Coverage by our in-house scientist – Aditya Sengupta. You can must follow him on twitter: @sengupta!
One of the striking observations about most “humanoid” robots today is how unhuman they actually are- particularly on the inside. They are filled with motors, gears and rigid joints that lead to an unnatural, non compliant manner of movement where the principles of motion differ appreciably from the way the human body works.
The ECCERobot project aims to change all that.
Built with bones, joints, muscles, and tendons, the ECCERobot shows a startling similarity with the internals of the human body. It mimics anthropomorphic features with rather simple mechanisms- muscles are built using strings and tendons with elastic rubber bands. The action of flexing the muscle is mimics using motors to pull the strings through spindles and pulleys- giving an appearance that Leonardo himself would be quite impressed with, as against more complicated mechanisms out there that use hydraulics or pneumatic air muscles.
The ECCERobot project aims at understanding human and artificial intelligence and applying it to innovations in robotics. Click through to the video to see an explanation and live demonstration by Dr. Rolf Pfiefer, director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Zurich:
For more information, visit the project page at http://eccerobot.org/
