Aid robot Hina – not so helpful but it tries really hard

After the production of many robotic toys has been stopped, we lost our faith in the current development of miniaturized humanoid robots. Besides the fact they are very entertaining, they could also be programmed to help us in simple everyday tasks. The fact that these robots are wanted is proved by a video posted a few days ago. It is a video about a small humanoid robot nicknamed Hina (although the robot creator claims it doesn’t have a name yet).

It is a little robot that makes coffee: preparing the cups and dripper, grinding the beans, filtering the coffee and pouring the finished product into a cup. The little humanoid robot is a creation of Mujaki and is based on Kondo’s KHR-2HV. We said it was based on Kondo’s robot since Mujaki needed 3 months to modify the parts around the joints and the head in order to make the robot more human-like.

It is 36 centimeters tall and it weights 1.1 kilograms. It has 21 servo motors which provide 21 degrees of freedom in its movement (6 in each leg, 4 in each arm and one in its neck). It has RCB-3J postural control which includes 2 gyroscopes and an acceleration sensor. It is charged by a 12V battery and it can be powered via a power cable (if it’s used as a hobby robot or during testing).

Although the walking of the robot isn’t programmed to run smooth (more elegant walking would demand greater amount of time), its movement when it is grinding the coffee or pouring water and waiting for more is incredibly human-like. At the end of the video it is shown when the robot made a mistake.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for similar robots in our homes for a while. Besides the need for further technical development regarding the joints and movement, the end of the video is a proof we’ll have to wait for greater artificial intelligence incorporated into these robots. That feature will enable robots to be more interactive, autonomous and able to know how and where to interact with the surrounding objects. We’ll also have to wait for the further progress of energy storing (or even providing) technology in order to make these robots useful.

Despite the fact the video was staged (since the robot is able to perform a great amount of sequences it was programmed to do), the popularity and positive response of people around the world show that companies shouldn’t stop the development and production of similar robots.