mainly aimed at increasing dexterity. The robot manipulator, developed by Philips Applied Technologies for domotic applications, has seven degrees of freedom and includes humanoid characteristics of a upper limb

  6. IHMC's experience competing in the Cybathlon compared to the DARPA robotics challenge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Neuhaus, Peter

    2017-11-09

    As a research scientist, my work tends to focus on scientific investigations. Our group occasionally makes discoveries or has a successful demonstration, and sometimes we can even repeatedly demonstrate something working on the hardware. This mode of operation works for research, but not for competitions. In the past few years, I have participated in two international robotics competitions, the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) and the Cybathlon; the research and development process for these competitions is significantly different from our typical research work. This commentary discusses our experience preparing for the Cybathlon, and contrasts it with our experience with the DRC. The human in the loop for the Cybathlon was the biggest differentiator between the DRC and the Cybathlon. Having the human at the center of the competition not only changed the way we developed, but changed how we viewed the impact of our work. For the DRC, a physics based dynamic simulation was a powerful, and invaluable, tool for not only the algorithm developers, but the robot operator as well. For the Cybathlon, simulation was of little use because the all of closed-loop control was performed by the pilot. In the software development cycle for the Cybathlon, the push was to just come up with something that works and "lock it down" and do not change it, so that the pilot could train with a given set of motions that would not change and make up for any deficiencies with his own abilities. The Cybathlon was more of an athletic challenge for the human who was assisted by technology. The DRC was the opposite, it was a robotics challenge assisted by a human. This commentary focuses on describing the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition's (IHMC) experience leading up to and at the Cybathlon, with some comparisons to the DRC experience. The Cybathlon was a very worthwhile experience me, my team, and of course our pilot. Knowing that our development could improve the quality of life

  7. Learning Robotics in a Science Museum Theatre Play: Investigation of Learning Outcomes, Contexts and Experiences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peleg, Ran; Baram-Tsabari, Ayelet

    2017-12-01

    Theatre is often introduced into science museums to enhance visitor experience. While learning in museums exhibitions received considerable research attention, learning from museum theatre has not. The goal of this exploratory study was to investigate the potential educational role of a science museum theatre play. The study aimed to investigate (1) cognitive learning outcomes of the play, (2) how these outcomes interact with different viewing contexts and (3) experiential learning outcomes through the theatrical experience. The play `Robot and I', addressing principles in robotics, was commissioned by a science museum. Data consisted of 391 questionnaires and interviews with 47 children and 20 parents. Findings indicate that explicit but not implicit learning goals were decoded successfully. There was little synergy between learning outcomes of the play and an exhibition on robotics, demonstrating the effect of two different physical contexts. Interview data revealed that prior knowledge, experience and interest played a major role in children's understanding of the play. Analysis of the theatrical experience showed that despite strong identification with the child protagonist, children often doubted the protagonist's knowledge jeopardizing integration of scientific content. The study extends the empirical knowledge and theoretical thinking on museum theatre to better support claims of its virtues and respond to their criticism.

  8. Does Prior Laparoscopic and Open Surgery Experience Have Any Impact on Learning Curve in Transition to Robotic Surgery?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cüneyt Adayener

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available It has been 15 years since the Food And Drug Administration approved the Da Vinci® robotic surgery system. Robotic applications are being used extensively in urology, particularly in radical prostatectomy. Like all high-tech products, this system also has a high cost and a steep learning curve, therefore, preventing it from becoming widespread. There are various studies on the effect of open surgery or laparoscopy experience on the learning curve of robotic surgery. Analyzing these interactions well will provide valuable information on making the training period of robotic system more efficient.

