Humanoid Robots

INTRODUCTION INTERACTION with the real world is of great importance for the advance of human intelligence. Now that the Net has spread worldwide and IT (information technology) is available everywhere, a new kind of social intelligence is about to be born. We need to overhaul the technologies that will be used to connect this new intelligence to the real world. In particular robotics technologies that integrate senses, motor responses, and intelligence will be of great importance. There have been many advances in the devices used to construct robots in recent years. The advances have expanded the fields in which robots can act. They have also presented robotics researchers with new research challenges. In the early history of robotics, robots were confined to specific places such as factories where they were used for repetitive and tedious tasks. Precision and speed of control were important for OVERVIEW: Human-oriented research on robotics is an active field. Researchers in the past tried to build robots that would mimic human beings and perform complicated tasks. Recently, they have shifted their main interest to human-symbiotic robotics in which human beings receive services from robots or are co-workers with robots in performing collaborative tasks. Hitachi began research on robotics at a very early stage and has been involved in many challenging projects since then. Its prototype intelligent robot in the 1970s and its Advanced Quadruped Robot in the 1980s are examples of Hitachi’s commitment to this field and the lessons learned from these projects are reflected in our latest EMIEW humanoid robots that act as evolving hubs between the human, machine, and information worlds.