Generating human-like social motion in a human-looking humanoid robot: The biomimetic approach

The objective was to generate human-like social motion in a human-looking humanoid robot following the biomimetic approach. We thought that the robot´s motion should be human-like for their social acceptance and it could be done if and only if (i) the robot appearance is made human-like, and (ii) human kinematics is implemented in the robot to generate the motion. To address the above, we introduced a very new custom-made human-looking humanoid robot including our in-house software and communication platform to animate the robot. We then studied and analyzed human´s hand waving motion (a representative social motion) using a 3D motion capture system and implemented the human´s kinematic and temporal information into the robot to generate the human-like hand waving. We then studied and analyzed the robot´s hand waving motion using the same motion capture system and compared them with that of the human. The subjects also subjectively evaluated the robot´s hand waving motion for its human-likeness. The results showed that the robot´s motion, which was inspired by the human, was almost same as the human motion. The findings will help develop socially accepted humanoid robots with a proper combination of human-like performances and appearances.