  9. Developing a successful robotics program.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luthringer, Tyler; Aleksic, Ilija; Caire, Arthur; Albala, David M

    2012-01-01

    Advancements in the robotic surgical technology have revolutionized the standard of care for many surgical procedures. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the important considerations in developing a new robotics program at a given healthcare institution. Patients' interest in robotic-assisted surgery has and continues to grow because of improved outcomes and decreased periods of hospitalization. Resulting market forces have created a solid foundation for the implementation of robotic surgery into surgical practice. Given proper surgeon experience and an efficient system, robotic-assisted procedures have been cost comparable to open surgical alternatives. Surgeon training and experience is closely linked to the efficiency of a new robotics program. Formally trained robotic surgeons have better patient outcomes and shorter operative times. Training in robotics has shown no negative impact on patient outcomes or mentor learning curves. Individual economic factors of local healthcare settings must be evaluated when planning for a new robotics program. The high cost of the robotic surgical platform is best offset with a large surgical volume. A mature, experienced surgeon is integral to the success of a new robotics program.

  10. Service Oriented Robotic Architecture for Space Robotics: Design, Testing, and Lessons Learned

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fluckiger, Lorenzo Jean Marc E; Utz, Hans Heinrich

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents the lessons learned from six years of experiments with planetary rover prototypes running the Service Oriented Robotic Architecture (SORA) developed by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at the NASA Ames Research Center. SORA relies on proven software engineering methods and technologies applied to space robotics. Based on a Service Oriented Architecture and robust middleware, SORA encompasses on-board robot control and a full suite of software tools necessary for remotely operated exploration missions. SORA has been eld tested in numerous scenarios of robotic lunar and planetary exploration. The experiments conducted by IRG with SORA exercise a large set of the constraints encountered in space applications: remote robotic assets, ight relevant science instruments, distributed operations, high network latencies and unreliable or intermittent communication links. In this paper, we present the results of these eld tests in regard to the developed architecture, and discuss its bene ts and limitations.

  11. Robot Choreography

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jochum, Elizabeth Ann; Heath, Damith

    2016-01-01

    We propose a robust framework for combining performance paradigms with human robot interaction (HRI) research. Following an analysis of several case studies that combine the performing arts with HRI experiments, we propose a methodology and “best practices” for implementing choreography and other...... performance paradigms in HRI experiments. Case studies include experiments conducted in laboratory settings, “in the wild”, and live performance settings. We consider the technical and artistic challenges of designing and staging robots alongside humans in these various settings, and discuss how to combine...

  12. A comprehensive gaze stabilization controller based on cerebellar internal models

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vannucci, Lorenzo; Falotico, Egidio; Tolu, Silvia

    2017-01-01

    . The VOR works in conjunction with the opto-kinetic reflex (OKR), which is a visual feedback mechanism that allows to move the eye at the same speed as the observed scene. Together they keep the image stationary on the retina. In this work we implement on a humanoid robot a model of gaze stabilization...... based on the coordination of VCR and VOR and OKR. The model, inspired by neuroscientific cerebellar theories, is provided with learning and adaptation capabilities based on internal models. We present the results for the gaze stabilization model on three sets of experiments conducted on the SABIAN robot...

  13. Experiences with an application of industrial robotics for accurate patient positioning in proton radiotherapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allgower, C E; Schreuder, A N; Farr, J B; Mascia, A E

    2007-03-01

    Protons beams deliver targeted radiation doses with greater precision than is possible with electrons or megavoltage X-ray photons, but to retain this advantage, patient positioning systems at proton clinics must meet tighter accuracy requirements. For this and other reasons, robots were incorporated into the treatment room systems at MPRI. The Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute (MPRI) is the first radiotherapy facility in the United States to use commercial robots with six degrees of freedom for patient positioning, rather than a traditional bed with four degrees of freedom. This paper outlines the ways in which robots are used at MPRI and attempts to distil insights from the experience of treating over 200 radiotherapy patients with a robotic system from February 2004 to late 2006. The system has performed well, and with great reliability, but there is room for future improvement, especially in ease of use and in reducing the time to get patients into position. Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  14. Fiscal 2000 report on result of R and D on robot system cooperating and coexisting with human beings. Development for putting new power generating technology to practical use; 2000 nendo ningen kyocho kyozongata robot system kenkyu kaihatsu seika hokokusho. Shinhatsuden gijutsu jitsuyoka kaihatsu

