Watch: Japanese Humanoid Robot Does Pushups, Crunches To Help Science

Humanoid robots running around like us was a distant dream just 20 years back. The growth of technology in the last decade has filtered through to innovation in every sphere, including robotics. Imagine walking down to your local gym to see a robot out lifting even the biggest guys in the gym.

Sounds cool, right?

Well, this could very soon turn into a reality thanks to scientists from Tokyo, who have created a robot capable of very human-like movements.

The team of researchers from the University of Tokyo is developing robots capable of making human-like movements, including doing exercises like push-ups, crunches, neck stretches, chin-ups, calf stretching.

Robots are usually associated with chunky movements, which are not as fluid or fast as ours. But the Tokyo team has created two robots — named Kengoro and Kenshire — based on how the human body works, recreating the entire musculoskeletal system using aluminium and plastic, and synthetic joints.

One glance at these futuristic looking bots will show how similar their structure is to a human’s muscle and skeletal system.

They have rib cages and a spine along with very human-proportioned hands and stocky feet. The robots were given a sensory nervous system which helps them maintain balance during strenuous exercise. Also, using AI (artificial intelligence) these bots have been programmed to think on their own and not wait for continuous instruction.

These robots actually sweat like humans during exercise too.

The robot was given human-like proportions to study the musculoskeletal structure, sensory nervous system, and methods of information processing in the brain in humans but replacing test subjects with highly human-like robots instead.

The developers say their humanoids can help researchers understand how humans move during sport, aid in the development of artificial limbs, advance the design of crash-test dummies and even provide a realistic scaffold for the growth of human tissue grafts.

The robot called Kengoro was modelled around a 13-year-old Japanese male. It is 167 cm (5 feet, 8 inches) tall and weighs 56.5 kg (124.5 pounds); it is also equipped with five-fingered hands and feet that can naturally touch the ground, and can even sweat. This is just the water used to cool the computer system and is emitted just as humans emit sweat from pores.

“A sponge-like metal material, created using a 3-D printer, is used in part of the skeletal structure,” The Japan Times report quoted lead researcher Yuki Asano as saying . “We have designed a cooling system that makes water seep through the material and evaporate.”

The robot is seen in a video performing a range of physical exercises like push-ups and crunches. Scientists are looking to observe these bots and try and study their behaviour to help understand human skeletal framework and muscle stress during strenuous physical activity.

There are several concerens with the growth of such sophisticated robots who are slowly beggining to be more human-like in appearance and fuctionality. Robots have already entered every industry known to man, including the sex industry.

There is a growing concern among scientists and civilians alike about how AI combined with the stregnth, durability and expendability. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX is a huge believer that AI will spell doom to human-kind. Several prominent figures share the same view.

Understanding the potential of this technology and being careful from the first step onwards will be crucial to keeping the impending explosion of AI-supported human life, under check.

Kenshiro was created between 2011 and 2014. Kengoro, the improvised version was developed from 2015.