A Humanoid robot is one of the most intelligent robots in the world. It is designed to work and cooperate with human beings and even for entertainment. For those entertainment based humanoid robots, they are usually constructed by servo motors with a similar joint configuration as humans. The height of those humanoid robots is usually above 30 cm with a weight of over 1kg. Because of these constraints, it is not convenient for a user to bring it out for entertainment.
To development a humanoid robot, motion planning with balance control is an important task. Gait generation is a typical example and the most common approach for motion planning is the concept of inverse kinematics. The inverse kinematics utilized traditionally is 2-dimensional (2-D) only. In fact, motions of a humanoid robot are 3-dimensional (3-D), and the use of inverse kinematics should also be 3-D.
Recently, sign language is commonly used as communication language for auditory handicapped people. It can also be an effective way of communication between humans and robots or even between auditory handicapped people and robots. Some wearable electronic technologies that recognize and translate sign language into spoken English have been proposed. Although the proposed systems can recognize sign language, the wearing of gloves is not convenient for daily application.
Our goal in this project is to develop a mini-humanoid robot with a capability for transformation, 3-D motions planning with balance control, and effective real-time hand sign recognition system. The research issues in this project include (1) what type, how many, and how to design the joints configuration for a mini-sized humanoid robot; (2) how to perform the transformation for further size reduction by folding; (3) how to generate joints trajectory automatically in order to perform the 3-D robotic motions like walking and balance control; (4) how to develop a mini-sized balance system to provide the mini-humanoid robot with a motion stability; and (5) how to design a fast and accurate vision system for the communication between a user and the humanoid robot.
With the rapidly expansion of technology, size of modern actuators, sensors and controllers are highly reduced. We can expect that the development of mini-sized humanoid robots is a tendency towards entertainment based household robot. At the same time, the relationship between humans and robots will be enhanced because of the improvements in the size, functions and level of intelligence of humanoid robots.
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