The Developmental Robotics Laboratory at Iowa State University is constructing an upper-torso humanoid robot with an expressive head.

Robot Design

Two Barrett Whole Arm Manipulators (WAMs) are used for the robot's hands. Each WAM has seven degrees of freedom.
In addition to that, each arm is equipped with a three-finger Barrett Hand. Each hand has seven degrees of freedom (two per
finger and one which controls the spread of fingers 1 and 2). Because fingers one and two can rotate by 180-degrees the robot
can perform a variety of grasps. In other words, even though the robot has only three fingers it can more than compensate for
that because it has not one but two opposable thumbs.


High resolution images of the concept art for the robot are posted here.

Facial Expressions

Head Animation

Check out the concept animation for the robot's head.
The animation was created by Izaak Moody (Virtual Reality Applications Center, Iowa State University).

Video Tutorials

Video tutorials on how to use the Barrett WAMs are posted here.

More Info

For more information about this project please contact Alex Stoytchev.