This paper discusses a novel approach towards socializing non-anthropomorphic robots, which harnesses the expert knowledge of dancers to develop abstract robot morphologies and their capacity to move in affective and expressive ways. We argue that movement offers a key to socializing non-anthropomorphic robots. Our Performative Body Mapping (PBM) method investigates the possibility of teaching ...

This paper presents a grasping strategy of unknown objects imitating human grasping reflex for anthropomorphic robot hands. In the proposed grasping, each joint of the thumb and the fingers is controlled independently using the contact force affecting its adjacent fingertip side link. By setting a suitable contact force, both fingertip grasping and enveloped grasping with uniform grasping force...

In this literature review we explain anthropomorphism and its role in the design of socially interactive robots and human-robot interaction. We illustrate the social phenomenon of anthropomorphism which describes people’s tendency to attribute lifelike qualities to objects and other non lifelike artifacts. We present theoretical backgrounds from social sciences, and integrate related work from ...

Playing table tennis is a difficult motor task which requires fast movements, accurate control and adaptation to task parameters. Although human beings see and move slower than most robot systems they outperform all table tennis robots significantly. In this paper we study human table tennis and present a robot system that mimics human striking behavior. Therefore we model the human movements i...

Robot’s sound feedback can have either speech or non-speech interface. Since a telepresence robot (FURo-i Home) is a robot intended to be used in remote communication where conveying the presence of the communicators is essential, this study investigated the effect of anthropomorphic sound interface on perceived copresence, telepresence and social presence of the communicator. We executed a 2 (...

In this paper, we show how a simulated anthropomorphic robotic arm controlled by an artificial neural network can develop effective reaching and grasping behaviour through a trial and error process in which the free parameters encode the control rules which regulate the fine-grained interaction between the robot and the environment and variations of the free parameters are retained or discarded...

In present research the advanced fundamental mechanical capabilities of anthropomorphic robots developed in Takanishi laboratory at Waseda University are to be enhanced in order to enable these robots to interact with humans in a natural way. The anthropomorphic robot KOBIAN is able to express human-like facial expressions and whole-body gestures. It is equipped with vision and audio sensors th...

This short paper outlines a framework for an evaluation method that takes as an input a model of an anthropomorphic artificial hand and produces as output the set of tasks that it can perform. The framework is based on the anatomy and functionalities of the human hand and methods of implementing these functionalities in artificial systems and focuses on the evaluation of the intrinsic hardware ...