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2001-06-01

    A highly safe and reliable robot is being developed capable of cooperating and coexisting with human beings to carry out complicated operations in a dangerous site such as a plant, power station maintenance, construction, disaster relief, etc. This paper describes the fiscal 2000 results. In the research for navigated walking functions, the capabilities were extracted for walking straight, turning around and going up and down stairs, with a virtual platform simulated and examined. In the development of remote operation for proxy drive, a method was investigated for instructing change in posture and cooperative movement of the arms and legs. In the evaluation of proxy drive operations for industrial vehicles, a type of operating machine was specified for driving in a standing posture applicable to a robot. In the development of information forming technology supporting remote operations, a basic design was made for the simulator technology of compensating information. Server/client remote control technology was investigated, while a plurality of bi-directional interface means were reviewed for the purpose of efficient information exchange between a robot and an operator. A system for assembling a wall panel was evaluated as an outdoor man-machine cooperative operation. Adaptability to complicated environment such as unprepared ground was also studied, as well as the control of movement of a humanoid robot. (NEDO)

  15. Learning robotics using Python

    CERN Document Server

    Joseph, Lentin

    2015-01-01

    If you are an engineer, a researcher, or a hobbyist, and you are interested in robotics and want to build your own robot, this book is for you. Readers are assumed to be new to robotics but should have experience with Python.

  16. Robotic surgery for rectal cancer: a single center experience of 100 consecutive cases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stănciulea, O; Eftimie, M; David, L; Tomulescu, V; Vasilescu, C; Popescu, I

    2013-01-01

    Minimally invasive techniques have revolutionized the field of general surgery over the few last decades. Despite its advantages, in complex procedures such as rectal surgery, laparoscopy has not achieved a high penetration rate because of its steep learning curve, its relatively high conversion rate and technical challenges. The aim of this study was to present a single center experience with robotic surgery for rectal cancer focusing mainly on early and mid-term postoperative outcome. A series of 100 consecutive patients who underwent robotic rectal surgery between January 2008 and June 2012 was analyzed retrospectively in terms of demographics, pathological data, surgical and oncological outcomes. Seventy-seven patients underwent robotic sphincter-saving resection, and 23 patients underwent robotic abdominoperineal resection. There were 4 conversions. The median operative time for sphincter-saving procedures was 180 min. The median time for robotic abdominoperineal resection was 160 min. The median distal resection margin of the operative specimen was 3 cm. The median number of retrieved lymph nodes was 14. The median hospital stay was 10 days. In-hospital mortality was nil. The overall morbidity was 30%. Four patients presented transitory postoperative urinary dysfunction. Severe erectile dysfunction was reported by 3 patients. The median length of follow-up was 24 months. The 3-year overall survival rate was 90%. Robotic surgery is advantageous for both surgeons (in that it facilitates dissection in a narrow pelvis) and patients (in that it affords a very good quality of life via the preservation of sexual and urinary function in the vast majority of patients and it has low morbidity and good midterm oncological outcomes). In rectal cancer surgery, the robotic approach is a promising alternative and is expected to overcome the low penetration rate of laparoscopy in this field. Celsius.

  17. Robotic transanal total mesorectal excision for rectal cancer: experience with a first case

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verheijen, P.M.; Consten, E.C.J.; Broeders, Ivo Adriaan Maria Johannes

    2014-01-01

    Background: A transanal approach for total mesorectal excision (TME) using a single incision port is feasible. The disadvantages are technical difficulties associated with limited manoeuvrability. Methods: We present our first experience with robotic-assisted transanal total mesorectal excision. A

  18. Design-Oriented Enhanced Robotics Curriculum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yilmaz, M.; Ozcelik, S.; Yilmazer, N.; Nekovei, R.

