The Nippon Institute of Technology, ZMP, Harada Vehicle Design, and ZNUG Design, have collaborated in the development of a humanoid robot. In 2004, NIT adopted thirty-five of ZMP’s e-nuvo WALK robots to ensure a one-to-one ratio of students to robot. This luxury robot is the size of an elementary school student. The small e-nuvo WALK is the educational version of the NUVO. The new luxury robot is just tall enough to interact with its environment in a very meaningful way. Students will show the robot at elementary and junior high schools, including care facilities. The idea is to improve student learning by raising consciousness of bipedal robot technology and its connection to math and physics. In addition, by going to care facilities the university students will be able to understand the real-world needs and applications for robots.
The e-nuvo HUMANOID is 126 centimeters high and weighs 15kg with twenty-one degrees of freedom. This luxury robot is powered using a Lithium Ion battery. The robot boasts outstanding features like gyro sensors, sensors for detecting impediment, accelerometers, distance sensors, cameras, and peizoelectric sensors. The e-nuvo can be controlled via PC or remote controller. With basic speech capabilities, the robot is able to serve as a teacher’s assistant. A built-in projector will allow it to display diagrams on a blackboard that might be hard to explain using just words. The robot can be programmed with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, which the students are using to test control algorithms for the e-nuvo WALK robots.
ZNUG Design’s Kota Nezu, the chief designer of the luxury robot, also worked on the i-unit personal transporter of Toyota, and ZMP’s RoboCar.
For sure, the robots will have even more significance in the future. For this reason alone, getting the younger generations used to their presence might be an extremely essential thing to do, since children will be likely the ones who will be living, working and playing alongside robots in the future.
The Japanese are thinking ahead and are rolling out this luxury robots like there’s no tomorrow. The e-NUVO is a small robot to demonstrate to young children the function and capabilities of robots.
The aim of the joint project is to allow the children to learn all about humanoid robots and get to see a robot in action themselves. This experiential approach is a lot more beneficial for their further development than just simply reading about robots from a text book or watching them on TV.
By extending such courses to other parts of the globe would be a grand idea. But since there is no better place on the Earth with such love and admiration for anything robot as Japan, it should be no surprise that this is the first choice for the deployment of the luxury robot known as e-NUVO. Also, should this project prove to be an extremely successful one, the fully-automated robotic instructors are just around the corner. The price tag for this luxury robot is about $132000
This article was written by Alexis.
Tags: e-nuvo robot