Android and Humanoid science

ANDROID AND HUMANOID SCIENCE

 Android and Humanoid science

ABSTRACT
Android science is a new interdisciplinary framework for studying human cognition and
Inter-action based on the premise that a very humanlike robot can elicit the sort of responses
people typically direct toward each other. Two approaches are necessary: one from robotics
and the other from cognitive science. The approach from robotics tries to build very humanlike
robots based on knowledge from cognitive science. The approach from cognitive science uses
the robot for verifying hypotheses for understanding humans. We call this cross-
interdisciplinary framework android science.

A fundamental issue in android science is the existence of the uncanny valley. As robots appear
more human, they seem more familiar; until a point is reached at which subtle imperfections
create a sensation of strangeness. Our important role is to verify the existence of the uncanny
valley and to explore how to overcome the uncanny valley problem with androids.

Android robots are capable of handling complex tasks that includes recognition of vocal
commands, logical inference, autonomous navigation and manipulation, etc. To accomplish
intelligent behaviors, researchers have proposed a number of control software architectures such
as tripodal schematic control architecture (TSCA). To achieve real-time performance for robot's
navigation, we have implemented software components in the reactive layer of TSCA on RTAI
(Real-Time Application Interface) for our intelligent robot
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Introduction:-

ANDROID:-

An android is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human. The term

was first mentioned by St. Albertus Magnus in 1270 and was popularized by the French writer

Villiers in his 1886 novel L'Ève future, although the term "android" appears in US patents as

early as 1863 in reference to miniature humanlike toy automations.

Androids have been mainly an element of science fiction, yet it is increasingly becoming a

reality in Japan and South Korea. The two countries are in a heated competition to make them a

commercial success in the global market and have developed a handful of successful androids

so far.

Android robots are created to imitate some of the same physical and mental tasks that humans

undergo daily. Scientists and specialists from many different fields including engineering,

cognitive science, and linguistics combine their efforts to create a robot as human-like as

possible.

The Android robot is capable walking, running, somersaulting and standing up from a face-

up or face-down lying position. It can even be programmed to pull itself up autonomously

after it has fallen over. It stands 13” tall, has 17 servo actuated joints (i.e., 17 degrees of

freedom), a powerful 60MHz HV processor with 512kB ROM / 64kB RAM and comes fully

loaded with over 75 preprogrammed motions.

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HUMANOID:-

A humanoid is a hybrid term from Latin humanus "human" and the Greek -oeides expressing

likeness. The term was coined in the year of 1918 to refer to fossils considered close to human

but not strictly human. A humanoid robot is a robot with its overall appearance based on that

of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general

humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of

humanoid robots may model only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some

humanoid robots may also have a 'face', with 'eyes' and 'mouth'. Androids are humanoid robots

built to aesthetically resemble a human. A humanoid robot is an autonomous robot because it

can adapt to changes in its environment or itself and continue to reach its goal.

ACTROID:-

An Actroid is a humanoid robot with strong visual human-likeness developed

by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro Company Ltd.

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It was first unveiled at the 2003 International Robot Exposition in Tokyo, Japan. Several

different versions of the product have been produced since then. In most cases, the robot's

appearance has been modeled after an average young woman of Japanese descent. The Actroid

woman is a pioneer example of a real machine similar to imagined machines called by the

science fiction terms android or gynoid, so far used only for fictional robots. It can mimic such

lifelike functions as blinking, speaking, and breathing. The "Repliee" models are interactive

robots with the ability to recognize and process speech and respond in kind.

