A Closeup of HRP-4C, "C" stands for "Cybernetic Human"
It's been a couple of weeks since AIST caused a sensation by announcing the female humanoid robot HRP-4C. I don't see any press releases being translated into English as of today, so I'm going to go ahead and summar up the information there adding some other facts about the robot that have been reported in the Japanese press.
HRP-4C is 158 cm tall (5 foot 2) and weighs 43 kg (95 pounds) including the battery. Now, that is NOT the average weight of 19-29 year old women in Japan - contrary to some reports claiming so. The height is about average but the robot is about 10 kg (22 pounds) LIGHTER than average. The robot's face is "based on an average of 5 female employees at AIST" (whatever that means) and was made by Kokoro with silicone rubber.
It has 42 degrees of freedom (neck 3, arms 6x2, hip 3, legs 6x2, face 8, hands 2x2). A NiMH battery is situated on the hips and lasts about 20 minutes. An Intel Pentium M 1.6GHz chip is used to generate motion and a VIA C7 1GHz is inside the head for voice recognition. (Data from Robot Watch.)
The robot's movement is produced using human motion capture. AIST used many techniques to enable the robot to be so thin and light, such as using the PCI-104 bus to save space. They developed a way to move all 4 fingers but the thumb with one motor. The "C" in HRP-4C stands for "Cybernetic Human" - which the researchers at AIST have coined.
AIST is planning to release to the public the architecture of HRP-4C. (GetRobo will let you know when it does.) The robot was developed by using many of the technologies originally created at AIST. RT-Middleware, OpenHRP3 and ART-Linux --- to give a few examples. AIST would like to make these technologies a "global standard" in the robotics field. So HRP-4C is a way to get attention and become a marketing tool for these underlying technologies.
On the outside, the robot is supposed to be of practical use in the "entertainment industry." Humanoid robot research is very popular in Japan compared to other parts of the world, but the market is limited to about 1-2 billion yen ($10-20 million) which consists mainly of biped robots for hobbyists and those used as research platforms. AIST wanted to show that humanoids can be commercialized for other uses, such as becoming fasion models. HRP-4C did appear at a fasion show in Tokyo on March 23, although she was not showing off any of her clothes.
According to Robot Watch, HRP-4C cost 200 million yen (2 million dollars) to develop. AIST thinks that if the hardware cost could be set to about tenth of that, there should be a market for this kind of robot.
lol sure john...
yay...
soon i will have my own CHOBITS.
Posted by: moopy | April 29, 2009 at 12:38 PM
its a fake with a young girl...
look for details and you will see that roboter is a human girl...
greetz
Posted by: John Mustermann | April 12, 2009 at 11:28 AM