Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Pepper, a new humanoid robot introduced earlier this month in Japan, may herald the beginning of a new era in personal robotics. Unlike its ancestors, such as Mitsubishi’s Wakamaru and Sony’s QRIO, who had to join the halls of robot extinction, Pepper, developed jointly by the French robotics company Aldebaran and the Japanese telecom giant SoftBank, is here to stay.

Although the robot aims at possibly the most unreachable market in robotics industry, that of personal household robots, there are several major factors that can play a decisive role in Pepper’s future: his advanced emotional intelligence, surprisingly low price, and, of course, let’s not forget that looks matter – Pepper’s design is every bit gorgeous.

Softbank plans to start selling the robots next year in Japan for about $ 1,900. Until then, people can get acquainted with Pepper at certain SoftBank stores in Japan.

Although Pepper might initially seem quite unpractical – it will not clean your house and may not even be able to effectively fetch things – the robot’s strong suit lies in its ability to be good company.

Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Pepper’s communication skills are the result of special software that allows it to effectively analyze human emotions by combining information about voice tone, facial expressions and body language. In this way Pepper will tailor each individual conversation based on how its interlocutors feel and behave. While by no means the first robot to do so, Pepper may well be the first consumer available robot with such advanced emotion-reading capabilities.

The cutting-edge emotion engine will be supported by a cloud-based “collective wisdom”, where all Pepper robots will be able to upload valuable information about their interactions with humans. Taken together, this data will allow them evolve and polish their communication skills. As an example, hundreds of robots could store information about whether a particular joke makes people laugh, and then decide whether the same joke will be appropriate in other situations.

Pepper’s emotional intelligence is a logical progression of Aldebaran’s pursuit of companion robots capable of living with humans and responding to their constantly changing moods and feelings. The robot is strongly reminiscent of Aldebaran’s previous hit Nao, but, unlike his little brother, uses wheels instead of legs to move around – a choice dictated by power efficiency requirements.

A legged version of Pepper, however, might also see the light: Aldebaran’s legged Romeo robot, which still remains in development, can in the future serve as a foundation for a legged version of Pepper. You can read a previous post to learn more about the ongoing Romeo project.

Allowing robots to understand human emotions and express their own is a critical step towards improving human robot interaction in all settings. Read this post to learn about some ongoing European projects that aim to improve emotional intelligence in robots.

Industrial robots may be bulky and dangerous, but who says they can’t dance? Watch this roboLounge tribute to Daft Punk by four Stäubli robotic arms. Synchrony is their strong suit!

These robotic strippers below have recently caused quite a stir following their appearance at this year’s CeBIT computer expo in Hanover, Germany. Tess and Lexy – yes, they have names – were developed by the German company Tobit Software in collaboration with the British artist Giles Walker.

Here is another “pole-dancing” robot, although the pole in this case is fixed to a mirror and serves to support the robot, which was part of a New York-based art installation created by the designer Jordan Wolfson. While some may find it sexy and others downright horrifying, we must admit that the movements of the robot – especially of the hands – are smooth enough to be rather convincing from a short distance.

Partner Ballroom Dance Robot (PBDR) was developed by Kazuhiro Kosuge, a bioengineering and robotics professor at Tohoku University. This elegant robot has sensors that allow it to predict its partners next move.

Travis, a smartphone speaker dock developed by Guy Hoffman, is a listening companion that will readily enjoy music with your. Travis can recognise different sound genres and adapt his dancing style accordingly. You can read a previous post to learn about other “robots with soul” by Guy Hoffman.

The video below is the result of an interesting study that explores the possibility of a gestural dialogue between two robotic performers and a human dancer. If the robotic arms in the video look familiar, you are not hallucinating: these are two UR10 robotic arms from Universal Robots, a Danish Manufacturer of collaborative industrial robots.

iCub was the protagonist of the live musical performance “Dancing with Robots“, which was organised by the eeFA project as part of the Living Machines 2013 conference at the Natural History Museum in London. Read this post for a detailed overview of the conference.

Although Nao from Aldebaran Robotics was not designed as a dancing robot per se, part of his fame comes from his dancing skills. Check out this beautifully orchestrated performance by several Nao robots.

This impressive performance by Sony QRIO robots was recorded back in 2005. Too bad these robots were never commercialised. Wouldn’t you like to have your own dancing companion?

Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Five years have passed since Aldebaran Robotics announced an ambitious joint project with over a dozen leading French research centres to make France one of the few countries to have developed an advanced humanoid robot. Finally, the robot, named Romeo, made its long-awaited debut at the Innorobo robotics fair, which was held earlier last month in Lyon.

