Realization of Standing of the Musculoskeletal Humanoid Kotaro by Reinforcing Muscles

We have been studying on how to realize robots that have physical flexibility and redundant multiple degrees of freedom. How to control the machine is still a problem and even maintaining standing was difficult. After joining the Prototype Robot Exhibition at the EXPO´05 with our novel musculoskeletal humanoid `Kotaro,´ we have made various improvements to the robot. This paper describes the improvements, and presents some experiments. The highlight is realization of standing itself, based on a concept of ´reinforceable muscle humanoid,´ which we have proposed