Communicating for Project Effectiveness (Report)
REPORT ON HUMANOID ROBOT
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Prepared for
The Singapore Polytechnic Learning and Sharing Festival Organising Committee
By
Class: DMRO/FT/2A/23
Team No.: 4
Team Members (Student ID):
Lee Jian Wei Nigel (1752973)
Kenneth Lee Guo Hao (1751154)
Muhd Aiman Bin Zaini (1850941)
In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the module
LC0556: Communicating for Project Effectiveness (CPR – Report)
CA1 Report Writing
Lecturer: Ms Wilma Marie
Submission Date: 27 11 2018
Word Count: 1,987
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It was a fruitful learning experience for us as we were able to learnt a lot from this report. We would like to express our gratitude to Ms Wilma Marie, Lecturer, School of Life Skills and Communication, Singapore Polytechnic, for her unwavering support, cares and guidance she had given us throughout this report in consultation and preparation.
CONTENTS
TOC h u z ACKNOWLEDGMENTSii
List of Illustrationsiv
Summaryv
Introduction1
1.1 Purpose1
1.2 Background PAGEREF _n95vbfnm1d1v h 6
1.3 Scope PAGEREF _n95vbfnm1d1v h 6
2. Features of the Humanoid PAGEREF _qxle6jkdw2zu h 7
2.1 Movement PAGEREF _i5jnqu74of9n h 7
2.2 AI PAGEREF _uotawiljn39p h 7
3. Components of Humanoid PAGEREF _wmsy34hxb5vi h 8
4. How to Use Humanoid PAGEREF _vpu6ovd0eac4 h 9
5. Users of Humanoid PAGEREF _ze01voiqsj6n h 10
6. Advantages and Disadvantages of Humanoid PAGEREF _di0o3t1av4cb h 11
7. Conclusion PAGEREF _sgr2v5bbbsn2 h 12
8. Recommendations PAGEREF _lm38ylfujs1i h 14
References15
List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure 1: ASIMO by Honda 1
Figure 2: Sophia by Hanson Robotics 1-2
Figure 3: ASIMO giving drinks to office employees 5
Figure 4: Sophia the robot giving off a speech 6
Summary
The highlights of this report allow Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Learning and Sharing Festival Organising Committee to gain insight to the innovation and technology of Humanoid. It also recommends of improvements that can be added to the technology from user feedback and from researcher/expert.
Humanoid is robot that function, resemble and having an character or facial appearance that of a human. The concept for developing Humanoid robot started in the 1990s with companies creating real human looking robots since 2002.
Although the technology is new and aim to ease the tasks of human or having a social interaction. Humanoid allow user to have a interacting conversation, helping to carry object or complete superhuman feat. Some can also assists in care taking for the elderly or people with disabilities with doing simple task like pouring of water.
There are companies that developed it own kind of robot and aim to achieve different task for example: Hanson Robotics Humanoid Sophia, robot that mimic human expression and social AI thinking. Honda Asimo robot, robot that detect and move object with feature to enable it to interact with human. Boston Dynamics Atlas robot, robot that can accomplish task that human can’t easily achieve.
The setbacks for Humanoid robot is it high cost, underdeveloped AI system and a low battery life. Over the years, companies invest more to create new version of Humanoid with improve functions, longer battery life and expand new applications of using it in our daily life. Weighing its advantages more than its disadvantages.
1Introduction
1.1Purpose
The highlights of this report allow Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Learning and Sharing Festival Organising Committee to gain insight to the innovation and technology of Humanoid. It also recommends of improvements that can be added to the technology from user feedback and from researcher/expert.
1.2Background
Humanoids are a general term used to describe robots that have features similar to humans. Robots that have a general shape of a human or have facial features are classified as humanoids. Humanoids are generally link with Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and are planned to be used in many areas of industries and commercial in the future. It’s general purpose function allows them to complete tasks most robot can’t without human aids. Although the progress is slow and have yet to succeed humans, Humanoid technology does not lack the potential to do so. As such, humanoids are deemed as the future, with the ability to do things humans can and more, it is free labour without the downsides of humans.
