atom
tetsuwan atom or astro boy
japanese researchers are advocating a grand project,
under which the government would spend 50 billion
yen a year over three decades to develop a humanoid
robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity
of a 5-year-old human - the atom project.
'most of today's robots operate with a program written by
humans. in order to develop a robot that can think and
move like a 5-year-old, we have to first understand the
mechanism of how human brains work,' mitsuo kawato,
chief of the computational neuroscience laboratories
at the kyoto-based advanced telecommunications
research institute internationa said, admitting the difficulty
of his project. 'that will be equal to understanding
human beings.'
tthe project was inspired by the popular robot animation series
'tetsuwan atom' by the late cartoonist osamu tezuka
(unlike cartoonist tezuka's 'atom' character, known as
'astro boy' overseas, based on an image of a 9-year-old
boy, the atom project aims to create a humanoid robot
with the physical, intellectual and emotional capacity of
a 5-year-old that would be able to think and move on its
own). the researchers say it would help promote scientific
and technological advances in japan, just like the u.s.
apollo project, which not only succeeded in landing men
on the moon but contributed to a broad range of technological
breakthroughs - a project of this magnitude would inject
much-needed vigor into a nation depressed from years of
economic slump.
souryu
snake robots are also known as serpentine robots.
as the name suggests, these robots possess multiple actuated
joints thus mulitple degrees of freedom.
this gives them superior ability to flex, reach, and approach a
huge volume in its workspace with infinte number of configurations.
this redundance in configurations gives them the technical name:
hyper redundant robots. ideally, the future snake design will
consist of three degree of freedom stages - roll, pitch, and extension.
souryu or blue dragon, is a remote-controlled robot designed by
tokyo institute of technology's professor shigeo hirose.
the snake-like souryu crawls using six tracks, two on each
side of its three-part body. it is equipped with a camera
and microphone to search for victims, and can bend at
the joints or roll over on its side to maneuver through rubble.
