ASIMO: the humanoid robot

ASIMO is a humanoid robot created by Honda. Standing at 130 centimeters and weighing 54 kilograms, the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack, and can walk on two feet in a manner resembling human locomotion at up to 6 km/h (3.7 mph). ASIMO was created at Honda’s Research & Development Wako Fundamental Technical Research Center in Japan. It is the current model in a line of eleven which began in 1986 with E0.

Officially, the name is an acronym for “Advanced Step in Innovative MObility”. As of 2002, there were 20 ASIMO units in existence. Each one costs $1 million to manufacture, and some units are available to be hired out for $150,000 per month.

With 2000’s ASIMO model Honda added many features, labelled “Intelligence Technology”, that enable ASIMO to interact better with humans. These features fall under 5 categories:

• Recognition of moving objects
  Using the visual information captured by the camera mounted in its head, ASIMO can detect the movements of multiple objects, assessing distance and direction. Common applications this feature would serve include: the ability to follow the movements of people with its camera, to follow a person, or greet a person when he or she approaches.
• Recognition of postures and gestures
  ASIMO can also interpret the positioning and movement of a hand, recognizing postures and gestures. Because of this ASIMO can react and be directed not only to voice commands, but also to the natural movements of human beings. This enables it to, for example, recognize when a handshake is offered or when a person waves and respond accordingly. It can also recognize movement directions such as pointing.
• Environment recognition
  ASIMO can recognize the objects and terrain of its environment and act in a way that is safe for both itself and nearby humans. For example, recognizing potential hazards such as stairs, and by stopping and starting to avoid hitting humans or other moving objects.
• Distinguishing sounds
  ASIMO’s ability to identify the source of sounds has been improved, and it can distinguish between voices and other sounds. It can respond to its name, face people when being spoken to, and recognize sudden, unusual sounds such as that of a falling object or a collision, and face in that direction.
• Facial recognition
  ASIMO has the ability to recognize faces, even when ASIMO or the human being is moving. It can individually recognize approximately 10 different faces. Once they are registered it can address them by name.

Albert Hubo: an “Einstein” Robot

Albert HUBO is an android robot. It is composed of a head, which takes after Dr. Albert Einstein, and HUBO’s body. The development period took about 3 months, and it had been finished at November, 2005. The head part was developed by Hanson-Robotics. Its skin is a special metarial, Frubber, which oftenly be used at Hollywood.

The head has 35 joints, so it can impersonate various facial expressions using independent movements of eyes and lips. It has 2 CCD cameras to do vision recognition. Also, the body of Albert HUBO can perform all the HUBO’s performances, so it is possible to express more natural feature and movements. In the body, there are lithium polymer batteries wich can get about 2 and half hours of the operating time.

By using remote network, it is possible to access the Albert HUBO from an external computer. Albert HUBO was announced first at 2005 APEC Summit in Pusan, Korea. It was praised from many World leaders, such as the USA president, the Japanese Prime Minister and so on.

Stanley: the autonomous vehicle

Stanley is an autonomous vehicle created by Stanford University’s Stanford Racing Team. It is a standard Volkswagen Touareg (an SUV) modified to be driven by onboard computers. It competed in, and won, the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, earning the Stanford Racing Team the 2 million dollar prize, the largest prize money in robotic history.

The sensors used by Stanley include five LIDAR laser-ranging units, a pair of RADAR units, a stereo camera, and a single-lens camera. Position sensing was provided by a GPS receiver, a GPS compass, an inertial guidance system, and wheel odometry information provided by the Touareg’s internal CAN bus. Computing was provided by six low-power Intel Pentium M based computers running various incarnations of the Linux operating system.

Stanley was characterized by a machine learning based approach to obstacle detection. Data from the LIDARs was fused with images from the vision system to perform more distant look-ahead. If a path of drivable terrain could not be detected for at least 40 meters in front of the vehicle, speed was decreased and the LIDARs used to locate a safe passage.

Also, Stanley drove by recording how a human drove the car through the desert, then assigning an accuracy value to each bit of data generated by its slew of sensors. After this modification was made, it began to speed at 45 mph down roads which were crisscrossed by shadows of trees. Before it started assigning accuracy values to its data, it would have shied away from the road – it would have been perceived as being crisscrossed with ditches, not shadows.

BigDog: the robotic mule

BigDog is a quadruped robot created in 2005 by Boston Dynamics. BigDog is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the hopes that it will be able to serve as a robotic pack mule to accompany soldiers in terrain too rough for vehicles.

BigDog is a meter long, 0.7 meters tall, and weighs 75 kilograms. It is currently capable of traversing difficult terrain at 5.3 kilometers per hour, carry a 54 kilogram load, and climb a 35 degree incline.

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