Demonstration Experiment of Automobile Driving by Tendon-driven Humanoids and Prosthesis Development toward Social Implementation of Robot Technology

—Social Cooperation Activity based on Industry-government-academia collaboration through Automobile Driving by Tendon-driven Humanoids—

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the demonstration experiments on the theme of driving an automobile with tendon-driven humanoids and the social cooperation activities under industry-government-academia collaboration. In the demonstration experiment by Kengoro conducted at Toyota City Hall, short-distance driving of the electric vehicle COMS by teleoperation was succeeded. In the demonstration experiment by Musashi conducted at Toyota Ecoful Town, in the stand-alone system setup composed of Musashi and COMS, the demonstration experiment was succeeded, in which COMS was stopped by the brake pedal operation after human recognition while the COMS drove forward. In addition, the development of prostheses is proceeding as an initiative to apply the knowledge obtained in the above demonstration experiments to the development of human assistance technology. As basic experiments of the developed prosthesis prototype, pedal operation and automobile driving with prosthesis were conducted, and a possibility of a prosthesis–vehicle cooperation was gained.