User:Arahbar/Humanoid robot

A humanoid robot is a robot whose shape resembles that of a human being. Their structure and components used vary depending on the set of tasks that they are designed to perform. A robotic head who senses similar external stimuli as humans and whose design resembles a human head would also be considered a humanoid robot.

History
The concept of a humanoid robot was developed by many different cultures around the world. Some of the earliest accounts of the idea of humanoid automata date to the 4th century BCE in Greek mythologies and various religious and philosophical texts from China. Physical prototypes of humanoid automata were later created in the Middle East, Italy, Japan, and France.

Greece
The Greek god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus, created several different humanoid automata in various myths. In Homer's Iliad, Hephaestus created golden handmaidens and imbued them with human-like voices to serve as speaking tools or instruments. Another Greek myth details how Hephaestus crafted a giant bronze automaton named Talos to protect the island of Crete from invaders.

China
In the 3rd century BCE, a Taoist philosophical text called the Liezi, written by Chinese philosopher Lie Yukou, detailed the idea of a humanoid automaton. The text includes mention of an engineer named Yan Shi who created a life-size, human-like robot for the fifth king of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty, King Mu. The robot was primarily constructed of leather and wood. It was capable of walking, singing, and moving all parts of its body.

Middle East
In the 13th century, a Muslim engineer named Ismail al-Jazari designed various humanoid automata. He created a waitress robot that would dispense drinks from a liquid reservoir and appear out of an automatic door to serve them. Another automaton he created was used for hand washing to refill a basin with water after being drained.

Italy
In the 1400s, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized a complex mechanical robot clad in a suit of armor, capable of sitting, standing, and independently moving its arms. The entire robot was operated by a system of pulleys and cables.

Japan
From the 17th to 19th centuries, the Japanese built humanoid automata called karakuri puppets. These puppets resembled dolls and were used for entertainment in theater and religious festivals.

France
In the 18th century, French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a significant humanoid automaton called The Flute Player. This wooden, human-sized robot was capable of playing various melodies with the flute. It consisted of a system of bellows, pipes, weights, and other mechanical components to simulate to the muscles necessary to play the flute.

Attachment and Deceit
Humans have long felt feelings of anthropomorphism toward inanimate objects. These raise ethical concerns with humanoid robots in that humans may express more attachment toward humanoid robots than necessary, and robot designers can use this fact to take advantage of humans. This is otherwise known as deceit, where robot makers design robots knowing that they have no emotions but still pretend to show feelings of attachments toward humans.

Sex Robots and Ethics
The use of humanoid robots as sex robots is another area of ethical concern. There are issues regarding whether humans mistreating humanoid robots should be punished because these robots look and behave similar to humans. Also, there are concerns that the mistreatment of humanoid robots such as female sex robots may lower the dignity of women. This mistreatment may also affect the behavior of the humans doing these actions or of the people observing, especially children.

Robot Rights
The human-like nature of humanoid robots also raises the issue of the rights that robots will have in human society as as well as the humanoid robot's legal status. Since humanoid robots are only machines, it is unclear who or what responsibility should go to if humanoid robots were to commit a crime.

Uses
Humanoid robots serve their purpose of mimicking human behavior to fulfill any number of roles in fields such as mechanics, medicine, entertainment, and research and development.

Medical and Research Applications
Humanoid robots are a valuable resource in the world of medicine and biotechnology, as well as other fields of research such as biomechanics and cognitive science. They can be used as test subjects for the practice and development of personalized healthcare aids, essentially performing as robotic nurses for demographics such as the elderly. Humanoid robots are also being used to develop complex prosthetics for individuals with physical disabilities such as missing limbs. The WABIAN-2 is a new medical humanoid robot created to help patients in the rehabilitation of their lower limbs.

Entertainment Applications
Humanoid robots have had a long history in the realm of entertainment, from the conception and ideas in the story of Prometheus to the application and physical build of modern animatronics used for theme parks. Current uses and development of humanoid robots in theme parks are focused on creating stuntronics. Stuntronics are humanoid robots built for serving as stunt doubles, and are designed to simulate life-like, untethered, dynamic movement.

Demonstrative Applications
Though many real-world applications for humanoid robots are unexplored, their primary use is to demonstrate up and coming technologies. Modern examples of humanoid robots, such as the Honda Asimo, are revealed to the public in order to demonstrate new technological advancements in motor skills, such as walking, climbing, and playing an instrument. Other humanoid robots have been developed for household purposes, however excel only in single purpose skills and are far from autonomous.

Humanoid Robots and Science Fiction
Common themes for the depiction include how humanoid robots can help humans in society as well as how humanoid robots server as monsters or threats in society. Some humanoid robots that occur in science fiction are C-3PO in Star Wars, David in Artificial Intelligence, Data in Star Trek, and the T-800 in Terminator.

Science fiction has also played a role in detailing the effects of intelligent humanoid robots on society. Science fiction can show artificial intelligence as being good or bad for society. One humanoid robot that is depicted as good for society is Commander Data in Star Trek. Opposite portrayals where humanoid robots are shown as scary or frightening are the T-800 in Terminator.

Sensors
A sensor is a device that measures some attribute of the world. Being one of the three primitives of robotics (besides planning and control), sensing plays an important role in robotic paradigms.

