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.