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ARMAR Humanoid Robot For The Kitchen

ARMAR, a kitchen robot with the domestic touch, will be demonstrated in Munich this week. Not only is ARMAR handy in the kitchen, it also is designed to work closely with human beings, unlike industrial robots which do not need such exacting constraints.


(ARMAR robot for the kitchen)

ARMAR is designed to be careful with dishes and capable of locating and picking up cups and glasses placed anywhere within reach. According to engineer Helge Björn Kuntze of the institute for Fraunhofer for information and processing (IITB) in Karlsruhe, ARMAR is able to plug an electrical applicance into the wall and put dishware in the dishwasher.

The ARMAR humanoid robot consists of the following elements:

  • An autonomous mobile wheel-driven platform
  • A body with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF)
  • Two arm system with grippers
  • Stereo camera in the head
  • Stereo camera also in the hand
  • ARMAR sits on a mobile platform, which consists of two active driven wheels fixed in the middle of an octagonal board and another two wheels as passive stabilisers (max velocity about 1m/s).
The anthropomorphic body of the robot is placed on the mobile platform and supports a rotation of about 330 degrees. It also can be bent forward, backward and sideways. The total weight of ARMAR is about 45kg.

The robot is designed with human proportions to mix well with human beings. The physical structure and kinematics of the robot's arms are intended to match those of human arms.

ARMAR should work well with the kitchen korner from William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru:

He got up. The Kitchen Korner, sensing him, woke. The fridge door slid aside. A single ancient leaf of lettuce sagged blackly through the plastic rods of one white shelf. A half-empty bottle of Evian on another. He held his cupped hands above the lettuce...

"Hey there," the fridge said. "You've left me open." Laney said nothing.
(Read more about the kitchen korner)

If you like real-world robots that get along well with humans, you'll like these friendly bots:

Read a bit more here and in this translated article.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/23/2006)

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