Humanoid Robot

Professor Chrystopher Nehaniv and Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Computer Science are working with an international consortium led by the University of Plymouth on ITALK (Integration and Transfer of Action and Language Knowledge in Robots), which begins on 1 March.Professor Nehaniv said: “Our approach is that robot will use what it learns individually and socially from others to bootstrap the acquisition of language, and will use its language abilities in turn to drive its learning of social and manipulative abilities. This creates a positive feedback cycle between using language and developing other cognitive abilities. Like a child learning by imitation of its parents and interacting with the environment around it, the robot will master basic principles of structured grammar, like negation, by using these abilities in context.”

Robot Development Is Child's Play

The six projects include one from Imperial College London that will explore how ‘mirror neurons’ found in the human brain can be translated into a digital application. ‘Mirror neurons’, discovered in the early 1990s, trigger memories of previous experiences when humans are trying to understand the physical actions of others. A separate team at UPF Barcelona will also work on iCub’s ‘cognitive architecture’.

Robots (a nurse) that can pretend to chat with you are on the way
. You may be fooled. Robots that can genuinely chat with you are a long way off, because consciousness, personality, humor, language, even common sense are extremely difficult to replicate. A big reason why robots are so hard to appraise realistically is that sci-fi movies have filled our heads with vivid pictures of what robots are capable of. But robots are a lot like time travel--easy to describe, hard to do! So where exactly are we? I’d say the whole field of robotics is in a state of reassessment. All the early dreams are in ruins. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) crowd is realizing with a shock that ordinary humans are immensely complex and talented--replicating us is akin to building a city on the moon. Replicating even lower life forms is way beyond us at this point.

Cheapest robot
Walkman, a 12.7-cm (5-in) tall robot, was built from the remains of a Sony Walkman costing US$1.75 (£1.15) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA, in 1996. In tests the robot struggled to get free when its legs were held without being programmed to do so, and without making the same movement twice.

Smallest robot humanoid
The smallest humanoid robot in production is the Be-Robot, which measures 153 mm (6 in) high and is able to walk, kick and perform push-ups. The robot was manufactured by GeStream (Taiwan) and demonstrated at the Global SMEs Convention on 6 September 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Fastest selling entertainment robot
Sony's AIBO Entertainment Robot ERS-110 (aibo means "pal" or "partner" in Japanese) retails for US$2,066. When Aibo made its first appearance on Sony's website on May 31, 1999, 3,000 were sold within 20 minutes. AIBO is 11-in (27.9cm) tall and can recognize its surroundings with a built-in sensor. It can be programmed to perform tricks or "play" on its own. On June 1, 1999, 2,000 AIBOs became available over the internet in America and the initial rush to buy the robotic pet puppy caused web servers to crash.

Japan developed a tiny robot that can ride a bicycle.

Murata Boy, which weighs just 5kg and is 20cm tall, can travel at 76 cm per second and is controlled by a wireless computer link.

Engineers said the most difficult part of the design process was getting Murata Boy to balance on the bike.

They solved the problem by installing special sensors on the robot, which allows it to judge its angle and speed, and then make balance adjustments. The whole point of developing the robot which rides a bicycle is to show the technology of balancing in the environment, where keeping your balance is tough," said project engineer, Shigeki Fukunaga.