Humanoids
16-864
Tuesdays 6-9pm, NSH 3002
Spring 2001

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The goal of this graduate seminar is to survey the field of humanoids, including both virtual humans and humanoid robotics. We will try to match studies of how people actually work with complementary research on humanoids. Each session will include a topic based discussion and a case study of a particular robot or system. Ideally the end product will be a list of research questions and potential thesis topics.

POTENTIAL TOPICS

• Action
  • Legged locomotion and balance.
  • Arm movement.
  • Gaze and auditory orientation control.
  • Facial expression.
  • Hands and manipulation.
  • Sound and speech generation.
  • Mechanisms.
• Perception
  • Motion capture/Learning from demonstration.
  • Human activity recognition using vision, touch, sound.
  • Vision.
  • Tactile Sensing.
  • Audition.
  • Speech recognition.
  • Face perception.
• Thinking.
  • Models of emotion and motivation.
• Performance.
  • Perception of motion.
  • What is special about anthropomorphic characters?
  • Interaction
  • Safety and robustness
  • Applications
• What next?

POTENTIAL CASE STUDIES

• Honda Robots (ASIMO)
• Sony Dog and Biped (mpg1, mpg2).
• Cog, Kismet, ...
• Robonaut.
• ATR/Sarcos robot.
• Waseda robots..
• MITI's Humanoid Robotics Project
• PINO
• M1
• Hiroshi face robot
• more
• Jack
• BDI Guy