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents an innovative two-course, laboratory-based, and design-oriented robotics educational model. The robotics curriculum exposed senior-level undergraduate students to major robotics concepts, and enhanced the student learning experience in hybrid learning environments by incorporating the IEEE Region-5 annual robotics competition…

  19. Interaction with Soft Robotic Tentacles

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Jonas

    2018-01-01

    Soft robotics technology has been proposed for a number of applications that involve human-robot interaction. In this tabletop demonstration it is possible to interact with two soft robotic platforms that have been used in human-robot interaction experiments (also accepted to HRI'18 as a Late...

  20. Edge Detection Algorithm Based on Fuzzy Logic Theory for a Local Vision System of Robocup Humanoid League

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea K. Perez-Hernandez

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available At this paper we shown the development of an algorithm to perform edges extraction based on fuzzy logic theory. This method allows recognizing landmarks on the game field for Humanoid League of RoboCup. The proposed algorithm describes the creation of a fuzzy inference system that permit evaluate the existent relationship between image pixels, finding variations on grey levels of related neighbor pixels. Subsequently, it shows an implementation of OTSU method to binarize an image that was obtained from fuzzy process and so generate an image containing only extracted edges, validating the algorithm with Humanoid League images. Later, we analyze obtained results that evidence a good performance of algorithm, considering that this proposal only takes an extra 35% processing time that will be required by traditional methods, whereas extracted edges are 52% less noise susceptible.

  1. Robotic repair of vesicovaginal fistula - initial experience

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ankush Jairath

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT Objective The most common acquired fistula of the urinary tract is Vesicovaginal fistulae (VVF (1 posing social stigmata for the patient as well as a surgical challenge for the urologist. Here we present our initial experience with Robotic assisted laparoscopic repair of VVF, its safety and efficacy. Materials and Methods Seven out of eight fistulas were post hysterectomy; five had undergone abdominal while two had laparoscopic hysterectomy while one was due to prolonged labour. Two had associated ureteric injury. All underwent robotic assisted laparoscopic trans abdominal extravesical approach. Three 8 mm ports for robotic arms, one 12 mm port for camera and another 12 mm for assistant were used in a fan shaped manner. All had preoperative ureteric catheter placed. Bladder was closed in two layers and vagina in one layer. Omental flap placed in all cases except two where it was not possible. Drain and per urethral catheter placed in all cases. Double J stents were placed in two cases requiring ureteric implantation additionally. Results The mean age of presentation was 39.25 years (26-47 range with mean BMI being 26.25 kg/m2 (21-32 range. Mean duration between insult and repair was 9.37 months (3-24 months. Only in single case there was history of previous repair attempt. On cystoscopy four had supratrigonal VVF and four were trigonal with mean size of 13.37 mm (7-20 mm. Mean operative time was 117.5 minutes (90-150. There were no intraoperative/postoperative complications or need for open conversion. Mean haemoglobin drop was 1.4 gm/dL (0.3-2 gm. Drain was removed once 24-48 hours output is negligible. One patient had post-operative urinary leak at 2 weeks which ceased with continuation of catheterisation for another 2 weeks. Catheter was removed after voiding cystourethrogram showed no leak at 2-3 weeks postoperatively. Mean duration of drain was 3.75 days (3-5 and per urethral catheterisation (which was removed after voiding

  2. Teleautonomous Control on Rescue Robot Prototype

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Son Kuswadi

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Robot application in disaster area can help responder team to save victims. In order to finish task, robot must have flexible movement mechanism so it can pass through uncluttered area. Passive linkage can be used on robot chassis so it can give robot flexibility. On physical experiments, robot is succeeded to move through gravels and 5 cm obstacle. Rescue robot also has specialized control needs. Robot must able to be controlled remotely. It also must have ability to move autonomously. Teleautonomous control method is combination between those methods. It can be concluded from experiments that on teleoperation mode, operator must get used to see environment through robot’s camera. While on autonomous mode, robot is succeeded to avoid obstacle and search target based on sensor reading and controller program. On teleautonomous mode, robot can change control mode by using bluetooth communication for data transfer, so robot control will be more flexible.

