Bionic robots and humanoid robots will be a key area for robotics research and development

As one of the most important frontier technologies in the field of high technology, robot technology has a forward-looking and leading character, which plays an important role in academic research, industrial upgrading, cultivating innovation consciousness, safeguarding national security and leading the development of economic society in the future. At present, the technology breakthrough in the field of robotics has widened the road for the application of the robot, which has covered the defense, aerospace, industrial production, service, medical rehabilitation, education and even ordinary family life, and a new research climax and development opportunity of robot technology has come.

So what will robots look like in the future? We believe that bionic robots and humanoid robots will become the focus of robotics research and development. With the support of science and technology projects such as Outstanding Youth Fund of National Natural Science Foundation, major instrument special, key fund, face fund, National 863 Program project and national major science and Technology special project, our country has carried out a series of research on intelligent robot technology in the field of scientific frontier problem and national important demand.

In robotics research, the first thing to mention is the robot's visual ability. Robot vision Sensor is an important means for robot to perceive the outside world, it is one of the core symbols of machine intelligence, and visual ability is an important guarantee to realize robot autonomous operation, and it is the core support of robot intelligence. The Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has carried out in-depth research on visual system calibration, visual measurement and positioning, real time vision, active vision and multi-mode visual control, and has obtained a series of innovative theoretical methods, and formed multiple visual prototypes and experimental systems, which have been applied in the fields of industry and medical rehabilitation.

The inspiration and inspiration from nature is of special significance to the development of robotics, and it is an important way to solve the problems faced by robotics, and also the main source of robot intelligence. Bionic robot is the key to the design and control of the complex operation and the extreme working environment by imitating and innovating the biological structure and the intrinsic mechanism. The research contents of Bionic robot include Bionic machine fish, playing table tennis robot and so on.

The bionic robotic fish is built on the basis of continuous and periodic deformation of fishes under the condition of simplifying the propulsion movement of fishes. Through the observation of fish movement and the experiment of bionic robot fish swimming, the researchers found that the fluctuation of the center of fish body around the direction axis will increase the lateral perturbation force, reduce the thrust and direction stability, that is, the fish's own line density distribution has a great influence on its motion performance. Therefore, the concept of "fundamental wave" which contains the description of deformation and line density is proposed, and the model of fish body fluctuation is established according to the fundamental theory, and the steady moving propulsion control method of bionic robot fish is put forward on the basis of considering the influence of line density fully.

In addition to the bionic robotic fish, the researchers designed a ping-pong-playing robot for fast-moving table tennis. This kind of robot is based on an effective table tennis tracking algorithm. The algorithm combines the difference frame method, the dynamic window and the run-length coding, so that the real-time performance of the algorithm is guaranteed. According to the crescent of the table tennis, the GSP algorithm is put forward, and the central coordinate of table tennis is precisely positioned to ensure the accuracy of the three-dimensional coordinates.

Other representative achievements include medical rehabilitation robots, robot coordination and control, and patrol robot.

Although with the development of information technology, some modern robots have the action of humanoid, but they do not have human thinking. The research on the information processing mechanism of human brain, especially the cognitive mechanism of human brain, will inspire the development of intelligent robot and intelligence control in the future, and make the intelligent robot more like human and can provide better service for human beings.

The future research on robots should be based on the exploration of human brain information processing mechanism and thinking, and the development of neural robots. In order to simulate the human brain system as the central nerve, to realize the coordination and control of multi-channel information processing, the robot is used as the carrier to inspire and promote the next generation of humanoid robots.

The research of humanoid robot is a seamless fusion of human brain simulation system, electronic neural network, brain computing technology and robot platform with humanoid action. Based on the robot platform with human appearance (including limb and muscle tissue, etc.) and action, the practice, application of visual, auditory, thinking and movement multi-channel information processing and coordination to achieve a new type of human neural computing and control.

The humanoid neural robot, which is based on the cranial nerve simulation system, will be a breakthrough approach to the real human beings in many aspects such as cognitive ability, information processing ability, reasoning decision-making ability, limb movement and so on, and it will be helpful to break through the traditional control theory when dealing with complex tasks. The interaction between humanoid robots will also contribute to the study and application of thinking-centric human community behavior. The realization of humanoid neural robot can not only simulate and reveal the nature of human and its behavior, but also promote the application of humanoid robot in industry, national defense, home and other fields.

