A Soft Human-Interactive Robot RI-MAN

Our goal is to create advanced engineering systems such as a soft human interactive robot. The robot developed here is named RI-MAN. RI-MAN exhibits the skill and ability to realize human care and welfare tasks. RI-MAN can search out a specific person in real time by fuing audio and visual information, and understand human speech based on a sound recognition function. In addition, RI-MAN's body is coverd with soft touch sensors, and RI-MAN can react to the amplitude and location of external forces. Using all these sensor functions, RI-MAN can successfully follow human commands and hold up a dummy of the same size as an adult human. RI-MAN will become an invaluable partner robot.