  3. PEAR: Prototyping Expressive Animated Robots - A framework for social robot prototyping

    OpenAIRE

    Balit , Etienne; Vaufreydaz , Dominique; Reignier , Patrick

    2018-01-01

    International audience; Social robots are transitioning from lab experiments to commercial products, creating new needs for proto-typing and design tools. In this paper, we present a framework to facilitate the prototyping of expressive animated robots. For this, we start by reviewing the design of existing social robots in order to define a set of basic components of social robots. We then show how to extend an existing 3D animation software to enable the animation of these components. By co...

  4. Self-supervised learning as an enabling technology for future space exploration robots: ISS experiments on monocular distance learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Hecke, Kevin; de Croon, Guido C. H. E.; Hennes, Daniel; Setterfield, Timothy P.; Saenz-Otero, Alvar; Izzo, Dario

    2017-11-01

    Although machine learning holds an enormous promise for autonomous space robots, it is currently not employed because of the inherent uncertain outcome of learning processes. In this article we investigate a learning mechanism, Self-Supervised Learning (SSL), which is very reliable and hence an important candidate for real-world deployment even on safety-critical systems such as space robots. To demonstrate this reliability, we introduce a novel SSL setup that allows a stereo vision equipped robot to cope with the failure of one of its cameras. The setup learns to estimate average depth using a monocular image, by using the stereo vision depths from the past as trusted ground truth. We present preliminary results from an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) performed with the MIT/NASA SPHERES VERTIGO satellite. The presented experiments were performed on October 8th, 2015 on board the ISS. The main goals were (1) data gathering, and (2) navigation based on stereo vision. First the astronaut Kimiya Yui moved the satellite around the Japanese Experiment Module to gather stereo vision data for learning. Subsequently, the satellite freely explored the space in the module based on its (trusted) stereo vision system and a pre-programmed exploration behavior, while simultaneously performing the self-supervised learning of monocular depth estimation on board. The two main goals were successfully achieved, representing the first online learning robotic experiments in space. These results lay the groundwork for a follow-up experiment in which the satellite will use the learned single-camera depth estimation for autonomous exploration in the ISS, and are an advancement towards future space robots that continuously improve their navigation capabilities over time, even in harsh and completely unknown space environments.

  5. Observation and imitation of actions performed by humans, androids, and robots: an EMG study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hofree, Galit; Urgen, Burcu A.; Winkielman, Piotr; Saygin, Ayse P.

    2015-01-01

    Understanding others’ actions is essential for functioning in the physical and social world. In the past two decades research has shown that action perception involves the motor system, supporting theories that we understand others’ behavior via embodied motor simulation. Recently, empirical approach to action perception has been facilitated by using well-controlled artificial stimuli, such as robots. One broad question this approach can address is what aspects of similarity between the observer and the observed agent facilitate motor simulation. Since humans have evolved among other humans and animals, using artificial stimuli such as robots allows us to probe whether our social perceptual systems are specifically tuned to process other biological entities. In this study, we used humanoid robots with different degrees of human-likeness in appearance and motion along with electromyography (EMG) to measure muscle activity in participants’ arms while they either observed or imitated videos of three agents produce actions with their right arm. The agents were a Human (biological appearance and motion), a Robot (mechanical appearance and motion), and an Android (biological appearance and mechanical motion). Right arm muscle activity increased when participants imitated all agents. Increased muscle activation was found also in the stationary arm both during imitation and observation. Furthermore, muscle activity was sensitive to motion dynamics: activity was significantly stronger for imitation of the human than both mechanical agents. There was also a relationship between the dynamics of the muscle activity and motion dynamics in stimuli. Overall our data indicate that motor simulation is not limited to observation and imitation of agents with a biological appearance, but is also found for robots. However we also found sensitivity to human motion in the EMG responses. Combining data from multiple methods allows us to obtain a more complete picture of action

  6. Observation and Imitation of Actions Performed by Humans, Androids and Robots: An EMG study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Galit eHofree

