Sharif Digital Repository

Humanoid robots are robots that are similar in appearance and performance to humans. Designing and controlling a humanoid robot to perform such supposedly ordinary tasks as walking, running, writing, talking, driving, riding bikes, and the like is such a difficult task from the control point of view that it seems to be quite ambitious and inaccessible. In this thesis, the previous efforts of scientists and researchers are presented using different intelligent controllers. Additionally, the dynamic analysis of selective biped (seven-link biped robot) is illustrated. In this research, we present a method to control the walking of the biped robot while retaining stability. In this method the... 

Trying both to understand the brain and to emulate some of its strengths has been one of the greatest human desires since ancient times. One of these amazing abilities is recognizing via vision. As a result, image recognition has been turned into one of the most attractive areas of research in Computer Vision field since recently. The challenging problem begins to rise where occlusion, scale, rotation and various light conditions contribute and manipulate the paradigm of image recognition. Although recognitions with these challenging problems are some of the capabilities that the brain has, but these are not all. One of the remarkable abilities of the brain is to recognize concepts through... 

In the resent years, social robots has been emerged to improve the interactions between humans and robots. These intractions are intended more in human environment. So the reasonable performance of such robots is achieved if robots’ motion; become similar to humans. Hence, despite the complexities of manufacturing and controlling the bipedal and humanoid robots, the researches on this class of robots are still in continuing more and more. In 2013, the humanoid robot, R-50, made by Robokind Company, was purchased by the Mechanical Engineering Department of Sharif University of Technology. This robot was named Mina and to be used in the researches on the treatment of autism patients. Although... 

This thesis covers the design and realization steps of the upper-body of RASA, a social humanoid robot to be used as a Persian sign language (PSL) teaching assistant. In the design and fabrication processes, three main requirments is defined. First requirement is the robot's ability to perform PSL. The second one is for the robot to posess the characteristics required for a social robot interacting with targeted groups of people. And the third one is for the robot to be realized with minimum required cost. Further design guidelines are generated based on these three requirements. Analysing the structure of Persian sign language, the kinematic layout of the upper-body of the robot, regarding... 

In this thesis, the purpose of the research was to develop a four-wheeled Mobile platform (Lower body) with three degrees of freedom for a humanoid robot upper body which is called RASA. RASA robot was designed and constructed for helping kids who have speech and hearing impairments. The objective was to develop a low-cost and affordable robot as compared to its international models to be used at home or school as a teacher assistant. RASA can help kids to learn signs as fast as possible due to the game-based and entertaining education system. The wheeled base platform consists of a new mechanism with 6 bar linkage for bending robot from the hip to about 60 degrees from a vertical position... 

In the recent years, development of new technologies in the field of cognitive science has made a huge effect on the people social life style. Facial expression imitation with applications in the design of human robot interaction (HRI) systems is an active area of research. In this study, we propose an approach using a humanoid social robot, The Alice, for real-time imitation of human facial expression. The facial keypoints of the user are extracted by using the Kinect sensor together with manipulated SDK 2.0 codes. Kinect output array are collected for each expression, then the training dataset is created with these output arrays. An accurate Artificial neural network (ANN), which has a... 

The present case study investigates the effect of applying a humanoid robot as a teacher- assistant to teach a foreign language (English in this case) to Iranian children with autism. Two groups of three male high-functioning autistic students (6-10 years old) with little or no background in English participated in the current study. The humanoid robot NAO made by Aldebaran Robotics was used as a teacher assistant to teach English to the Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) group. The non-RALL group received the same lessons simply without the presence of the robot in teaching sessions. However, the non-RALL group also had the chance to interact with the robot through some robotic games... 

Statistics have shown an endemic worldwide increase of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) since the 1960s, Iran also faces the same problem. Autistic disorders are characterized by three major behavioral disorders: impaired social interaction, impaired communication, and impaired imagination and social creativity. The usage of robots in autism diagnosis and treatment has been increasing in recent years. In this study, our objective (as one of the pioneers in Iran) is to explore the clinical application of two interactive social humanoid robots (NAO and ALICE with the Iranian names of NIMA and MINA) as medical assistants in the treatment and education of children with autism in order to... 

The purpose of this research is the design and fabrication of a mobile social robot for children with cancer. This robot is named Arash. Interaction with the robot can improve children's education, as well as their mental condition. Design and development of Arash robot project have been carried out in a number of M.Sc. projects. In the present study, it is specifically focused on three areas of activity:
1. Design and fabrication of the robot head (and the overall appearance of the robot)
2. Design and development of human-robot interactions
3. Social and educational interactions/interventions of the robot with children
In this study, with the cooperation of child... 

One of the recent studies in the field of humanoid robots is to achieve a robot gait close to the human-like gait. Therefore, using the foot equipped with passive or active toe joint is developed in case of robots. The results of several studies show that the segmented foot with a toe joint has several advantages compared to the rigid foot in: walking speed, range of joint angle and ability to kneel and climb higher steps. Both passive and active toe joints of humanoid robots are developed. Advantages of the passive toe joint is obvious; in terms of design, it is more simple and light. Moreover, in normal gait, when the robot is equipped with passive toe joint, body inertial causes an... 

Although Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) has recently received attention as a tool for language learning, its role in pragmatic development has gone unnoticed. Hence, this study sought to explore the effect of RALL on pragmatic learning of greeting, thanking, and request speech acts by young Persian-speaking EFL learners. To this end, 38 preschool female and male kids (3-6 years old) were assigned to the RALL (19 students) and game-based (19 students) groups. The humanoid robot for the RALL group was used as an assistant to the teacher while for the game-based group the instruction was based on gaming methods such as command, mystery bag and pass the ball games. The instructional... 

From the creation of the first robots, researchers have been fascinated by the possibility of interaction between a robot and its environment, by the possibility of robots interacting with each other and with humans. The common, underlying assumption is that humans prefer to interact with machines in the same way that they interact with other people. In this work, an assistant robot is developed based on a commercial platform, known as Alice R-50 (with the Iranian name of Mina). Alice is designed specifically for human-robot social interaction and has been used widely for studies on developmental and social robotics. It is used to improve and encourage the development of communication and...