Understanding Humanoid Intelligence via Artificial Muscles and Skin

Human intelligence comes about through strong coupling between body, 
brain and environment.  Therefore, it is very hard for us to understand 
intelligence embedded in our body.  To understand it, one approach is 
building anthropomorphic body and testing hypothesis that we have on our 
intelligence.  In this way, we also build up an intelligent humanoid 
that has better performance than conventional "hard" robots in the sense 
of engineering.

In the presentation, I introduce several projects utilizing artificial 
muscles and soft skin.  Through the experiments, we will see how we can 
build humanoid intelligence, and the way to understand human.
(1) Bouncing locomotion of an anthropomorphic monopod
(2) Walking and jumping of an anthropomorphic biped
(3) Emergence of bipedal walking
(4) Bionic robot hand with soft skin