Robotics:-

Robotics is the science and technology of robots, and their design, manufacture, and
application. Robotics is related to electronics, mechanics, and software. The first recorded use of
the term was by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction short-story “Liar!” The first digitally
operated and programmable robot, the Unimate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal
from a die casting machine and stack them. Today, commercial and industrial robots are in
widespread use performing jobs cheaper or more accurately and reliably than humans. They are
also employed for jobs which are too dirty, dangerous, or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots
are widely used in manufacturing, assembly and packing, transport, earth and space exploration,
surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, safety, and mass production of consumer and industrial
goods

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:-

The term artificial intelligence is used to describe a property of machines or programs: the
intelligence that the system demonstrates. Among the traits that researchers hope machines will
exhibit are reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, communication, perception and the ability
to move and manipulate objects. Constructing robots that perform intelligent tasks has always
been a highly motivating factor for the science and technology of information processing.
Unlike philosophy and psychology, which are also concerned with intelligence, AI strives to
build intelligent entities such as robots as well as understand them.
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They are motivated by computation in the brain. Small Threshold computing elements when put
together produce powerful information processing machines.
AI deals in science, which deals with creation of machines, which can think like humans and
behave rationally. AI has a goal to automate every machine. AI combined with various
techniques in neural networks, fuzzy logic and natural language processing will be able to
revolutionize the future of machines and it will transform the mechanical devices helping
humans into intelligent rational robots having emotions.

DEFINITION OF INTELLIGENCE & TURING TEST

The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing (1950), was designed to provide a satisfactory
definition of intelligence. Turing defined intelligent behavior as the ability to achieve human-
level performance in all cognitive tasks, sufficient to fool an interrogator.
Roughly speaking, the test he proposed is that the computer should be interrogated by a human
via a teletype, and passes the test if the interrogator cannot tell if there is a computer or a human
at the other end. His theorem (the Church-Turing thesis) states that “Any effective procedure (or
algorithm) can be implemented through a Turing machine. “ Turing machines are abstract
mathematical entities that are composed of a tape, a read-write head, and a finite-state machine.
The head can either read or write symbols onto the tape, basically an input-output device. The
head can change its position, by either moving left or right.
The finite state machine is a memory/central processor that keeps track of which of finitely
many states it is currently in. By knowing which state it is currently in, the finite state machine
can determine which state to change to next, what symbol to write onto the tape, and which
direction the head should move.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
NLP can be defined as:
 Processing of data in the form of natural language on the computer. I.e. making the
computer understand the language a normal human being speaks.
 It deals with under structured / semi structured data formats and converting them into
complete understandable data form. The reasons to process natural language are;
generally - because it is exciting and interesting, commercially – because of sheer
volume of data available online, technically – because it eases out Computer-Human
interaction.
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There are four procuring levels in NLP:
 Lexical - at word level it involves pronunciation errors.
 Syntactical - at the structure level acquiring knowledge about the grammar and structure
of words and sentences.
 Semantic - at the meaning level.
 Pragmatic – at the context level.
Another major problem in speech processing understands of speech due to word boundary. This
can be clearly understood from the following example:
Eg:-I got a plate. / I got up late.

Vision (Visibility Based Robot Path Planning)

Consider a moving robot. There are two things, robots have to think and perform while moving
from one place to another:
1. Avoid collision with stationary and moving objects.
2. Find the shortest distance from source to destination.
One of the major problems is to find a collision free path amidst obstacles for a robot from its
starting position to its destination. To avoid collision two things can be done viz 1) Reduce the
object to be moved to a point form. 2) Give the obstacles some extra space. This method is
called Mikownski method of path planning.
Recognizing the object and matching it with the contents of the image library is another method.
It included corresponding matching and depth understanding, edge detection using idea of zero
crossing and stereo matching for distance estimation. For analysis, it also considers robot as a
point body.
Second major problem of path planning is to find the shortest path. The robot has to calculate
the Euclidean distance between the starting and the ending points. Then it has to form
algorithms for computing visibility graphs.
These algorithms have certain rules associated with.
 Join lesser number of vertices to reduce complexity.
 Divide each object into triangles.
 Put a node in each triangle and join all of them.
 Reduce the unnecessary areas because they might not contribute to the shortest path.
 Compute minimum link path and proceed.
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This problem of deciding shortest path prevails. Robot might be a bulky and a huge object so
can’t be realized as a point. Secondly a robot is a mechanical body which can’t turn instantly so
it has to follow the procedure of wait-walk-wait-turn-wait-walk---- which is very time-
consuming and so not feasible. Therefore shortest distance should have minimum number of
turns associated with it.

