Humanoid robots capable of performing somersaults and complex martial arts moves were demonstrated at Asia鈥檚 largest electronics and computing fair in Tokyo on Saturday.
Visitors to CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) met Morph3, a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors.
Another miniature humanoid robot on display was Fujitsu鈥檚 HOAP-2. This droid has been programmed to perform moves from the Chinese martial art taijiquan, as well as Japanese Sumo wrestling stances.
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HOAP-2 is designed as an aid to robotics research and therefore runs on open source, Linux-based software. Fujitsu believes it will sell between 20 and 30 of the robots to universities and companies in 2004.
But impressive as these high-kicking robots are, Frederic Kaplan, at Sony鈥檚 robotics laboratory in France, says making more agile robots is not the biggest challenge facing robotics researchers at the moment.
鈥淭here are challenges in terms of mechanics still, but the biggest gap would be in intelligence,鈥� he told 快猫短视频. 鈥淥ne of the key things we are looking at now is developmental robotics, where a robot learns.鈥