TMSUK teamed up with Waseda University to create a robot capable of walking without the bent knee approach. Shinpo is the result of this experiment. Basically it takes a step by lifting up its whole leg, while putting all its weight on the other foot, like humans do. In result, the pelvis is rotated. Obviously modeled after the design of the human body, the robot is 5″, 158lbs, 39 DOF, and the speed capacity of 1.8kph. That is one dense robot.

Now displayed in Niigata Hall of Natural Science, Shinpo can take a rest. The exhibit also includes interactive touch screens, movies, and information stands to help the visitors understand Shinpo. If you want to know more about Shinpo, I’d advise you to take a trip to Japan.
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Recently announced by Waseda University’s Kobayashi Lab, SCHEMA is all about language and communication. Design-wise it has a friendly look that won’t scare humans away and two unfortunate hands. The humanoid upper body is mounted on a wheeled base, allowing the bot to move about with ease.

During the unveiling SCHEMA gave a pop quiz in to some humans in English. The results of said quiz are unknown.

[Impress]

This robot from Tokyo’s Waseda University is called Twendy-One. I’m fairly sure this robot was unveiled over a year ago, but for some reason it has resurfaced now. For Japan’s aging population, a robot like Twendy-One is just what the doctor ordered.
It has enough strength to support a human to sit up or stand, but is also dexterous enough to manipulate delicate objects. Its hands each have four silicone-covered fingers. Twendy-One’s dexterity is really impressive. “In a demonstration the robot picked up a loaf of bread without crushing it, served toast out of a toaster and delivered a food trays to someone in a wheelchair.” Breakfast in bed bot? Yes, please. Waseda mechanical engineering professor Shigeki Sugano said, “In our super-aging society, both strength and delicacy are required for robots. Twendy is the first robot that can meet those conditions.” This robot should be available for sale in 2015. See a video of Twendy-One below.
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This is the Waseda Talker-7 robot, and it makes strange vowel sounds through an actual biomechanical simulation of the way humans speak. And so it has a 19 degrees-of-freedom motorized system that replicates lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips, basically the whole system.

Takanishi labs isn’t interested in this tech for speaking robots. Nope. They want to build it into a cellphone for high-compression speech synthesis. So if you’re reading this in 2012 and your cellphone bitches at you on a daily basis, you have this guy to thank.

[Waseda Talker]

The flute playing robot from Waseda University in Japan may not blurt “Hey, Aqualung!” at the end of its performance, but it is still a really impressive robot. The latest version of the Waseda Flutist, WF-4RIV, was recently presented the IEEE’s BioRob 2008. From the Waseda site:

The research on the anthropomorphic flutist robot, started at Waseda University since 1990, has focused on three main goals:

- Clarifying the human motor control while playing the flute from an engineering point of view
- Enabling the communication with humans at the emotional level of perception (i.e. performing a duet with a professional flutist player)
- Proposing novel applications of humanoid robots (i.e. transferring flute playing skills to unskilled persons).

The current version of this bot has robotic components that correspond to almost all of a human flutist’s playing processes. Simulated lungs, vocal cords, and a tongue — all with variable movement — are just part of the technology. It also has CCD cameras for eyes, which can watch a human player and allow the robot to more accurately follow along by adjusting its speed, like it would need to do in a duet or ensemble.
And the robot can do more than just play, it can teach. A beginner flutist can learn from the robot, who would monitor the human’s technique and offer advice. Here’s a video of the robot playing Flight of the Bumblebee.

[Technology Review]