Toyota Violin Playing Partner Robot

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Toyota today announced its mobility transport robot and its violin playing robot. The violin playing robot is (obviously) a dextrous robot that has 17 joints in its arms. That allows for some pretty precise movement. The transport robot allows folks who have trouble with mobility to navigate things like stairs. Toyota said that practical development of both could be achieved in the 2010′s.

Outline of new Toyota Partner Robots

Name	Mobility Robot	Violin-playing Robot
Main use	Assistance with short-distance personal transport	Assistance with domestic duties and nursing and medical care
Features	Can negotiate steps with independent vertical movement of left and right wheels, allowing it to assist in short-distance personal mobility - Has a traveling range of 20km on one hour of battery charge - Travels at up to 6km/h and capable of traversing a 10-degree gradient - Capable of following a person, allowing it to function as a porter - Capable of avoiding obstacles to reach its owner and of autonomously transporting its owner	Easy-to-become-familiar-with bipedal robot, capable of performing a variety of tasks with its hands and arms - Able to achieve dexterous, human-like hand movement and arm strength when playing the violin - Able to achieve vibrato on a violin similar to that created by humans
Future plans	Practical use trial at a TMC-related facility from the latter half of 2008	Advancing further development of hand and arm flexibility in order to be able to use general purpose tools
Height	1,000mm (at rest); 1,100mm (in motion)	1,522mm
Weight	150kg	56kg
Photographs

Here’s a video of the violin player in action.

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