Purdue, Japanese Researchers to Create More Human-Like Robots
From: Purdue University News - 11/08/2004

Purdue University electrical and engineering professor C.S. George Lee says
the purpose of a four-year National Science Foundation-funded collaboration
between Purdue and Japan's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is
"to give humanoid robots the ability to behave and move more like human
beings, to have the skill-learning capabilities of humans." Lee says the
engineering accomplishments of humanoid robot technology are undercut by the
machines' stiff, mechanical motion, and the collaborative project aims to
teach humanoid robots how to rapidly learn new movements so they can offer
more assistance to people. The initiative will involve three-dimensional
recording of human movements by Purdue researchers, using minuscule wire
"receivers" positioned strategically on the subject's body as he or she moves
in a low-level magnetic field. The movements will cause the receivers to
generate a current that will be tracked by lab computers, allowing Lee and
fellow Purdue professor Howard Zelaznik to perceive fundamental movement
patterns from which mathematical models could be extracted. These models
could then be applied to software that allows robots to carry out
sophisticated movements by integrating more "primitive" skills. "We'd like to
see whether we can figure out if there is a computationally reasonable way
for a robot to take a set of skills and combine them into new skills rather
efficiently, flexibly and quickly," says Zelaznik. The $900,000 NSF grant for
the project was provided under the foundation's Information Technology
Research program. 

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/041108.Lee.robots.html

Links:
Howard N. Zelaznik, PhD
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/hk/faculty/zelaznik.howard.htm

Purdue, Japanese Researchers To Create More Human-Like Robots
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041109235501.htm

Researchers to Create More Human-like Robots
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2542536