December 14, 2017 Conference paper Open Access

The design and validation of the R1 personal humanoid

Marco Randazzo; Anand Vazhapilli Sureshbabu; Pierpaolo Congiu; Vadim Tikhanoff; Giorgio Metta; Alessandro Scalzo; Hagen Lehmann; Lorenzo Natale; Alberto Cardellino; Roberto Cingolani; Ugo Pattacini; Daniele E. Domenichelli; Andrea Pagnin; Marco Maggiali; Luca Fiorio; Alberto Parmiggiani

In recent years the robotics field has witnessed an interesting new trend. Several companies started the production of service robots whose aim is to cooperate with humans. The robots developed so far are either rather expensive or unsuitable for manipulation tasks. This article presents the result of a project which wishes to demonstrate the feasibility of an affordable humanoid robot. R1 is able to navigate, and interact with the environment (grasping and carrying objects, operating switches, opening doors etc). The robot is also equipped with a speaker, microphones and it mounts a display in the head to support interaction using natural channels like speech or (simulated) eye movements. The final cost of the robot is expected to range around that of a family car, possibly, when produced in large quantities, even significantly lower. This goal was tackled along three synergistic directions: use of polymeric materials, light-weight design and implementation of novel actuation solutions. These lines, as well as the robot with its main features, are described hereafter.