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Understanding others’ actions is essential for functioning in the physical and social world. In the past two decades research has shown that action perception involves the motor system, supporting theories that we understand others’ behavior via embodied motor simulation. Recently, action perception has been facilitated by using well-controlled artificial stimuli, such as robots. One key question this approach enables is what aspects of similarity between the observer and the observed agent facilitate motor simulation? Since humans have evolved among other humans and animals, using artificial stimuli such as robots allows us to probe whether our social perceptual systems are tuned to process other biological entities. In this study, we used humanoid robots with different degrees of humanlikeness in appearance and motion along with electromyography (EMG to measure muscle activity in participants’ arms while they either observed or imitated videos of three agents produce actions with their right arm. The agents were a Human (biological appearance and motion, a Robot (mechanical appearance and motion and an Android (biological appearance, mechanical motion. Right arm muscle activity increased when participants imitated all agents. Increased muscle activation was found also in the stationary arm both during imitation and observation. Furthermore, muscle activity was sensitive to motion dynamics: activity was significantly stronger for imitation of the human than both mechanical agents. There was also a relationship between the dynamics of the muscle activity and motion dynamics in stimuli. Overall our data indicate that motor simulation is not limited to observation and imitation of agents with a biological appearance, but is also found for robots. However we also found sensitivity to human motion in the EMG responses. Combining data from multiple methods allows us to obtain a more complete picture of action understanding and the underlying

  7. Beyond Speculative Robot Ethics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smits, M.; Van der Plas, A.

    2010-01-01

    In this article we develop a dialogue model for robot technology experts and designated users to discuss visions on the future of robotics in long-term care. Our vision assessment study aims for more distinguished and more informed visions on future robots. Surprisingly, our experiment also lead to

  8. Effects of Robot Facial Characteristics and Gender in Persuasive Human-Robot Interaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aimi S. Ghazali

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available The growing interest in social robotics makes it relevant to examine the potential of robots as persuasive agents and, more specifically, to examine how robot characteristics influence the way people experience such interactions and comply with the persuasive attempts by robots. The purpose of this research is to identify how the (ostensible gender and the facial characteristics of a robot influence the extent to which people trust it and the psychological reactance they experience from its persuasive attempts. This paper reports a laboratory study where SociBot™, a robot capable of displaying different faces and dynamic social cues, delivered persuasive messages to participants while playing a game. In-game choice behavior was logged, and trust and reactance toward the advisor were measured using questionnaires. Results show that a robotic advisor with upturned eyebrows and lips (features that people tend to trust more in humans is more persuasive, evokes more trust, and less psychological reactance compared to one displaying eyebrows pointing down and lips curled downwards at the edges (facial characteristics typically not trusted in humans. Gender of the robot did not affect trust, but participants experienced higher psychological reactance when interacting with a robot of the opposite gender. Remarkably, mediation analysis showed that liking of the robot fully mediates the influence of facial characteristics on trusting beliefs and psychological reactance. Also, psychological reactance was a strong and reliable predictor of trusting beliefs but not of trusting behavior. These results suggest robots that are intended to influence human behavior should be designed to have facial characteristics we trust in humans and could be personalized to have the same gender as the user. Furthermore, personalization and adaptation techniques designed to make people like the robot more may help ensure they will also trust the robot.

  9. Tool-Body Assimilation Model Based on Body Babbling and Neurodynamical System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kuniyuki Takahashi

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available We propose the new method of tool use with a tool-body assimilation model based on body babbling and a neurodynamical system for robots to use tools. Almost all existing studies for robots to use tools require predetermined motions and tool features; the motion patterns are limited and the robots cannot use novel tools. Other studies fully search for all available parameters for novel tools, but this leads to massive amounts of calculations. To solve these problems, we took the following approach: we used a humanoid robot model to generate random motions based on human body babbling. These rich motion experiences were used to train recurrent and deep neural networks for modeling a body image. Tool features were self-organized in parametric bias, modulating the body image according to the tool in use. Finally, we designed a neural network for the robot to generate motion only from the target image. Experiments were conducted with multiple tools for manipulating a cylindrical target object. The results show that the tool-body assimilation model is capable of motion generation.