For path planning the robot has to take a snap shot of the area it is going to cover. This snap shot
is processed in the above mentioned ways and then the robot moves. But then the view changes
with every step taken. So it has to do the calculation at every step it takes which is very time
consuming and tedious.

Experts decided to make the robot take the snap shot of the viewable distance and decide the
path. But this again becomes a problem because the device used for viewing will have certain
limitation of distance. Then these experts came to a conclusion that the robot be given a fixed
parameter i.e. take to take the snap shot of a fixed distance say 10 meters, analyze it and decide
the shortest path.

Structure of Android:-

The structure of an android is usually mostly mechanical and can be called a kinematic chain
(its functionality being similar to the skeleton of the human body). The chain is formed of links
(its bones), actuators (its muscles), and joints which can allow one or more degrees of freedom.
Most contemporary android use open serial chains in which each link connects the one before to
the one after it. These android are called serial robots and often resemble the human arm.
Robots used as manipulators have an end effectors mounted on the last link. These end effectors
can be anything from a welding device to a mechanical hand used to manipulate the
environment.
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Power source:-

At present; mostly (lead-acid) batteries are used, but potential power sources could be:

 compressed air canisters (see air car)

 flywheel energy storage
 organic garbages (through anaerobic digestion)
 feces (human, animal); may be interesting in a military context as feces of small combat
groups may be reused for the energy requirements of the robot assistant (see DEKA's
project Slingshot stirling engine on how the system would operate)
 still untested energy sources (e.g. Joe Cell, ...)
 radioactive source (such as with the proposed Ford car of the '50); to those proposed in
movies as Red Planet (film)

Components of Android:-

Sensors:-

A sensor is a device that measures some attribute of the world. Being one of the three primitives
of robotics (besides planning and control), sensing plays an important role in paradigms.
Sensors can be classified according to the physical process with which they work or according
to the type of measurement information that they give as output. In this case, the second
approach was used.
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Proprioceptive Sensors

Proprioceptive sensors sense the position, the orientation and the speed of the humanoid's body
and joints. In human beings inner ears are used to maintain balance and orientation. Humanoid
robots use accelerometers to measure the acceleration, from which velocity can be calculated by
integration; tilt sensors to measure inclination; force sensors placed in robot's hands and feet to
measure contact force with environment; position sensors, that indicate the actual position of the
robot (from which the velocity can be calculated by derivation) or even speed sensors.

Exteroceptive Sensors

Exteroceptive sensors give the robot information about the surrounding environment allowing
the robot to interact with the world. The exteroceptive sensors are classified according to their
functionality.

Proximity sensors

Proximity sensors are used to measure the relative distance (range) between the sensor and
objects in the environment. They perform the same task that vision and tactile senses do in
human beings. There are other kinds of proximity measurements, like laser ranging, the usage of
stereo cameras, or the projection of a colored line, grid or pattern of dots to observe how the
pattern is distorted by the environment. To sense proximity, humanoid robots can use sonar’s
and infrared sensors, or tactile sensors like bump sensors, whiskers (or feelers), capacitive and
piezoresistive sensors.

Actuators:-

Actuators are the motors responsible for motion in the robot. Android robots are constructed in
such a way that they mimic the human body, so they use actuators that perform like muscles and
joints, though with a different structure. To achieve the same effect as human motion, humanoid
robots use mainly rotary actuators. They can be electric, pneumatic, hydraulic, piezoelectric or
ultrasonic.
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Hydraulic and electric actuators have a very rigid behavior and can only be made to act in a
compliant manner through the use of relatively complex feedback control strategies. While
electric coreless motor actuators are better suited for high speed and low load applications,
hydraulic ones operate well at low speed and high load applications. Piezoelectric actuators
generate a small movement with a high force capability when voltage is applied. They can be
used for ultra-precise positioning and for generating and handling high forces or pressures in
static or dynamic situations. Ultrasonic actuators are designed to produce movements in a
micrometer order at ultrasonic frequencies (over 20 kHz). They are useful for controlling
vibration, positioning applications and quick switching. Pneumatic actuators operate on the
basis of gas compressibility. If one end is fixed, the other will move in a linear trajectory. These
actuators are intended for low speed and low/medium load applications. Between pneumatic
actuators there are: cylinders, bellows, pneumatic engines, pneumatic stepper motors and
pneumatic artificial muscles.

