Humanoid robot for brain research

Brain science has made remarkable advances in the 20th century and several kinds of brain functions have been elucidated. On the other hand, not only neurobiological research approaches or theoretical approaches but also systematically combined research approaches are needed to understand higher-level brain mechanisms such as language and learning, i.e. intelligence. Based on this idea, our research approach with a robot has two main aspects. One is to provide a test bed for the validation of hypotheses related to brain mechanisms from the point of view of computational theory. The other aspect is to develop new algorithms for trajectory generation or learning methods for the robot using a biologically inspired method. We have developed a hydraulic anthropomorphic robot with legs, arms, a jointed torso and a head with a binocular vision system based on our research concept. The humanoid robot was designed and built by the SARCOS Research Corp., USA. Figure 1 illustrates the conŽ guration of the humanoid robot system and Fig. 2 shows a photograph of the humanoid robot. The height of the robot is approximately 1.85 m and its weight is 80 kg. It has 30 d.o.f. The head has 3 d.o.f. and the binocular vision system is equipped with four cameras to imitate the behavior of human eyes. This camera system has pan and tilt d.o.f. Each arm has 7 d.o.f. Each leg has 3 d.o.f. The trunk has 3 d.o.f. Every d.o.f. has a position sensor and a load sensor except for the d.o.f. for the camera system. Linear hydraulic actuators and rotary actuators actuate the joints. These joints are very compliant since there is no reduction gear. The hydraulic pressure is approximately 0.45 MPa. The robot is Ž xed on a rod that is movable up and down.