Expressive Robot Body Tilt and Head Motion With Fewer Joints
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional robots face a trade-off between performing emotional expressions through gestures and reducing size and cost, with installation-type robots having low degrees of freedom and humanoid robots having complex configurations that are difficult to miniaturize.
Innovation Solution
A robot design featuring a body that can pan and tilt, paired with arms that can move up and down, and a head that can pan and tilt, allowing for emotional expressions through non-verbal reactions by combining these movements with audio and LED outputs, while maintaining a relatively simple configuration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the degree of freedom of operation is increased to enable emotional expressions through gestures, then the robot can perform more expressive gestures, but the configuration becomes complex and size/cost reduction becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes unnecessary joints from the robot configuration. Specifically, it eliminates the need for complex shoulder, waist, and foot joints by designing a simplified body that can tilt forward and backward as a single unit. This extraction of essential movement functions allows emotional expressions to be achieved without the complexity of multiple articulated joints.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of achieving body orientation through multiple articulated joints (shoulder, waist, knee joints), the patent inverts the approach by using a single tilting body structure. The body tilts forward and backward as one unit, and the head pans and tilts to achieve the desired orientation, fundamentally reversing the conventional hierarchical joint structure.
2Device complexity
If the degree of freedom of operation is reduced to simplify configuration and reduce size/cost, then the robot structure becomes simpler, but the capability to perform emotional expressions through gestures is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the simplified body structure multi-functional. The tilting body mechanism serves multiple purposes: it enables forward and backward orientation for indicating directions, creates bowing motions for greeting expressions, and provides foundational movement for various emotional gestures. This multi-functionality allows limited joints to achieve diverse expressive capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges multiple joint functions into a single tilting body mechanism. Instead of separate shoulder, waist, and knee joints working independently, these functions are combined into one unified body tilt operation. The head then compensates with panning and tilting to achieve the required orientation, merging the functions of multiple joints into fewer components.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple joints are controlled appropriately to enable expressions like bowing, then emotional expressions can be performed, but the control system becomes complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the need for complex multi-joint coordination control. By eliminating shoulder, waist, and foot joints, the control system no longer needs to coordinate multiple independent joint movements. Instead, control is simplified to managing a single body tilt angle and head orientation, dramatically reducing control complexity while maintaining expression capabilities.
4Adaptability or versatility
If humanoid robot joints and configurations are made complex to achieve human-like gestures, then emotional expressions can be performed, but size and cost reduction becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the unnecessary humanoid joint structures (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle joints) that make humanoid robots large and complex. It retains only the essential tilting body and head orientation mechanisms, extracting the core functionality needed for emotional expressions while eliminating the bulky joint structures that prevent size reduction.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent inverts the humanoid joint architecture by replacing the distributed joint system with a centralized tilting body mechanism. Instead of human-like articulated limbs, the robot uses a simplified structure where the body tilts and the head orients, fundamentally inverting the conventional humanoid approach to achieve similar expressive goals with reduced complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A robot for performing an expression by a non-verbal reaction, includes a body including a lower part provided so as to be capable of panning and tilting with respect to a support point coupled to a placement surface; a pair of arms provided to side parts of the body so as to be capable of moving up and down; and a head provided to an upper part of the body so as to be capable of panning and tilting, wherein the non-verbal reaction includes a combination of the tilting and the panning of the body with respect to the support point and movement of the pair of arms or the head or any combination thereof.