Weekly Lunch Seminar by Jimmy Or on March 10

The 5th Lunch Seminar

We had the fifth instalment of the weekly lunch seminar by Prof. Jimmy Or.

Prof. Jimmy Or

Prof. Jimmy Or

Lunch Seminar

Lunch Seminar

Date and time: Tuesday, March 10th, from 12:20.

Place: Faculty of Science Conference Room (Science Building 3, Room 207-209)

Speaker: Jimmy Or

Title:
Towards the Development of Flexible Spine Humanoid Robots

Abstract:
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in humanoid robots. Although advanced robots such as the Sony QRIO and Honda ASIMO are able to walk and climb stairs, their movements are not as natural looking as they could be. In order for the next generation of humanoid robots to move more like humans, it is necessary for them to have a higher degree of freedom in the body trunk.

To address this deficient area of humanoid robotics research, I started a new research project on flexible spine humanoid robots at Waseda University in 2003. As a first step, I developed a unique, full-body flexible spine humanoid robot (WBD-1) as an experimental platform. Inspired by the rhythmic and wave-like motions commonly seen in lamprey swimming and in belly dancing, I investigated the possibility of controlling the spine of this robot using the lamprey central pattern generator (CPG). In this talk, I briefly introduce my research on spine robots and belly dancing.