Bony robot mimicking human body

[ScienceNology] - Why try and build human-like robots from scratch if you can cash on thousands of years of evolution, which have produced a good working model – we humans. That’s the idea behind the Eccerobot project.

ECCEROBOT, which stands for “Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot”, takes mimicking human body to a new level. Unlike robots such as Honda’s ASIMO, the machine – developed by several European institutes – is not only shaped as a humanoid, but also has an internal structure similar to the bones and muscles you and I have.



The robot’s anatomy is not organic, of course. The bones are made of a thermoplastic polymer, which can be molded by hand if heated to 60 degrees Celsius, but set at room temperature. And stiff kite-lines pulled by screwdrivers serve as the muscles.

The most difficult part is controlling all this machinery. The robot only has parts from the waist up, but it takes 80 artificial muscles to move them. Scientists hope in the future to use the human-like form to "explore human-like cognitive features".

For those concerned with the rise of machines and the decline of humanity, in the demo video, Eccerobot shakes hands with one of the researchers rather then pulling a laser gun on him.

The video below demonstrating the recently developed shoulder design which replicates the human model in great detail.




A News from RussiaToday , 25 August 2009

More on Eccerobot.org

Categories: Engineering , Robotic , Video News