Links:

Kismet - Emotionbot

Shadow Biped

Sarcoman

Robby: Latest Look

Robby: Specs

In today's world, humanoid robots are mostly used for entertainment purposes. We are rarely surprised when we see an automated comedian at an executive party or a remote controlled robot giving a speech at a car show. But a humanoid robot as a domestic companion?

Kismet is an expressive robotic with perceptual and motor modalities tailored to natural human communication channels. To facilitate a natural infant-caretaker interaction, the robot is equipped with visual, auditory, and proprioceptive sensory inputs. The motor outputs include vocalizations, facial expressions, and motor capabilities to adjust the gaze direction of the eyes and the orientation of the head.

Shadow Walker, developed by Shadow Robot Company in the U.K., is a prototype bipedal robot with shadow air-muscle, which operates on compressed air at low pressures, whilst providing both power-to-weight ratios and strengths within the range of the human muscles. There are four types of sensor used on the Shadow Walker: Pressure, strain, underfoot pressure, and joint position. Shadow Walker is controlled by neural networks that are trained in one of the three ways: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and self-organization.

Sarcos' Sarcoman is an entertainment robot that is remote controlled by a human operator.

Robby will be a $15000, 4 1/2 ft high, pneumatic, humanoid, household and light assembly robot, once it is fully built. Robby would need 220 watts of electrical power, and would use a modified "General Learner" computer program as its mind. Robby can also be called an android. The prototype, with the electronic interface for the senses and battery, weighs 24 kg (53 lbs.)
For the time being the computer brain and air compressor will be separate, connected to the body by cables.