AIST HRP-5P

HRP-5P is the humanoid AIST built to do heavy work, announced on 27 September 2018. At 182 cm and 101 kg it is a different class of machine from the research platforms that preceded it: HRP-4 weighed 39 kg. The 37 degrees of freedom are distributed as two in the neck, three in the waist, eight in the arms, six in the legs and two in the hands. The headline demonstration was not a walk but a job. HRP-5P picked up a gypsum board measuring 1820 x 910 x 10 mm and weighing roughly 11 kg, carried it, held it against a wall frame and fastened it — autonomously, using its own 3D measurement of the surroundings taken at 0.3 Hz and object detection reported at 90 percent or better. It also handled plywood panels of 1800 x 900 x 12 mm and about 13 kg. Interior construction was chosen deliberately: it is physically punishing work, done in spaces designed for human bodies, in an industry short of labour. Two numbers explain how a humanoid manages that. Each arm held out horizontally can support 2.9 kg, against 1.3 kg for HRP-2 and 0.9 kg for HRP-4 — a threefold gain in the posture that matters when you are pressing a large sheet against a wall. And the joints deliberately exceed human range: the hips swing through 202 degrees where a person manages about 140, and the waist rotates 300 degrees against roughly 80 for a human. A robot that can twist further than a person can reach into positions a person would have to walk around to. HRP-5P is a research prototype, not a product; AIST built it to prove the approach and to give laboratories a platform for the control work such tasks need.

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