Planning and Control:-

In planning and control the essential difference between Android and other kinds of robots (like
industrial ones) is that the movement of the robot has to be human-like, using legged
locomotion, especially biped gait. The ideal planning for humanoid movements during normal
walking should result in minimum energy consumption, like it happens in the human body. For
this reason, studies on dynamics and control of these kinds of structures become more and more
important.
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To maintain dynamic balance during the walk, a robot needs information about contact force
and its current and desired motion. The solution to this problem relies on a major concept, the
Zero Moment Point (ZMP).

Another characteristic about Android robots is that they move, gather information (using
sensors) on the "real world" and interact with it; they don’t stay still like factory manipulators
and other robots that work in highly structured environments. Planning and Control have to
focus about self-collision detection, path planning and obstacle avoidance to allow humanoids to
move in complex environments.

There are features in the human body that can’t be found in humanoids yet. They include
structures with variable flexibility, which provide safety (to the robot itself and to the people),
and redundancy of movements, i.e., more degrees of freedom and therefore wide task
availability. Although these characteristics are desirable to humanoid robots, they will bring
more complexity and new problems to planning and control.

The mechanical structure of a robot must be controlled to perform tasks. The control of a robot
involves three distinct phases - perception, processing, and action (robotic paradigms). Sensors
give information about the environment or the robot itself (e.g. the position of its joints or its
end effectors). This information is then processed to calculate the appropriate signals to the
actuators (motors) which move the mechanical.
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Child and Adult Androids:-

Child android: the appearance is realized by making a copy of an existing person

Adult android: it has 42 air actuators in

the upper torso. The appearance is
realized by making a copy of an existing
person.

Facial expressions of the adult

android: 13 of the 42 actuators are used
in the head. Humanlike facial expressions
are realized by the motion of the eyes and
mouth.
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Development of an Android:-

Repliee R1:-

The appearance is that of a five-year-old Japanese girl. The actuator is an electrical motor. It has
nine Degrees of Freedom (DoF) in the head and one DoF at the left elbow. Silicon skin covers
the whole body and makes the skin feel human-like. There are four high-sensitivity tactile
sensors constituted by piezo film under the skin of the left arm. These sensors can detect the
touch strength. To make the appearance closely resemble a human's, the body is shaped from a
mold of a girl. The skin is painted in imitation of the girl.

The appearance and internal mechanism of Repliee- R1

Repliee Q1 expo:-

The appearance is that of an adult woman. The face is shaped to be like an average Japanese
woman. The actuator is an air-servo motor. It has thirty-one DoF in the upper body. The
actuator can realize soft servo control without compliance control. An air compressor to drive
the actuators can be placed apart from the android, so that the machinery noise is quiet. Silicon
skin, which is the same as Repliee R1's covers her hands and part of the upper breast. There are
eleven high-sensitivity tactile sensors in the upper body.

Repliee-R2
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Generation of humanlike motion:-

It would be nearly impossible to specify manually the changing joint angles of an android with
many degrees of freedom. Therefore, we explore various hierarchical methods of automatically
generating humanlike motion. The first major step involves simplifying complex motions into a
compact sinusoidal representation. The second involves imitating human motion as it appears at
body surfaces. Past research has focused on humanoid dynamics and joint angle mappings
between people and robots or avatars. We are also addressing how to overcome structural
differences in androids and humans in order to generate humanlike motion.

