Albert Hubo Robot Design – A Tribute to Albert Einstein The research of humanoid robots includes multiple categories such as robot hardware development, artificial intelligence (AI), the realization of biped locomotion, and robot-human interaction. With the advancement of these researches and the rapid growth of technology, the researchers have started to focus on the human-friendly robot design.
It’s no wonder that the roboticists will come forward to pay a tribute to one of the pioneers of today’s technological advancement – Albert Einstein. In the honor of the centenary celebration of his announcement of the theory of special relativity, the Hanson robotics team and the KAIST HUBO team crafted a humanoid robot – Albert HUBO. Though the robot was launched back in 2005, it has not lost its relevance even today. And the aspiring roboticists seek inspiration from this design to develop something even better. As you may have well guessed, today our topic is Albert HUBO. We will take a brief tour of this exciting robot design. So stick to the end!
What’s so Special About it?
This is a common curiosity. With so many robotic variations coming to the forefront almost every year, what made this robot excite the roboticists and lead them to experiment on it even now! Well, according to many learned roboticists, Albert HUBO features the world’s first expressive human face along with walking biped robotic body! And guess what! As a tribute to Dr. Einstein, the roboticists chose Albert Einstein’s face for the robot design. Interesting, we say!
Robot Design – Structure and Appearance
The height and weight of Albert HUBO is 137 cm and 57 kg respectively. It has 66 degrees of freedom (DOFs) – 35 for body motions and 31 for head movements. It also has 3 servo motors for neck movements and 28 servo motors for the facial movements. The head part utilizes Frubber (flesh and rubber) material to exhibit a smooth artificial skin. It is a spongelike material that is quite akin to facial soft-tissue. From creases to wrinkles and amass – the material has a more skin-like texture than animatronics! The head of the robot is designed by the Hanson robotics team and the techniques of low power consumption and facial expressions are introduced on the basis of Philip K. Dick android. HUBO can showcase a full range of facial expressions including happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, etc. Further, the robot design consumes limited power – even less than 10W while exhibiting a full range of facial expressions.
Return of Einstein!
To produce the desirable impacts, the project team minimized the functional modification range and looked to introduce a new styling concept. The designing concept of HUBO is known as the “Return of Einstein”. The concept further included the resurrection of Einstein and his homecoming from the outer space. To execute this idea, a spacesuit was designed for the astronaut Einstein and it effectively hid the inner mechanical controllers and devices. The arms and legs, too, were covered with a spacesuit image.
Conclusion  Unveiled at the APEC summit at Basan, Korea in November 2005; Albert HUBO greeted schoolchildren, world leaders, and press media over the span of 5 days of presentation. But the craze of the design extended far beyond those 5 days and continued even today! It is indeed a milestone in the humanoid robot domain and inspired many roboticists to carry on research and build robots. After all, Albert Einstein is back, be it in a robotic form! We hope you have found the article interesting. Feel free to your thoughts in the comment box below.
Visit animatronicsoln.weebly.com/home/albert-hubo-robot-design-a-tribute-to-albert-einstein to know more.
Custom Entertainment Solutions INC 536 Pickett Cir, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115 Phone: +1 801-410-4869 Website: www.animatronicrobotics.com Email ID: support@customentsolutions.com