Newscientist published an article last week about HRP-2, a robot unveiled this month during the Humanoids2010 conference in Nashville. Sébastien Lengagne of Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, along with a team of french and japanese scientists, developed a program that allows the HRP-2 to use objects in his environment to help his movements, rather than simply considering them as obstacles.
For now the computer processing the data is external, but the team hopes to one day be able to fit it in the robot armature. The way it moves definitely reminded everybody of a senior, but it’s a big breakthrough nevertheless.

credits to the University Carlos 3 of Madrid for the pictures