Generation of humanlike motion by sinusoidal waves

Many natural-looking gestures and autonomic responses
can be generated from sinusoidal waves. As a kind of
"shorthand," we control the movement of each joint by
specifying a sinusoidal wave or combination of
sinusoidal waves. In addition, we developed the
techniques of generating various periodic motions by
tuning parameters of sinusoidal waves, such as their
phase, frequency, and amplitude.

In an early implementation, Perlin noise determined the

value of the periodic signal for each joint. While talking
the android moved its arms widely, as would be typical
of a political speech. Fig1.The example generated by
Perlin noise
The value in the figure is the number
In a second example, we tuned sinusoidal parameters of frame. ( frame is 33msec)
that determined the angles of the android's mouth, neck,
torso, shoulders, and arms.
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The generation of humanlike motion by mapping human
motion to the android

We control the android by mapping human motion to its joints to accurately position the motion
capture markers. However, a simple mapping from human to android joint angles is not
sufficient to realize natural motion owing the android's unique skeletal structure and dynamics,
which are affected by inertia and the compliance of its actuators. Therefore, a direct mapping of
joint angles is not possible, and it is necessary to learn how the android's joint angles influence
its body surfaces.

In this research we use the three-dimensional coordinates of markers placed on the surface of
the skin for mapping from the human to the android because of the difficulty in obtaining and
converting joint angles from a person to an android with differing kinematics and because of the
complexity of the kinematics and dynamics of an android with many degrees of freedom. Thus,
we can largely ignore the kinematic structure of the android in making the initial mapping. We
can evaluate the performance of the mapping by comparing the original human motion capture
data to the data generated by the android.

We use feedback error learning to control the android, and a neural network to perform the
mapping of the feed-forward controller. A image of this technique is shown below:

The image of mapping motion

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Android projects and its applications:-

Japanese projects:-
DER 01, Japanese android

The Intelligent Robotics Lab, directed by Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka

University, and Kokoro Co., Ltd. have demonstrated the Android at Expo
2005 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. In 2006, Kokoro Co. developed a new
DER 2 android. The height of the human body part of DER2 is 165 cm.
There are 47 mobile points. DER2 can not only change its expression but
also move its hands and feet and twist its body.

The "air servo system" which Kokoro Co. developed originally is used for the actuator. As a
result of having an actuator controlled precisely with air pressure via a servo system, the
movement is very fluid and there is very little noise. DER2 realized a slimmer body than that of
the former version by using a smaller cylinder. Outwardly DER2 has a more beautiful
proportion. The smoothness of her movement has also been improved, making it now even more
likely for the uninitiated to confuse her with an actual human being. Once programmed, she is
able to choreograph her motions and gestures with her voice.

The Intelligent Mechatronics Lab, directed by Hiroshi Kobayashi at the Tokyo University of
Science, has developed an android head called Saya, which was exhibited at Robodex 2002 in
Yokohama, Japan. There are several other initiatives around the world involving humanoid
research and development at this time, which will hopefully introduce a broader spectrum of
realized technology in the near future. Now Saya is working at the Science University of Tokyo
as a guide. The robot expresses his/her face by moving all points to the decided positions, they
say. The first version of the robot was first developed back in 2003. After that, a year later, they
did a couple of major improvements in the design. The robot features an elastic mask made from
the average head dummy. It uses a driving system with a 3DOF unit. The WD-2 robot can
change its facial features by activating specific facial points on a mask, with each point
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possessing three degrees of freedom. This one has 17 facial points, for a total of 56 degrees of
freedom. As for the materials they used, the WD-2's mask is fabricated with a highly elastic
material called Septom, with bits of steel wool mixed in for added strength.

