Humanoids and personal robots: Design and experiments

This paper addresses the field of humanoid and personal robotics-its object ives, motivations, and technical problems. The approach described in the pa per is based on the analysis of humanoid and personal robots as an evolutio n from industrial to advanced and service robotics driven by the need for h elpful machines, as well as a synthesis of the dream of replicating humans. The first part of the paper describes the development of anthropomorphic co mponents for humanoid robots, with particular regard to anthropomorphic sen sors for vision and touch, an eight-d.o.f. arm, a three-fingered hand with sensorized fingertips, and control schemes for grasping. Then, the authors propose a user-oriented design methodology for personal robots, and describ e their experience in the design, development, and validation of a real per sonal robot composed of a mobile unit integrating some of the anthropomorph ic components introduced previously and aimed at operating in a distributed working environment. Based on the analysis of experimental results, the authors conclude that hu manoid robotics is a tremendous and attractive technical and scientific cha llenge for robotics research. The real utility of humanoids has still to be demonstrated, but personal assistance can be envisaged as a promising appl ication domain. Personal robotics also poses difficult technical problems, especially related to the need for achieving adequate safety, proper human- robot interaction, useful performance, and affordable cost. When these prob lems are solved, personal robots will have an excellent chance for signific ant application opportunities, especially if integrated into future home au tomation systems, and if supported by the availability of humanoid robots. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.