A Historical Humanoid Development and Human Support Robot Technologies

Yoshihiro Kuroki received his B. S. and M. S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Waseda University,  Japan, in 1975 and 1977,  respectively. He joined Sony  Corporation from 1977 and worked in development on the high-speed assembly robot and intelligent robot systems. From 1997, he worked in research and development focusing on a  small biped entertainment robot QRIO. He moved to  Toyota Motor Corporation in 2008. He is a member of the Society of Biomechanisms  Japan and Robotics Society of Japan. Fellow of Robotics  Society of Japan.

I have launched a development project for a small biped entertainment robot named SDR (Sony Dream Robot) in 1997. In the shortest development period, in November 2000, we proposed the first prototype SDR-3X featuring dynamic and attractive motion performances such as Parapara dances and multi-unit formation dances. QRIO (SDR-4X II) is the latest and the most advanced model and has important capabilities such as a safe design and functions for safe physical interaction with a human. But QRIO project has been terminated in 2006.

I started to develop the essential technologies for human support robots in 2009. Human support robots living together with humans and providing livelihood support to humans should have capabilities to make physical interaction with humans, objects, and the environment. To achieve these capabilities in physical interaction tasks with safe operations, we propose a new torque-sensing method and cooperative force adaptive control by joint torque detection based distributed torque servo control systems. I will also provide a brief introduction to the joint torque control based bilateral master-slave system exploring future applications.