On the development of the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII with RCH-1

Among social infrastructure technologies, robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role in solving the problems of both decrease of birth rate and increase of elderly people in the 21st century, specially (but not only) in Japan where the average age of the population is rising faster than any other nation in the world. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, human hands play a fundamental role in exploration, communication and interaction with objects and other persons. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant´Anna, Pisa, Italy, and ROBOCASA, Tokyo, Japan. At first, the integration of the artificial hand RTR-2 of ARTS lab with the humanoid robotic platform WE-4R during ROBODEX2003 is presented. Then, the paper show the preliminary results of the development of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-I (ROBOCASA Hand No.1) and its integration into a new humanoid robotic platform, named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II).