Team in Japan creates most advanced humanoid robot yet

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo has created what appears to be the most advanced humanoid robot yet—actually two of them, one called Kenshiro the other Kengoro. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the team describes working to make robots that are as similar to humans as possible and demonstrates what their two latest models can do.

Researchers in Japan have been refining robotic parts to mimic human parts and assembling them to make whole robots that move as closely as possible to the ways humans move. For example, they give their robots rib cages, backbones and rotating joints. The result is surprisingly lifelike movement in similarly lifelike forms.

Of the two robots the team is demonstrating, Kengoro is the most advanced, because it is the most recent humanoid the team has built. It can do push-ups, pull-ups, back bends, and even hit a badminton birdy. In another interesting first, it also sweats, to a certain extent. Because it has actuators to pull strings meant to mimic muscle movement, the humanoid gets hot.

Read more at Tech Xplore

Image Credit: Asano, Okada, Inaba

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