  10. Control of a Robot Dancer for Enhancing Haptic Human-Robot Interaction in Waltz.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hongbo Wang; Kosuge, K

    2012-01-01

    Haptic interaction between a human leader and a robot follower in waltz is studied in this paper. An inverted pendulum model is used to approximate the human's body dynamics. With the feedbacks from the force sensor and laser range finders, the robot is able to estimate the human leader's state by using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). To reduce interaction force, two robot controllers, namely, admittance with virtual force controller, and inverted pendulum controller, are proposed and evaluated in experiments. The former controller failed the experiment; reasons for the failure are explained. At the same time, the use of the latter controller is validated by experiment results.

  11. Pose Estimation and Adaptive Robot Behaviour for Human-Robot Interaction

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Svenstrup, Mikael; Hansen, Søren Tranberg; Andersen, Hans Jørgen

    2009-01-01

    Abstract—This paper introduces a new method to determine a person’s pose based on laser range measurements. Such estimates are typically a prerequisite for any human-aware robot navigation, which is the basis for effective and timeextended interaction between a mobile robot and a human. The robot......’s pose. The resulting pose estimates are used to identify humans who wish to be approached and interacted with. The interaction motion of the robot is based on adaptive potential functions centered around the person that respect the persons social spaces. The method is tested in experiments...

  12. Rethinking Regulation for Experimenting with Emerging Robotics Technologies

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Fosch Villaronga, Eduard; Heldeweg, Michiel A.

    2016-01-01

    Great expectations and major concerns accompany the development and possible uses of robotics in many areas of life and in many forms, such as drones and care-robots. Possible pro’s and con’s require careful regulatory attention, both as regards technological aspects and with respect to

  13. Learning motor skills from algorithms to robot experiments

    CERN Document Server

    Kober, Jens

    2014-01-01

    This book presents the state of the art in reinforcement learning applied to robotics both in terms of novel algorithms and applications. It discusses recent approaches that allow robots to learn motor skills and presents tasks that need to take into account the dynamic behavior of the robot and its environment, where a kinematic movement plan is not sufficient. The book illustrates a method that learns to generalize parameterized motor plans which is obtained by imitation or reinforcement learning, by adapting a small set of global parameters, and appropriate kernel-based reinforcement learning algorithms. The presented applications explore highly dynamic tasks and exhibit a very efficient learning process. All proposed approaches have been extensively validated with benchmarks tasks, in simulation, and on real robots. These tasks correspond to sports and games but the presented techniques are also applicable to more mundane household tasks. The book is based on the first author’s doctoral thesis, which wo...

  14. Robotic nurse duties in the urology operative room: 11 years of experience

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ali Abdel Raheem

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available The robotic nurse plays an essential role in a successful robotic surgery. As part of the robotic surgical team, the robotic nurse must demonstrate a high level of professional knowledge, and be an expert in robotic technology and dealing with robotic malfunctions. Each one of the robotic nursing team “nurse coordinator, scrub-nurse and circulating-nurse” has a certain job description to ensure maximum patient's safety and robotic surgical efficiency. Well-structured training programs should be offered to the robotic nurse to be well prepared, feel confident, and maintain high-quality of care.

  15. The robotic appendicovesicostomy and bladder augmentation: the next frontier in robotics, are we there?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cohen, Andrew J; Pariser, Joseph J; Anderson, Blake B; Pearce, Shane M; Gundeti, Mohan S

