Human friendly robotics - A challenge to new robot applications

Summary form only given, as follows. At the beginning of the 21 st century, an increase of the population of the elderly people is expected. For example, the statistics tell us that in Japan the population of the elderly people who are older than 65 years will reach to 25% of the total population in 2010. Such a society is supposed to cause several problems in our daily life. One of the most serious problems will be relating to the difficulty of supplying enough labor power in several areas. The other is to increase people who need some kinds of help in their daily life because of the increase of the aged people population who needs health care. One of ways to solve these problems will be to develop some kinds of machines like robots which can work in lieu of human and also provide some services to human. The human friendly robotic research has started to pursue such kinds of robots. There are so many robots used in manufacturing industry and so on. Those robots were for releasing people fkom hazardous, dirty and tedious works and were the machines which work in non human existing environment. Therefore, the robot can be a dangerous machine to human and is used with keeping strict regulations for human safety. Human friendly robot will be defined as the robot which can work together with quite ordinary people in the same environment safely, friendly and efficiently. To develop such a robot, there are many problems which have to be solved, like how the robot structure should be designed to guarantee human safety, how the human-robot interface should be designed and so on. This talk will introduce several current research activities in human friendly robotics researches. There are many robot applications we can consider in human environment. In the talk, two types of human friendly robots will be pointed out. The first is the robot which can help some physical tasks. The second is the robot which can provide some emotional impression through its behavior which makes human delight. Health care and welfare, power assist for several tasks and medical robots will be typical important applications of the first type. The second type will be something like pet robots and so on. This talk will address several examples of the developed products concerning those applications and mention what is the technology to be needed to produce more advanced products. Finally, the current statw of humanoid robotics technology will be addressed. Humanoid robotics researches have been popular since the beginning of 1990s. From the observation of the recent technology advancement, some technology in this area seems to be mature to use it practically in the near future. Humanoid robotics research itself includes both aspects of fundamental and application researches. From the application point of view, the humanoid robot will be a candidate of efficient human fiiendly robot, because the shape makes us imagine the human friendliness. With this in mind, the possibility of the humanoid robot as a type of human friendly robot will be discussed. Also, the Japanese national project "Humanoid Robotics Project" will be introduced.