Some examples of humanoids are:
Figure 1: Asimo by Honda, Picture taken from (https://cityos.io/Best-Humanoid-Robots)
Figure 2: Sophia by Hanson Robotics, Picture taken from (https://metro.co.uk/2016/03/29/i-will-destroy-humans-intelligent-robot-gives-a-very-creepy-answer-in-tv-interview-5783373/)
1.3Scope
This report discusses the features of Humanoid, its components, its users, advantage and disadvantage, and recommendation for
Improvement. Since “Humanoid” is a vague description of a set of robot that resembles or mimics human behaviour both physically and creatively, the report is going to cover the topic very briefly mainly because the technology is in its infancy stage and still require further testing before commercial use. Research papers and company logs are extremely hard to get as the result of its infancy, resulting in brief descriptions and reduced amount of sources.
2Features of the Humanoid
2.1Movement
Unlike humans, robots do not have muscles and tendons, rather, they have actuators and motors which act as the muscles and strings and intricate pulley systems that allow the movement of a facial feature or a limb. Much of which is a closely guarded secret by companies about their materials and design.
As the humanoid is a robot that should be capable in moving about on its own, Sensors like proprioceptive sensors and exteroceptive sensors are used to aid the humanoid in its task. Proprioceptive sensors are sensors that allow the robot to measure internal condition and forces such as joint angle, battery percentage, balance, etc, whereas Exteroceptive sensors are used to measure external conditions and forces such as temperature, distance sensors, sona, etc.
(Find out more : http://www.robotiksistem.com/robot_sensors.html)
2.2Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
Artificial intelligence is an algorithm that allows computer to learn like how humans do. How a computer learns is largely unknown because the code is too complex for one to understand, nonetheless it still gets the job done. A.I. is the prefered way to go as the actions and movements of humans, although easy to perceive, is hard to replicate. Having to program every single degree of movement, distance and speed in very different scenarios can quickly get out of hand be be a task too great for even the best programmers and certainly a waste of manpower, contradicting the main purpose of a humanoid (reduce work loads/Carry out mundane tasks). A.I. helps with this task because like a kid, there will be many trials and selection, with each trial the computer learns and remembers what is right and wrong, eventually reaching the targeted goal. Whether it is movement or speech A.I. is how humanoids will “think” in the future.
Find out more about how computers learn: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo)
3Components of Humanoid
Most humanoid robots similarly consists of 2 parts ; the sensors and the actuators.
Sensors are the basic necessity for all robots. They are mainly used to make robots be able to do their purposes. However, for a humanoid robot, two types of sensors are needed:
Proprioceptive sensors (internal)
Exteroceptive sensors (external)
Proprioceptive sensors senses the insides of the humanoid robot(mostly its joints). E.g. accelerometers, tilt sensors, force sensors , position sensors, speed sensors and etc.
Exteroceptive sensors are basically the “five senses” of the robot. E.g sound sensors, vision sensors(commonly used vision sensor = CCD cameras), tactile sensors and etc.
Actuators are the motors of the humanoid robots. They make the humanoid robots be able to move. As humanoid robots copies the same way a human move, actuators are needed for such motion. With that, there are four types of actuators:
Pneumatic (pressurised air)
Hydraulic (oil)
Piezoelectric (electricity)
Ultrasonic (sound)
Example of company robots with their specifications:
ACTUATOR Servo Motor+Harmonic Speed Reducer+Drive Unit
CONTROL UNIT Walk/Operating Control Unit, Wireless Transmission Unit
SENSORS: FOOT 6-axis Foot Area Sensor
SENSORS: TORSO Gyroscope ; Acceleration Sensor
POWER Rechargeable 51.8V Lithium Ion Battery
Table 1: ASIMO robot specifications, Table taken by http://asimo.honda.com/asimo-specs/
4How to Use Humanoid
There are many different humanoid robots made with different purposes. For example, the ASIMO robot made by HONDA is mainly designed to be a humanoid robotic helper. For now, it is known to be able to help with bartending, interacting with people and even be a buddy to play soccer with. Simply, it is used by approaching the robot and calling its name “ASIMO”, it will respond to the user. After that, the user can ask for help like getting a drink or play soccer with it all through voice command.
