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 NEWSSony unveils humanoid robot By Martyn Williams November 21, 2000 2:45 am PT update SONY ON TUESDAY lifted the veil on its latest entertainment robot development efforts and demonstrated it has made the evolutionary jump from four legs to two legs.
The first is the development of a small-size actuator that combines a motor, gearbox, and associated circuitry into a small package. Such actuators are used in the joints on the robot's "body" and size is a key factor for entertainment robots, which are much smaller than commercial robots used in industry. The SDR-3 has three types of actuators that differ by the torque, or turning power, each one can provide. The second development highlighted by Doi was the robot's synchronized body movement. The SDR-3 can move the upper half of its body to counteract the movement generated by the lower half and so maintain balance. Dual RISC processors continuously crunch data from sensors mounted throughout the robot to ensure it stays balanced. They are powerful enough to enable a walking speed of 15 meters per minute. Tokyo-based Sony has also built basic voice recognition and image recognition into the unit, the latter via a color 180,000-pixel resolution CCD (charge coupled device) pickup similar to those used in digital still cameras. At the demonstration, Doi showed how the robot could distinguish between two balls of different colors and kick the selected one into a goal. The SDR-3 won't be on the market anytime soon however. In fact, Sony has no plans to commercialize it as a single product. Rather, it represents some of the latest technology developed by Sony and is likely to make its way into future commercial products over the coming years, Sony said. The company's research into robots is being driven by a belief that robots have a place in the home as entertainment products. Sony took its first steps towards proving this theory in 1999 when it launched the Aibo dog-like entertainment robot in 1999. The company managed to sell 150,000 of the first-generation Aibo despite a hefty $2,295 price tag and recently launched a second-generation Aibo, this time based on a baby lion but retaining many of the same looks as the original product. At the time Doi said: "The 1990s was the era of the PC and the Internet. The first decade of the 21st century will be dominated by robots." The SDR-3 robot will be on display at the Robodex exhibition in Japan from this Thursday. The event, which is being billed as the first ever expo for entertainment and companion robots, will showcase some of the latest breakthroughs in the field including an updated version of Honda Motor's humanoid robot. The car-maker's robot technology development program is aimed at improving its technology for factory automation rather than entertainment. More information about Robodex, which runs from Thursday until Sunday this week in Yokohama, can be found online at www.robodex.org.. Martyn Williams is Tokyo correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.  RELATED SUBJECTS  Client HardwareSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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