Kondo KHR-1 humanoid robot
Japanese company Kondo introduced their KHR-1 programmable humanoid robot in June 2004. KHR-1 is supplied as a kit and built using digital servo motors for each joint connected together in a human-like frame, the robot can perform complex movements with speed and precision and is easily programmed with a computer.Kondo are a leading producer of digital servo motors, in around 2002 the company noticed high sales of a particular one of their low-weight high-power remote controlled servos that was commonly used in RC cars & planes, and realised that people were using them to build humanoid robots. 
This style of servo-controlled humanoid robots, originally produced by hobbyists in Japan & Korea, led to a robot martial arts tournament called Robo-One which is held regularly and televised in Japan/Korea. Contenders bring their robots along to fight against each other in wrestling & martial arts events. Each robot is different - many are based on a KHR-1 or similar kit, and then modified heavily in order to get an edge over the opponent, and for the sake of advancing robot technology.
The KHR has 17 servos giving it 17 "Degrees of Freedom (DOF)" a term commonly used in robotics circles to describe how many moving joints the robot has. Each servo has its own flash memory to store it's particular parameters & configuration. The robot has it's own 8-bit CPU controller with 128kb of memory to store pre-programmed movement sequences, and an interface to connect to a computer.
Programming the robot is done using the "Catch & Playback" method, by simply moving the robot's physical joints into the desired position, save the first position in the software then move the robot into another position and save this second position (and continue saving a sequence of poses), the software calculates the transistion between the saved positions and you can set the speed of the transition. The robot can then play out the movement, moving to the first position, and then moving it's servos to achieve the second position at the designated speed and so on until it has played out the movement you set. There can be as many positions as you like, with different transition speeds, this method of programming seems very user-friendly and you can really get the robot to do just about anything you can think of - including cartwheels, rolls, dance moves, getting up from the floor, martial arts moves, and more.
Kondo's second generation robot, the KHR-2HV, is a much improved robot with a stronger frame and more powerful servos. The kit is available for just £449.29 from RoboSavvy. In late 2006 a new robot was released, the KHR-1HV, which has 2 additional servos in each of its hips allowing it to rotate each leg individually, giving 19 Degrees of Freedom (DOF), this new kit is certainly the most advanced of the kit robots but has limited support and the manual is not in English, although it is similar to the 2HV manual and you can use the pictures in the Japanese one.
Since the KHR-1, there have been a few other popular small servo kit robots released, including the Robonova-1, the Bioloid and the new Manoi robots. Email this story to a friend  Add this link to:            
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