Figure 3: ASIMO giving drinks to office employees. Picture taken from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2694586/Coming-pub-near-Meet-Asimo-multi-lingual-robotic-bartender-serve-drinks.html
Whereas Sophia the robot, also known as “The First Robot Citizen”, is designed mostly for its text-to-speech/voice recognition. The users can socialize with Sophia from talking about politics, sharing jokes and even sing with it. There are three ways it can be used:
1. Using Timeline Editor – Sophia is loaded with a script where she can just use it to read it off on-stage..
2. Using Sophisticated Chat System – Sophia uses a “Chatbox” system where she can reply with only a little understanding of what he/she just asked/said to her to make the chat more entertaining.
3. Using OpenCog – Sophia uses her own experience from time to time and answers all the questions asked on her.
(Information above taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fnCQC7bLs0;t=351s @ 4:11)
Figure 4: Sophia the robot giving off a speech on-stage. Picture taken by https://studentedge.org/article/meet-sophia-robot-the-worlds-most-terrifying-robot
5Users of Humanoid
An increase use of humanoid robot in education as well as in the retail industry to better personalize customer support by 2023. Medical and logistics sectors are also integrating more AI robots.
ASIMO robot was introduced and unveiled in 2000. The robot that walk on two legs, interpret voice commands and human gestures. Over the years, has traveled around the world and performed in front of international audiences. ASIMO played soccer with President Obama and had a dancing group. (Dani, 2018)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/28/17514134/honda-asimo-humanoid-robot-retire
6Advantages and Disadvantages of Humanoid
Advantage Disadvantage
Future dangerous and distant space mission (Soffar, 2018)
Reduce human error and mistakes (Soffar, 2018)
Company save cost on employees (Soffar, 2018)
Efficient in the work (Soffar, 2018)
Customize to the needs by programming (Soffar, 2018) Expansive (Soffar, 2018)
Replace human job (Soffar, 2018)
Undeveloped AI system to do difficult tasks (Soffar 2018)
Low battery life (Soffar, 2018)
Table 2: Advantages and Disadvantages of Humanoid
Humanoid has many advantages that include efficiency and reduce in making mistake.
In addition, it can do different task if needed and change depends on it design.
The disadvantage of having Humanoid is that it’s too expensive, undeveloped AI
system and low battery life.
However, the advantages of Humanoid outweigh its disadvantages as companies
Creating new version with improvement and expand it application to our daily lives.
7Conclusion
Humanoid is a new technology that able to benefit its users. These benefits include
social interaction, ease the tasks of human across different needs. While companies still
improving and new robot under development, results shown that more places will in
higher demand in humanoid robot. Therefore, Humanoid has it potential to bring benefits
to more industries and homes in the future.
8Recommendations
The team has two recommendations for improving Humanoid robot. Firstly, Companies can produce more in production as it will lower down the cost and drive improvement in the Humanoid systems. Secondly, Companies should expand its range of applications by creating new and devious robot to cater to everybody needs eg. Medical, Educational sector.
References
Wikipedia, n.d. Humanoid Robot online. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanoid_robot Accessed 23 November 2018
Haris, n.d. Best Humanoid Robot online. Available from: https://cityos.io/Best-Humanoid-Robots Accessed 23 November 2018
Robotiksistem, n.d. Robot Sensor online. Available from: http://www.robotiksistem.com/robot_sensors.html Accessed 23 November 2018
CGP Grey, 2017. How Machines Learn online. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo Accessed 24 November 2018
Olivier, S., Thomas, F., 2018. An overview of humanoid robots technologies online. Available from: https://hal.laas.fr/hal-01759061/document Accessed 24 November 2018
Heba,S., 2018. Humanoid Robots Uses, Risk, Advantages and Disadvantages online. Available from: https://www.online-sciences.com/robotics/humanoid-robots-uses-risks-advantages-and-disadvantages Accessed 24 November 2018
Dani, D., 2018. Honda retires its famed Asimo robot online. Available from: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/28/17514134/honda-asimo-humanoid-robot-retire
Accessed 24 November 2018
