English Task

•Biaggi Rahmat Maulana

•Haekal Kavi
•Muhammad Rafly Endria
•Serino De Lingga
 Toyota Gets Back Into Humanoid
Robots With New T-HR3
 Toyota has announced the T-HR3, a brand-
new, third-generation humanoid robot. At first
glance, it appears to be very capable, with
excellent balance and coordination, and
Toyota has decided to approach autonomy by
keeping a human in the loop inside of a
sophisticated, immersive “Master
Maneuvering System.”
There were a couple different versions of
Toyota’s musical humanoid partner robots
from the 2000s; the first one of these could
play the trumpet, and was introduced in 2003.
The second could play the violin, and had
more muscular legs and significantly better
There’s also this robot, though, which
appears to have a completely different set of
Third Generation
legs (and a massive battery pack) to enable
much more dynamic movements:
Second Generation First Generation
 All of these humanoids are on the order of a decade old, or older. More
recently, Toyota has been focusing on the HSR (Human Support Robot) as a
robotic hardware platform, which (as a more conventional mobile manipulator
design) is easier to use and far more practical for both research and basic
household tasks. This make us wonder why (presumably a year or two ago)
Toyota decided to invest in humanoid robots again.
Toyota’s press release addresses this with a very general statement about
how the T-HR3 is designed to be “a platform with capabilities that can safely
assist humans in a variety of settings, such as the home, medical facilities,
construction sites, disaster-stricken areas and even outer space.” This particular
version doesn’t seem like the sort of beefy platform that could handle an
industrial environment, much less one that’s post-disaster, in contrast to the
humanoid robot that Honda has
This particular version doesn’t seem like the sort of
beefy platform that could handle an industrial
environment, much less one that’s post-disaster, in
contrast to the humanoid robot that Honda has been
working on. Rather, T-HR3 looks decidedly more
domestic, which is in keeping with Toyota’s overall
mission to “support doctors, caregivers and patients,
the elderly, and people with disabilities.”
To make sure its robots operate safely around
people, Toyota also put a lot of effort in developing a
new torque sensing and actuation system. The new
Torque Servo Modules, which the company developed
in collaboration with Tamagawa Seiki and Nidec Copal
Electronics, are used in both the T-HR3 and the Master
Maneuvering System. The modules measure forces on
the robot’s joints and convey that information to the
human operator using force-feeedback. They allow the
T-HR3 to control contact forces safely and accurately,
and also help the robot to maintain its balance even if
it collides with objects in the environment.
•It’s certainly true that in theory, a
humanoid robot is the ideal design to
maximize capability in any environment
designed for humans. Tasks like going up
and down stairs (or going over door
thresholds), carrying objects with two
hands, and providing direct assistance to
humans are all facilitated by a bipedal
design with two arms. In practice, however,
a robot like T-HR3 is vastly more
complicated to control than something like
HSR, especially in the context of long-term,
reliable, independent autonomy.
•The Master Maneuvering System is a
clever (if complicated and expensive) way of
sidestepping the autonomy problem. In the
short term, at least, it’s a way of giving T-
HR3 a massive amount of pseudo-autonomy
by offloading all of the sensing, processing,
motion planning, and manipulation tasks
onto a human who only has to be mildly
trained.
•Long term, a system like this probably isn’t a sustainable way to
manage a fleet of humanoid robots. Our guess is that Toyota is
hoping to use the MMS as a tool to help enable reliable learning
by demonstration, where the robot gains experience as it
observes humans doing a variety of tasks through it, and
eventually is able to understand how to do those tasks itself, in an
approach somewhat similar to what Pieter Abbeel is doing at
Embodied Intelligence.
•The other big advantage of the MMS is that it provides a backup
of sorts for autonomous robots that are operating in semi-
structured or unstructured environments. If they get stuck, the
robots could call for help, and a human could give solution
•It’s tempting, at the moment, to compare T-HR3 to Boston
Dynamics’ robots and not be even a little bit impressed. But keep
in mind that BD has focused a lot on dynamic mobility platforms,
and that’s not what Toyota is trying to do: Rather, they’re more
about in-home robots that can be helpful with a focus on
precision interaction, and that includes just enough mobility to
get around because there’s no reason to include any more.
•So far, we don’t have a lot of detail on
what, specifically, Toyota is trying to do
with T-HR3. We're hoping to see how
well the MMS works in semi-structured
environments to enable the robot to do
task like clearing a table or folding
laundry.
THANK YOU 