evolved, and today, robotics is in many different areas of application, from robots
working with a surgeon to operate on a human to robots assisting works to carry a heavy
load to robots in entertainment to robots in many different fields.
This is what is really exciting about robotics, the fact that robotics is getting closer and
closer to the human. We are using the robot now to carry, to lift, to work, to extend the
[inaudible] of the human through haptic interaction. You can feel a virtual environment
or a real environment. I’m not sure if everyone knows what haptics is. Haptics is a Greek
word that describes the sense of touch. From haptics – here are the hands of the surgeon,
and the surgeon is still operating.
He is operating from outside but essentially, the robot is inserted and instead of opening
the body, we have a small incision through which we introduce the robot, and then we do
the operation and the recovery is amazing. A few days of recovery and the patient is out
of the hospital. The operation through haptics or through master devices are to control –
here is the surgeon working far away, operating underwater or interacting with a physical
environment in homes or in the factory.
Another interesting thing about robotics is that because robotics focuses on articulated
body systems, we are able now to use all of these models and techniques to model human
and to create a digital model of the human that can, as we will see later, can be simulated
and controlled to reproduce actual behavior captured from motion capture devices about
human behavior.
Also with this interaction that we are creating with the physical world, we are going to be
able to use haptic devices to explore physical worlds that cannot be touched in reality.
That is, we cannot for instance go to the atom level, but we can simulate the atom level
and, though haptic devices, we can explore that world.
The most exciting area in robotics is reproducing devices that look like the human and
behave like life, animals or humans. A few years ago, I was in Japan. This is from
Yokohama, and in Yokohama, there is [inaudible]. It brings thousands and thousands of
people to see all the latest in robotics. This was a few years ago. You could see
[inaudible] here, which is the latest in a series of development [inaudible] following P2
and P3 robots.
In addition, you could see most of the major players in humanoid robotics. Has anyone
seen this one? This is the Sony robot. I think I have a video. Let’s see if it works. The
Sony is balancing on a moving bar, and this is not an easy task. You can imagine the
requirements in real time control and dynamic modeling and all the aspects of this. This
was accomplished a few years ago. We brought this robot to Stanford a few years ago,
and they did a performance here. It was quite exciting to see this robot dancing and
performing.
There are a lot of different robots, especially in Asia, Japan and Korea. EIST built a
series of robots, HRP, HRP1 and HRP2, and they are building and developing more