HRP-4C (Female Robot)

Inventor: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Company: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Timeline: 2010 - current
Structure: Humanoid
Mobility: Walk

WOW... this robot is spectacular and is considered one of the best performer among all the robots in the world. This robot have many potentials.

Toyota Music Playing Robots

Inventor: Toyota
Company: Toyota
Timeline: ??? - current
Structure: Humanoid
Mobility: Wheel and Leg

Toyota went into a different arena in robotics by inventing musical playing robots. It's very impressive to have robots to play music like trumpets, tubas and drums in front of audiance. It's a matter of time for robots to artificial intelligently learn to invent new musics. And wonder if Toyota will create a set of Classical Music Robots Team.

Robo-guard

Inventor: Asian Forum for Corrections
Company: Asian Forum for Corrections
Timeline: 2012 - current
Structure: Machine
Mobility: Wheel

Another invention that was put in real life usage. Robo-guards was deployed to South Korea prison as a patrol guard in autonomous mode or controlled manually with an iPad. This really helps to lighten the heavy workload for the human officers. Wonder if this robot can deliver food/water to the inmates.

Nano Quadrotors

Inventor: GRASP Lab
Company: GRASP Lab
Timeline: 2011 - current
Structure: Quadrotors
Mobility: Fly

GRASP stands for General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception. This is an evolution idea to have robots to collaborate with each other to complete a task. Such task could be building something, play entertainment, spying, security guard, and the list could be endless. Imagine if the swarm of Nano Quadrotors are big size, then we can use this robots for a real job.

BigDog

Inventor: Boston Dynamics
Company: Boston Dynamics
Timeline: 2008 - current
Structure: 4 leg animal
Mobility: leg

BigDog was developed by Boston Dynamics funded by  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to accompany soldiers in terrain too rough for conventional vehicles. THe robot has successfully manage to adapt to tough terrain. It would be great if the robot can have it's skin. I wonder whether BigDog can move under raining and snowing weather. Also, would BigDog walk with a silent movement one day.

Kismet / Leonardo / Nexi

Inventor: Dr. Cynthia Breazeal
Institute: Media Lab
Timeline: 2008 - current
Structure: Humanoid
Mobility: wheel

Nexi is a MDS robot (Mobile, Dexterous, Social) that combines rich social communication abilities with mobile desterity to investigate more complex forms of human-robot teaming. It started off with robot Kismet, and soon evolve to robot Leonardo and finally robot Nexi. It's interesting to see a robot that can interact with emotions. If only the interaction is faster, then this will revolutionaize human-robot interactions.

Kismet

Leonardo

Nexi

TPR-Robina

Inventor: Toyota
Company: Toyota
Timeline: 2007 - current
Structure: Humanoid
Mobility: wheel

A tour guide robot which Toyota developed to interact with visitor in Toyota Kaikan Exihibition Hall in Toyota City. One thing good is that this robot is been used to be used as a tour guide. If only we can have avatar for the robot and it's going to be interesting to have robina in different company as a tour guide.