Effect of the cervical structure on the operability of teleoperated humanoid head

Android robots: humanoids with realistic human appearance can serve as a telecommunication medium (teleoperated humanoids). We have anticipated that if teleoperated humanoids acquired with not only their human appearances, but also an ability of to realize human-like head motions, the telecommunication and the system operability through androids would greatly improve. To realize such human-like head motions of teleoperated humanoids, we referred to the human cervical spine mechanism, and accordingly aimed to verify how the cervical structure of teleoperated humanoids would affect the operability in our remote-controlling system. First, we developed a multiple joint cervical structure for our teleoperated humanoid, and then, we evaluated of if the multiple joint cervical structure realized human-like head motions and improved its system operability through experiments from the aspects of its eyesight targeting performance and subjective impressions. Finally, we concluded that our proposed multiple joint cervical structure of the teleoperated humanoid enabled to increase the system operability in comparison with the prototype system: with either a top joint cervical structure or a bottom joint one. We anticipate that this work will contribute to the future development and implementation of telecommunication by humanoids.