In this post on Exploring Humanoid Robots, I will briefly explain Humanoid Robots. As the name suggests, humanoid robots have a human-like look and body and they are usually best for educational purposes. In fact, I have explained the benefits of using robots in education in my last post on Learning with Educational Robots. As far as humanoid robots are concerned, they offer even more benefits.
How Humanoid Robots Work?
In order to understand, the working of humanoid robots, let us first understand the shape of a robot. Since humanoid robots resemble human body, it has so many joints similar to the human body. In general, the actuators or motors make the joints in a robot. Also, they have sensors to guide the orientation and speed of the robot’s body and joints. Besides, humanoids also have vision and sound sensors to recognize objects and hearing sound.
As far as the brain of a humanoid robot is concerned, it consists of Artificial Neural Networks(ANN) that controls other parts of the robot.
Benefits of Humanoid Robots
- Firstly, the kids prefer humanoid robots
- Although, humanoid robots can help kids learn, still they can be used for more sophisticated tasks that they do with more accuracy and precision. For instance, they do screwing more efficiently.
- Moreover, you can program them to fit your needs.
- Recently, they have been used in fighting coronavirus pandemic. Read more about their use in this article: How Robots are helping us Fight the Coronavirus Pandemic.
- Also, they can be used by hospitals in performing surgeries.
- Evidently, humanoid robots have been used in temperature sensing at airports and railway platforms.
- They can take care of the elderly.
- Even, the most compelling evidence of using humanoid robots is in disaster and dangerous situations.
Popular Humanoid Robots
- Vyommitra is a humanoid robot launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
- T-HR3 is a 1.5 m humanoid robot by Toyota that has 32-degree of freedom. This robot can assist humans in a variety of ways. In general, the robot can carry out a variety of tasks in the home, in medical facilities, and in disaster management.
- Pepper is another humanoid robot by Soft Bank that is capable of carrying out conversations with humans.
- Basically, Robonaut is a NASA robot for their space mission that can help astronauts in a number of ways.
- Neon is a humanoid robot by Samsung that carries out many human-like tasks and can participate in the conversation.
- Surena IV is also a humanoid robot developed by the Center for Advanced Systems and Technologies (CAST) in Iran that has whole-body motion. In fact, the robot can carry out lots of human-like tasks such as grasping a water bottle. Moreover, it can pose like a human and can also write.
Summary
In this article on Exploring Humanoid Robots, I have explained briefly about how humanoid robots work and what they can do. Also, some of the popular humanoid robots are described here.