Toyota Partner Robots

Abstract

With the desire to know the mechanism of human motion and to realize a robot close to human, we started studying humanoid robots in 2000 and have developed a wide variety of humanoids. In pursuit of the dexterity like human, the musical performance humanoids were developed that could play the trumpet, drum, violin, and the like. Based on the concept of novel mobility to transport a person on uneven ground and stairs by walking bipedally, the mountable humanoid named “i-foot” was created. Inspired from human body structure, the wire-driven humanoid was designed and constructed, which imitated the human musculoskeletal mechanism. The interest in the dynamic and refined human running motion motivated us to build the high motion performance humanoid that could achieve fast-running locomotion. Then, focusing on joint flexibility of human, we are currently working on the torque-controlled humanoid composed of the developed drive module using a high-sensitivity torque sensor. This chapter presents the details about these humanoid robots and takes a look back over the history of our robot development.