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This paper gives an overview on current and forthcoming research activities of the Collaborative Research Center 588 "Humanoid Robots -Learning and Cooperating Multimodal Robots" which is located in Karlsruhe, Germany. Its research activities can be divided into the following areas: mechatronic robot system components like lightweight 7 DOF arms, 5-fingered dexterous hands, an active sensor head and a spine type central body and skills of the humanoid robot system; multimodal man-machine interfaces; augmented reality for modeling and simulation of robots, environment and user; and finally, cognitive abilities. Some of the research activities are described in this paper, and we introduce the application scenario testing the robot system. In particular, we present a robot teaching center and the execution which is of type "household."

This paper gives an overview of the current and forthcoming research projects of the Collaborative Research Center 588 "Humanoid Robots -Learning and Cooperating Multimodal Robots." The activities can be divided into several areas: development of mechatronic components and construction of a demonstrator system, perception of user and environment, modeling and simulation of robots, environment and user, and finally cooperation and learning. The research activities in each of these areas are described in detail. Finally, we give an insight into the application scenario of our robot system, i.e. the training setup and the experimental setup "household."In this interdisciplinary research center, 12 institutes from the faculties of computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and arts of the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, as well as other research institutions are involved. The more than 40 scientists belong to the following research organizations:This paper gives an overview of the current and forthcoming activities of the Collaborative Research Center 588. In Sec. 2, other humanoid robot projects are described. Section 3 discusses our main points of focus. Sections 4-7 explain our research in more detail. In Sec. 8, we give an insight into our application scenario. The paper closes with a short summary in Sec. 9. Humanoid Robots in International ResearchMore than 30 years ago, the first developments took place in the area of mechatronic sub-systems of humanoid robots. Since then, the development of the technological environment (e.g. computing power, energy consumption, integration scale) has been revolutionary. This has made acceptable solutions for sub-problems possible which were unthinkable even ten years ago. As a result of these advances, humanoid robots were rediscovered as a research topic. Completely implemented or in development, very advanced humanoid robots can mostly be found in the mother country of humanoid robotics, Japan, and in the United States.In 1998, the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) created a project in Japan which used a platform approach (HRP − 1 = humanoid robot platform 1) for the construction of a humanoid robot. As a platform, the project used the humanoid robot P3 from Honda, which was designed as a successor of the P2 model. P2 was the first humanoid robot world-wide which could walk in a very human-like manner and also climb stairs. Further information about the platform approach can be found in Ref. 1, and about the robots P2 and P3 in Ref. 2. Further enhancements of the ability to move entered into the successive model Asimo. 3 In competition with Honda, Sony developed the Dream Robot (SDR), which can be assigned to the field of entertainment. 4 At an early stage of development are the robots of the Waseda University in Japan. 5 Hadaly-2, which is built onto a mobile platform and equipped with manipulators, and WABIAN, which is a two-legged robot with a human-like walk. WABIAN c...

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