Korean projects:-

EveR-1, the world's second female android, can express human emotions
and have a conversation in Korean and English

EveR-1 is a female android, developed by a team of South Korean scientists from the Korea
Institute of Industrial Technology in Korea University of Science and Technology. The project
is headed by Baeg Moon-hong in Seoul on May 4, 2006. Its name is derived from the
combination of the Biblical "Eve" and the r from robot.EveR-1 is a direct competitor of Actroid,
which is being developed by Kokoro Dreams and Osaka University of Japan and was unveiled
at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo in 2003. EveR-1 was built in a year at a cost of
300 million won (US$321,000) in state funds. The creators said the humanoid's face is a
composite of two well-known Korean actresses, while the torso is based on a singer, though the
names of the celebrities were not revealed. The android weighs 50 kilograms and has a height of
160 centimeters.

The creators also said that EveR-1 can mimic the human emotions of happiness, sadness, anger,
and surprise more naturally than its Japanese rival, while using a hydraulic system for certain
movements. EveR-1 contains a total of 35 miniature motors located throughout its upper body,
which enables EveR-1 to move its head, arms, and upper body and even move its lips in
synchronization with the robot's speech. Its skin is made of synthetic, pliable silicone jelly that
feels similar to human skin. The android can recognize 400 Korean and English words, allowing
it to respond to questions both verbally and through 15 facial expressions: EveR-1 will show
displeasure if you poke her. The android also has motion data process sensors in its artificial
eyes, enabling it to follow people with its eye.
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EveR-2 is more advanced than its predecessor, and is the first android in the
world to have the ability to sing.

EveR-2 is the successor of EveR-1, which performed at Robot World 2006 in Seoul, has
improved vision and ability to express emotions, as well as various other enhancements.
Boredom is now an available emotion, along with the usual joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.
She sang the Korean ballad "I Will Close My Eyes for You" during the opening ceremony at the
Robot World 2006 conference in Seoul, which made her the first android singer in the world.
She is about 5'7" (170cm) tall and weighs about 135 pounds (60kg). Her silicone-covered face
has a higher flexibility; 29 motors and dozens of joints provide 23 degrees of freedom for self-
expression. In total, EveR-2 has 25 more degrees of freedom than EveR-1. Her improved speech
recognition, voice synthesis and gesture expression technology allows for more sophisticated
communication and interaction with a human.

Different types of Androids and Humanoids:-

Kismet:-

Kismet is a android made in the late 1990s at MIT with auditory, visual and expressive systems

intended to participate in human social interaction and to demonstrate simulated human emotion

and appearance. The name Kismet comes from the Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi

word meaning "fate" or sometimes "luck".

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TOPIO:-

TOPIO ("TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot") is a bipedal humanoid robot designed to play table
tennis against a human being. It was developed in 2005 by TOSY, a robotics firm in the country
of Vietnam. It was publicly demonstrated at the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition (TIPE)
on November 28, 2007. TOPIO 2.0 (the latest vesion of TOPIO) stands approximately 2.1 m tall
and weighs 60 kg.

TOPIO 2.0 TOPIO 1.0

ASIMO:-

ASIMO is a humanoid robot created by Honda. Standing at 130 centimeters (4 feet 3 inches)
and weighing 54 kilograms (114 pounds), the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a
backpack and can walk or run on two feet at speeds up to 6 km/h (4.3 mph), matching EMIEW.
ASIMO was created at Honda's Research & Development Wako Fundamental Technical
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Research Center in Japan. It is the current model in a line of eleven that began in 1986 with E0.

Honda E series:-

The E-series was a collection of successive humanoid robots created by the Honda Motor
Company between 1986 and 1991. The fact that Honda had been developing the robots was
secret until the announcement of the Honda P2 in 1996.