Aldebaran Robotics hit the big time with its famed Nao robot, which immediately conquered the love of the robotics community, and it was only a question of time before Aldebaran would face the challenge of creating a larger and more capable robot. Romeo, who stands 1,40 meters tall and weighs around 40 kg, however, is not just an enlarged version of Nao and, although not without some synergy between the two projects, the researches had to develop in many ways a very different humanoid.

Romeo was conceived as a personal assistant to elderly and disabled people and will have to move in an everyday environment and, in theory, perform such tasks as fetching objects, take out the trash and monitor the owner’s health, mood and behaviour.

Safety was a major concern when designing the physical platform, for a bigger robot implies bigger risks, and so Aldebaran set about developing a robot that neither looks dangerous, nor is a danger. In this regard, the project has made some important advances: unlike most humanoids, which rely on gears to power their joints, Romeo’s joints – and most importantly leg joints – are based on a very light and low-friction backdrivable mechanism consisting of screws and cables, which offers more control over the robot and is considerably safer and cheaper. A good example of a backdrivable robot is the WAM arm from Barrett Technology.

Romeo, of course, still remains in the development stage, which was fairly obvious at Innorobo. So far, the robot seems to have limited mobility and cognitive capabilities, and it might be too early to talk about how Romeo stands up to what was promised at the beginning of the project. Some parts of the robot will be almost definitely improved along the way: Romeo’s hands, for instance, now have four fingers each and just one degree of freedom, which allows him to perform only a basic grasping motion – clearly not enough to perform most of the tasks envisioned for the robot.

Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Aldebaran hopes that Romeo will start working at aged care facilities by the year 2017 or, at the latest, by 2019. And, although it might seem unrealistic – given the rumoured cost of Romeo at around $ 330.000 – Aldebaran has plans for commercialising the robot by offering it to hospitals and nursing homes and eventually to individuals.

For more information on Romeo, you can read this article.

Illus. by E. Benyaminson for “Hello, I’m Robot!” by Stanislav Zigunenko

We featured a previous post on one of the most emotionally literate robots in the world Nao, who was developed by Aldebaran Robotics and is currently being used by the ALIZ-E project scheduled to end this year. This cute robot has been tested at aged care facilities and proved helpful for such tasks as monitoring and reducing people’s anxiety levels by engaging with them emotionally.

Now, another European project is testing Nao in a slightly different role – that of a tutor. Needless to say, EMOTE, a three-year research project launched in 2012, also picked up Nao for his ability to empathise.

The project aims to develop and evaluate a new generation of artificial tutors with sufficient perceptive capability to engage in emotional interactions with students in a physical space. Nao’s tutoring skills have already been put to test in a number of schools in Portugal, the UK and Sweden. The robot uses his peculiar abilities to track and respond to students’ emotions, which allows him to adapt his teaching style to an ever-changing environment of a classroom.

However, for robots to be truly effective as tutors, they must adapt their behavior and teaching style not only within singular encounters, but also over longer sequences of encounters. This challenge is addressed by the EASEL project. Launched in December of 2013, EASEL will revolve around the study of human-robot symbiotic interaction, which among other things requires the robot to be able to influence and be influenced by humans (including on the emotional level), store the acquired information and consequently use it to extract new knowledge necessary for successful long-term interactions with students.

It is easy to envision how empathetic robots can revolutionise the tutoring process and maybe even do better than human tutors at some aspects such as tracking the engagement level and progress of each and every student simultaneously and over long periods of time. Making robots even more engaging by enabling them to express emotions is a different part of the story, and we will need to have a better understanding of how emotions work in ourselves before we can successfully teach them to robots. EFAA, for instance, is another European project that aims to enhance our social interactions with robots, including by means of equipping them with just such an ability to express emotions.

The  HRP-4C Humanoid  robot was developed by The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan and Kawada Industries. As you can see above, this robot can put on quite the show! Created mainly for entertainment purposes, this robot has even hit fashion runways! Actroid- DER3, developed by Osaka University and the robotics company Kokoro, is also being used for similar purposes.

Another pretty face below- the mask bot which uses a simple projection of a real human face to achieve its life-like appearance, was developed by AIST and  the Institute of Cognitive Systems (ICS) at the Technische University in Munich .

Some humanoids can even play music! Check out a robot released by Toyota back in  2007 that can play the violin.

A joint project between the MIT Media Lab and Drexel University put on this performance using 4 HUBO robots which were developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Many robots are developed for use as research platforms. Nao, developed by Aldebaran is currently being used in all sorts of research at elementary schools, hospitals and universities around the world.

MIT Media Lab’s Nexi is giving researchers insight into human-robot interaction. While it couldn’t pass for a human, the robot does manage to display rather convincing facial expressions.

CB2 is another robot developed by Osaka University. Similarly to the iCub (developed by the European RobotCub consortium), it expresses child-like behaviours and learning abilities to help researchers study human cognitive development.

Of course there are plenty more humanoids out there! What’s your favourite android?