Recent Trends in Humanoid Robotics Research: Scientific Background, Applications, and Implications

Abstract

Even though the market size is still small at this moment, applied fields of robots are gradually spreading from the manufacturing industry to the others as one of the important components to support an aging society. For this purpose, the research on human–robot interaction (HRI) has been an emerging topic of interest for both basic research and customer application. The studies are especially focused on behavioral and cognitive aspects of the interaction and the social contexts surrounding it. As a part of these studies, the term of “roboethics” has been introduced as an approach to discuss the potentialities and the limits of robots in relation to human beings. In this article, we describe the recent research trends on the field of humanoid robotics. Their principal applications and their possible impact are discussed.

Keywords:

• entertainment robotics
• humanoid robotics
• medical robotics
• roboethics

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A part of the research on the Musical Instrument–Playing Robot was done at the HRI, Waseda University, and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Sciences (TWINs). This research is supported (in part) by a Gifu-in-Aid for the WABOT-HOUSE Project by Gifu Prefecture. This work is also supported in part by Global COE Program “Global Robot Academia” from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. WF-4RIV and WAS-2 have been designed by 3D CAD design software SolidWorks. Special thanks to SolidWorks Japan K.K. for the software contribution. The research on the Medical Assisted–Training HR was supported by the Knowledge Cluster Initiative, a project from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. We would like also to thank the doctors from the Department of Anesthesiology at the Tokyo Women's Medical University for their valuable time in providing medical knowledge for the WKA-3. Finally, this study is in part supported by JSPS, KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research), No. 21520004 (K. Ishihara, PI).