E0, unveiled in 1986, was the very first robot. It walked in a straight line on two feet, in a
manner resembling human locomotion, taking around 5 seconds to complete a single step.
Quickly engineers realized that in order to walk up slopes, the robot would need to travel faster.
The model has 6 degrees of freedom: 1 in each groin, 1 in each knee and 1 in each ankle.E1,
unveiled in 1987, was larger than the first and walked at 0.25 km/h. Since the model, the E-
series robots have 12 degrees of freedom: 3 in each groin, 1 in each knee and 2 in each
ankle.E2, unveiled in 1989, could travel at 1.2km/h, through the development of 'dynamic
movement.E3, unveiled in 1991, travelled at 3km/h, the average speed of a walking human.
E4, unveiled in 1991, lengthened the knee to achieve speeds of up to 4.7km/h.E5, unveiled in
1992, was able to walk autonomously, albeit with a very large head.E6, unveiled in 1993, was
able to autonomously balance, walk over obstacles, and even climb stairs
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Honda P-series:-

The P-series is a chronological progression of prototype humanoid robots as developed by

Honda. The research conducted allowed the eventual creation of ASIMO.

Shadow Hand:-

The Shadow Dexterous Hand is a human form robot hand system developed by The Shadow
Robot Company in London. The hand is comparable to a human hand in size and shape, and
reproduces all of its degrees of freedom. The Hand is commercially available and currently used
by NASA, Bielefeld University and Carnegie Mellon University. The forearm structure is
comparable in length to the human forearm, although at the base it widens to 146 mm.

Degrees of freedom

The Shadow Dexterous Hand has been designed to have a range of movement equivalent to that
of a typical being. The four fingers of the hand contain two one-axis joints connecting the distal
phalanx, middle phalanx and proximal phalanx and one universal joint connecting the finger to
the metacarpal. The little finger has an extra one-axis joint on the metacarpal to provide the
Hand with a palm curl movement. The thumb contains one one-axis joint connecting the distal
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phalanx to the proximal phalanx, one universal joint connecting the thumb to the metacarpal and
one one-axis joint on the bottom of the metacarpal to provide a palm curl movement. The wrist
contains two joints, providing flex/extend and adduct/abduct. This means that that the Shadow
Dexterous hand has 24 joints all together, with 20 degrees of freedom.

Actuation

The movements of the hand are powered by a set of 40 Air Muscles in the forearm. The flow of
air into and out of each muscle is controlled by eighty valves, also in the forearm. This is done
based on the information gathered from the joint sensors.

Cost

Shadow hand reportedly costs more than US$100,000.

HUBO:-

HUBO is a walking humanoid robot, head mounted on a life-size walking bipedal frame,
developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and released
on January 6, 2005. Hubo is short form for "humanoid robot."Hubo has voice recognition and
synthesis faculties, as well as sophisticated vision in which its two eyes move independently of
one another.
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QRIO:-

QRIO ("Quest for curiosity", originally named Sony Dream Robot or SDR) was to be a bipedal
humanoid entertainment robot developed and marketed (but never sold) by Sony to follow up on
the success of its AIBO toy. QRIO stood approximately 0.6 m (2 feet) tall and weighed 7.3 kg
(16 pounds). QRIO's slogan was "Makes life fun makes you happy!"

Conclusion:-

Android robots are used as a research tool in several scientific areas. A researcher needs to
understand the human body structure and behavior (biomechanics) to build and study Android
robots. On the other side, the attempt to simulate the human body leads to a better understanding
of it. Human is a field of study which is focused on how humans learn from sensory information
in order to acquire perceptual and motor skills. This knowledge is used to develop
computational models of human behavior and it has been improving over time. It has been
suggested that very advanced robotics will facilitate the enhancement of ordinary humans.
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Although the initial aim of Android research was to build better orthosis and prosthesis for
human beings, knowledge has been transferred between both disciplines. A few examples are:
powered leg prosthesis for neuromuscular impaired, ankle-foot orthosis, biological realistic leg
prosthesis and forearm prosthesis. Besides the research, humanoid robots are being developed to
perform human tasks like personal assistance, where they should be able to assist the sick and
elderly, and dirty or dangerous jobs. Regular jobs like being a receptionist or a worker of an
automotive manufacturing line are also suitable for humanoids.

Humanoid robots, especially with artificial intelligence algorithms, could be useful for future
dangerous and/or distant space exploration missions, without having the need to turn back
around again and return to Earth once the mission is completed.