[info] smartmachines: another personal robot

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

(
http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/2007/11/twenty-one-robot-for-your-home.html
quite good demo videos:
http://twendyone.com/demo_e.html
)

The Japanese unveiled today another robot designed to help care for
their quickly ageing population. Researchers from Waseda University,
presented their new home service robot named Twenty-One. The new robot
looks massive standing just less than 1.5 meters tall but making up for
its lack of height with lots of width. It is also rather heavy weighing
nearly 250 pounds. The robot has a humanoid upper body with two arms;
the upper body is mounted on top of a wheeled base creating a more
stable robotic platform compared to the current state-of-the-art in
legged robots.

    TWENDY-ONE is an advanced version of the WENDY robot (Waseda
Engineering Designed　sYmbiont) which was developed in 1999 in Sugano
Laboratory, Waseda University. WENDY equipped the passive impedance
mechanism in each joint of its two arms. Passivity is a key technology
which is required for robots to perform various tasks with human in
daily life. WENDY also has the human mimetic dexterous hand and it is
the first robot in the world, which could break an egg skillfully.

 

In order for the robot to safely co-exist with humans, researcher have
equipped it with a large number of touch and force feedback sensors
allowing to detect and react to collisions in order to prevent injuries.
The researchers demonstrated the robot helping an elderly person get out
of bed and preparing breakfast with him. I would not be surprised if the
demo was carefully designed to show the robot operating perfectly but
this is almost always the case in such situations. The Twenty-One robot
team wants to commercialize their creation by 2015 which would be plenty
of time for them to work out many details that would allow the robot to
operate in more complex and unconstrained situations.

Twenty-one robot official website with more information and videos.