Sensors can be classified according to the physical process with which they work or according to the type of measurement information that they give as output. In this case, the second approach was used.

Proprioceptive
Proprioceptive sensors sense the position, the orientation and the speed of the humanoid's body and joints, along with other internal values.

In human beings the otoliths and semi-circular canals (in the inner ear) are used to maintain balance and orientation. In addition humans use their own proprioceptive sensors (e.g. touch, muscle extension, limb position) to help with their orientation. Humanoid robots use accelerometers to measure the acceleration, from which velocity can be calculated by integration; tilt sensors to measure inclination; force sensors placed in robot's hands and feet to measure contact force with environment; position sensors, that indicate the actual position of the robot (from which the velocity can be calculated by derivation) or even speed sensors.

Exteroceptive
Arrays of tactels can be used to provide data on what has been touched. The Shadow Hand uses an array of 34 tactels arranged beneath its polyurethane skin on each finger tip. Tactile sensors also provide information about forces and torques transferred between the robot and other objects.

Vision refers to processing data from any modality which uses the electromagnetic spectrum to produce an image. In humanoid robots it is used to recognize objects and determine their properties. Vision sensors work most similarly to the eyes of human beings. Most humanoid robots use CCD cameras as vision sensors.

Sound sensors allow humanoid robots to hear speech and environmental sounds, and perform as the ears of the human being. Microphones are usually used for this task.

Actuators
Actuators are the motors responsible for motion in the robot.

Humanoid robots are constructed in such a way that they mimic the human body, so they use actuators that perform like muscles and joints, though with a different structure. The actuators of humanoid robots can be either electric, pneumatic, hydraulic. The actuators in humanoid robots should be have high power, low mass, and small dimensions.

Electric Actuators
Electric actuators are the most popular types of actuators in humanoid robots. These actuators are smaller in size, and a single electric actuator may not produce enough power for a human-sized joint. Therefore, it is common to use multiple electric actuators for a single joint in a humanoid robot. An example of a humanoid robot using electric actuators is HRP-2.

Hydraulic Actuators
Hydraulic actuators produce higher power than electric actuators and pneumatic actuators and they have the ability to control the torque they produce better than other types of actuators. However, they can become very bulky in size. One solution that was made to counter the size issue were electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHA). The most popular example of a humanoid robot using hydraulic actuators is the ATLAS robot made by Boston Dynamics.

Pneumatic Actuators
Pneumatic actuators operate on the basis of gas compressibility. As they are inflated, they expand along the axis, and as they deflate, they contract. If one end is fixed, the other will move in a linear trajectory. A popular example of a pneumatic actuator is the Mac Kibben muscle.

Planning and Control
Planning in robots is the process of planning out motions and trajectories for the robot to carry out. Control is the actual execution of these planned motions and trajectories. In humanoid robots, the planning must carry out biped motions, meaning that robots should plan motions similar to a human. Since one of the main uses of humanoid robots is to interact with humans, it is important for the planning and control mechanisms of humanoid robots to work in a variety of terrain and environments.

The question of walking biped robots stabilization on the surface is of great importance. Maintenance of the robot's gravity center over the center of bearing area for providing a stable position can be chosen as a goal of control.

To maintain dynamic balance during the walk, a robot needs information about contact force and its current and desired motion. The solution to this problem relies on a major concept, the Zero Moment Point (ZMP).

Another characteristic of humanoid robots is that they move, gather information (using sensors) on the "real world" and interact with it. They don't stay still like factory manipulators and other robots that work in highly structured environments. To allow humanoids to move in complex environments, planning and control must focus on self-collision detection, path planning and obstacle avoidance.

Humanoid robots do not yet have some features of the human body. They include structures with variable flexibility, which provide safety (to the robot itself and to the people), and redundancy of movements, i.e. more degrees of freedom and therefore wide task availability. Although these characteristics are desirable to humanoid robots, they will bring more complexity and new problems to planning and control. The field of whole-body control deals with these issues and addresses the proper coordination of numerous degrees of freedom, e.g. to realize several control tasks simultaneously while following a given order of priority.

Timeline of Developments
Honda humanoid robot

Development of a new humanoid robot WABIAN-2

Humanoid robot HRP-3

Humanoid Robots

An Overview of Humanoid Robots Technologies

Sophia

Humanoid Robots: Historical Perspective, Overview, and Scope

A Software Architecture for Generally Intelligent Humanoid Robotics

Robovie: an interactive humanoid robot

On Learning, Representing, and Generalizing a Task in a Humanoid Robot

Telesuit: design and implementation of an immersive user-centric telepresence control suit

Elon Musk unveils Tesla Bot, a humanoid robot that uses vehicle AI

Stuntronics

Atlas

Optimization-based locomotion planning, estimation, and control design for the atlas humanoid robot

Overview of humanoid robots - describes applications

The da Vinci Robot

Occurences in science fiction

Artificial intelligence in Humanoid Robots - Forbes

Cognitive development robotics

Humanoid Robots- A new kind of tool

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought

Ancient Greek Ideas on Speech, Language, and Civilization

Robot Evolution: The Development of Anthrobotics

Ancient Myths (Talos)

Jacques Robots

Karakuri puppets