Servo - December 2013

bots IN BRIEF

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Unlike the DARPA robots, Nino — a humanoid unveiled earlier this year by the National Taiwan University's Robotics Laboratory — may not find itself performing tasks in dangerous situations any time soon, but this robot has some special skills. It is likely the first full-sized humanoid to demonstrate sign language.

"Sign language has a high degree of difficulty, requiring the use of both arms, hands, and fingers, as well as facial expressions," commented Professor Han-Pang Huang, who leads NTU's Robotics Lab. That's why sign language, he added, is an ideal task to help researchers develop capable robot hands which could also find applications in factories or other kinds of work that require dexterous manipulation.

Nino stands 1.45 meters ( 4' 9") tall and weighs 68 kilograms (150 lbs). It has 52 degrees of freedom — including individual finger joints — and is equipped with 112 sensors that monitor the robot's motors, power usage, and temperature.An LED array in its head produces simple emoticon-style expressions such as blinking and lip movements. Nino is also able to walk, turn, and slowly climb up and down stairs and ramps.

One challenge for robot sign language is that mechanical hands with five fingers are usually considered slightly redundant for the type of work robots are expected to do. Advanced robots such as Boston Dynamics' Atlas or Willow Garage's PR2 feature only two or three fingers. Up until its latest revision, even Honda's ASIMO (considered one of the world's most advanced humanoids) didn't have hands with individually moving fingers. KAIST's Hubo robots are among the exceptions.

It took 20 researchers and students about three years to develop Nino, but they still have their work cut out for them.

Although the robot was programmed to sign certain words in advance — such as introducing itself at a press conference — it doesn't have the image processing software necessary to interpret human signing which uses subtle movements and can be very quick. In the future, they'd like Nino to be able to hold a conversation with a person using only sign gestures.