Transformer-DARwIn: A miniature humanoid for potential robot companion

Robot companionship has become more popular in past years. However, humanoid gait might be somewhat unstable for these applications. Even with miniature humanoids, falls occur frequently. Thus, wheel attachments have been added onto a miniature humanoid, so it can move faster and with more stability than walking. In addition, with such attachments a robot can switch from walking to rolling when necessary. DARwIn-OP is a humanoid robot that has been used as an experimentation and performance evaluation platform. This paper discusses preliminary work regarding robot companionship applications by using a miniature humanoid capable of fetching different toys based on voice command.