Dancing Robots Save Japan

Posted 14 Jan 2005 at 23:32 UTC by steve

Katsushi Ikeuchi and other researchers at Tokyo University have turned to humanoid robots to find a way to preserve Japanese cultural heritage. The number of humans that know and practice Japanese traditional dancing is declining rapidly and many Japanese have seen it only at local festivals. Using Kawada's HRP-2 Promet humanoid, a $484,000 robot, Ikeuchi has painstakingly found ways to reproduce the physical moves of Japanese dance in a robot. The movements of live dancers were recorded in much the same way used in Hollywood for special effects. For more details on the problems involved in creating realistic dancing motion in humanoid robots, there are a number of research papers on the topic. For photos and video of HRP-2 Promet operating backhoes and doing other non-dance things, see the plyojump.com website.

Still too expensive, posted 15 Jan 2005 at 12:43 UTC by motters » (Master)

These sorts of robot are still too expensive, and rely upon heavy duty computing power. Even if they are able to carry out some useful tasks the cost of using a robot like this is still far higher than the equivalent cost of employing a human.

I think something more like a big version of Robosapien V2 would be more practical and affordable, especially if it could be wirelessly teleoperated.

Impressive, posted 17 Jan 2005 at 13:21 UTC by c6jones720 » (Master)

Its very impressive but still needs a little bit of work. Looking at that video though, I'm sure it wont be long until complex tasks like that will be performed by humanoid robots. Like motters said, they are expensive and I can visualise something like oversized lower cost robots like robosapiens doing EOD work or something like that.