    2015-02-01

    There is growing interest in applying robotic-assisted laparoscopic techniques to complex reconstructive pelvic surgery owing to inherent benefits of precision, tissue handling, and articulating instruments for suturing. This review examines preliminary experiences with robotic-assisted laparoscopic augmentation ileocystoplasty and Mitrofanoff appendicovesicostomy (RALIMA) as either an isolated or combined procedure. These series suggest RALIMA is feasible, with the benefit of early recovery and improved cosmetic results in selected patients. The robotic approach incurs functional outcomes and complication rates similar to those of open techniques. Given the steep learning curve, only surgeons with extensive robotic experience are currently adopting this technique. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Learning robotic eye-arm-hand coordination from human demonstration: a coupled dynamical systems approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lukic, Luka; Santos-Victor, José; Billard, Aude

    2014-04-01

    We investigate the role of obstacle avoidance in visually guided reaching and grasping movements. We report on a human study in which subjects performed prehensile motion with obstacle avoidance where the position of the obstacle was systematically varied across trials. These experiments suggest that reaching with obstacle avoidance is organized in a sequential manner, where the obstacle acts as an intermediary target. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the notion of workspace travelled by the hand is embedded explicitly in a forward planning scheme, which is actively involved in detecting obstacles on the way when performing reaching. We find that the gaze proactively coordinates the pattern of eye-arm motion during obstacle avoidance. This study provides also a quantitative assessment of the coupling between the eye-arm-hand motion. We show that the coupling follows regular phase dependencies and is unaltered during obstacle avoidance. These observations provide a basis for the design of a computational model. Our controller extends the coupled dynamical systems framework and provides fast and synchronous control of the eyes, the arm and the hand within a single and compact framework, mimicking similar control system found in humans. We validate our model for visuomotor control of a humanoid robot.

  17. A Guide for Developing Human-Robot Interaction Experiments in the Robotic Interactive Visualization and Experimentation Technology (RIVET) Simulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-05-01

    5.2 Gunnery 34 5.3 Driverless Vehicle Transport 36 6. Discussion 38 6.1 Lessons Learned 38 6.1.1 Problem No. 1: CARVE Does Not Always Load...gunnery user interface GUI setup 5.3 Driverless Vehicle Transport A third, and most recent, type of mission used for HRI experimentation investigated a...specific non-combat operation of driverless vehicles for passenger transit. One example is an experiment motivated by the Autonomous Robotics for

  18. Uncanny valley: A preliminary study on the acceptance of Malaysian urban and rural population toward different types of robotic faces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tay, T. T.; Low, Raymond; Loke, H. J.; Chua, Y. L.; Goh, Y. H.

    2018-04-01

    analysed to determine the preferred features in a humanoid robot, the acceptance of respondents toward the robotic faces and the existence of uncanny valley phenomenon. Based on the limited study, it is found that the uncanny valley phenomenon existed in both the Malaysian urban and rural population.

  19. Digital Emotion : How Audiences React to Robots on Screen

    OpenAIRE

    Damian Schofield,

    2018-01-01

    The experience of interacting with robots is becoming a more pervasive part of our day-to-day life. When considering the experience of interacting with other technologies and artefacts, interaction with robots presents a distinct and potentially unique component: physical connection. Robots share our physical space; this is a prominent part of the interaction experience. Robots offer a lifelike presence and the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) issues go beyond the traditional interactions of mor...

  20. Gearing up and accelerating cross-fertilization between academic and industrial robotics research in Europe technology transfer experiments from the ECHORD project

    CERN Document Server

    Veiga, Germano; Natale, Ciro

    2014-01-01

    This monograph by Florian Röhrbein, Germano Veiga and Ciro Natale is an edited collection of 15 authoritative contributions in the area of robot technology transfer between academia and industry. It comprises three parts on Future Industrial Robotics, Robotic Grasping as well as Human-Centered Robots. The book chapters cover almost all the topics nowadays considered ‘hot’ within the robotics community, from reliable object recognition to dexterous grasping, from speech recognition to intuitive robot programming, from mobile robot navigation to aerial robotics, from safe physical human-robot interaction to body extenders. All contributions stem from the results of ECHORD – the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development, a large-scale integrating project funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme from 2009 to 2013. ECHORD’s two main pillars were the so-called experiments, 51 small-sized industry-driven research projects, and the structured dialog, a powerful interac...