Dexterous motions of Japanese dance by a miniature humanoid robot

First, we discuss about requirements for humanoid robots of Japan. Here, Japanese dance is one of important Japanese cultures. Also, there are many people unfamiliar with Japanese dance in other countries. If they hope to learn Japanese dance, it is very important to instruct such people in Japanese dance. There have been several studies about the system for imitating human dances by using a robot. In this paper, we discuss the availability of robots for the instruction of Japanese dance. Typically, a classical Japanese dance is composed with fluent motions. Therefore, a robot needs to shift the center of gravity smoothly in Japanese dancing. In such a case, we found that `Suri-Ashi´ motion was effective. In this study, we focused on the realization of `Suri-Ashi´ motion. We researched about `Suri-Ashi´ motion from various points. Especially, we investigated points for implementing `Suri-Ashi´ motion to a miniature humanoid robot. Finally, we carried out experiments of dexterous motions in Japanese dancing by using a miniature humanoid robot.