This study will produce a humanoid neural robot platform simulating human brain system. The robot platform has the ability of human-like vision, human-like hearing, human-like thinking and human-like action, and can be applied in key fields. According to the actual distribution of muscles and joints of human body, the simulation platform of human motion control is established, and the human brain Simulator is the core control system to realize fast and accurate decision and motion response to complex task. In addition, it will develop and realize the ability of interactive learning and complex task solving.

Service Robot

Service robot is the technical support for our country to cope with the aging society and promote the development of people's livelihood. Our country has developed a series of robot prototype in the fields of medical treatment, helping the old handicap and so on, and entered the demonstration application stage. According to the International Robot Alliance Statistics, 2011 Annual Global Service robot sales of about 2.5 million units, the market value of more than 4.2 billion U.S. dollars, is growing at 20%-30% speed, to 2015 sales will reach 8.5 billion U.S. dollars. Service robot is expected to be one of the most potential growth points in robotics field.

Lower extremity rehabilitation Robot: This is a horizontal lower limb rehabilitation robot system, designed including treadmill and pedal training, such as passive training, not only from the leg mechanical drive patients lower extremity passive exercise training, can also allow patients to carry out active rehabilitation training.

Minimally Invasive Vascular Interventional Surgery Robot: This specialized surgical robot system for vascular intervention mainly includes four parts, such as delivery device, doctor control end, position control manipulator and three-dimensional image navigation, which can assist doctors to realize the precise transportation and placement of complete set of interventional instruments by remote control operation. So that doctors in the process of surgery to avoid X-ray radiation, with high precision, good control, and effectively reduce the difficulty of operation and other characteristics. At the same time, aiming at the image navigation of minimally invasive vascular interventional robot, this paper realizes the key techniques of traditional C-arm real-time image acquisition, C-arm system calibration and image correction, and three-dimensional reconstruction of vascular model based on Double view.

Industrial robot

Industrial robot is the technological means to upgrade the manufacturing industry and change from Big country to great power. At present, the development mode of China's manufacturing industry has met with severe challenges, on the one hand, the western countries represented by the United States and Europe began to carry out manufacturing backflow, on the other hand, in China's sustained economic growth at the same time, labor supply gradually decreased, labor costs rose rapidly; The shackles of low product value-added, per capita labor productivity is only 1/6 of the United States, unit GDP energy consumption for the world average level twice times more. Industrial robots have replaced the labor force from "alternative" to "necessary".

High-voltage transmission line patrol robot: can replace the artificial transmission line detection, maintenance and other tasks, on the line can also achieve the removal of ice and other work.

Bionic robot

Bionic robot Fish: The Water dynamics and aerodynamics analysis and modeling method, the optimal body structure and the drive system design method, the high speed motion of the robot dolphin and the precise attitude control method, the jump water control method based on the sensor feedback are studied for the leap water control of the robotic dolphin. Air attitude estimation and adjustment control method, water entering attitude control method, etc. Finally realized the machine dolphin jump water control, so that the machine dolphin only rely on their own power, completely jumped out of the water, and achieved 3 times times the maximum length/second speed.

Play Table tennis Robot: This is a rectangular coordinate robot with five degrees of freedom. Using the intelligent camera and PC to form the Vision measurement system, the control system of the robot is constituted by another PC and motion control card. 50 consecutive rounds of sparring have now been achieved.

Humanoid robot

Visual robot: The neural computing model of vision is established by introducing the associative memory and learning mechanism. On the basis of the human upper limb, a biomechanical simulation model of neuromuscular-muscular joint was established, and the related biological simulation experiments were carried out.

Human brain Simulator: This is the "central nervous system" of humanoid neural robots. It combines with the robot system with humanoid action, and realizes the cooperative control of perception, thinking and action with the help of the robot as the carrier and the perceptual input of visual and auditory.

In particular, the integration of robot vision and auditory perceptual information will be realized, which provides integrated perceptual input for the thinking stage.　According to the command request and perceptual input received by the robot, the collaborative thinking Simulation system realizes the collaborative processing based on the perceptual information, background knowledge and logical thinking, and the final thinking result will realize the action output through the cooperative humanoid action subsystem. (The author is a researcher of Institute of Automation, CAS)

Lower extremity rehabilitation Robot

Minimally Invasive vascular Interventional surgery Robot

The figure shows the first generation of patrol robot.

The figure shows the second generation of patrol robot.

The diagram shows the third generation of patrol robot, which uses the two-arm bionic mechanism, the robot arm moves through the symmetrical straight line, imitates the spider's crawling way to cross the obstacle, can realize the whole line inspection.

Bionic Robot Fish

Bionic Robot Fish

Playing table tennis robot

Visual robot

Human brain Simulator

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)