In the National Engineers Week of Drexel University, seven humanoid robots were centre staged on 20 Feb 2012. This is considered to be one of the first events to showcase seven robots together.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted funds for the manufacture of adult-sized Korean HUBO robots. These robots have a height of 4ft and 3in and have been totally actuated. Their legs, hands and arms including fingers resembled like a human.
The creation of humanoid robots was started in 2008 by Drexel’s team in association with HUBO Lab of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The fund for the development of robots was received under Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) program of NSF.
In 2009, the first humanoid robot, Jaemi Hubo, was produced. Drexel with other institutions was granted an additional $6 million from NSF in 2010. This Major Research Infrastructure (MRI) grant helped them to further extend their research on humanoid robots. As a result, six additional robots were created.
The seven identical robots will be sent to Penn, Purdue, Ohio State, South California, Virginia Tech, Carnegie Mellon and MIT universities for research. The researchers of the corresponding universities will be provided adequate training to handle these robots. This step will take humanoid robotics to the next level.
The HUBO robots are capable of identifying and greeting administrators and lead the ‘Simon Says’ game. Drexel researchers will further work on the fidelity sensors of the robot for physical, audibility and visual sensing in humanoid robots.
The director of Music and Entertainment Technology (MET) lab, Dr.Youngmoo Kim said the stage appearance of the humanoid robots has been a great achievement for robotics research.
Source: http://www.drexel.edu/