Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 05, 2019 - June 08, 2019
Japanese “Bunraku” puppets have attracted people by showing their impressive and emotional action, even though the structures and motions are different from human beings. The exaggerating and omission of motions, which include expansion and contraction, and high frequency shakings of the body, are effectively utilized to express humanistic emotions. This paper proposes novel robot mechanisms to reproduce functions and motions of Bunraku puppets by extracting the mechanism of a Bunraku puppet. The proposed configuration of the robot has capability of expanding and contracting of its neck and chest. The shoulders, arms and hands are mounted on the both sides of the waist, which mimics the Bunraku puppeteers to realize expansion and contraction of both arms, and at the same time it contributes to drastically reduce the weight of upper body to realize high frequency shaking. Translate motion of the shoulder, which independently moves from the neck, realizes much emotional action.
