). I found it on the french newspaper website lemonde.fr (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0 ... 813,0.html) because its being tested in Toulouse, my hometown (where the new Airbus A380 is being assembled) but I translated it for you 
Here is a picture of this cool robot: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/illustration/ ... 599,0.html
Some gestures of the arms, a balance on a foot, two rotations of the chest, then ten steps carried out with good train, a bar wedged between the grips: the demonstration was brief, but convincing. HRP-2, first humanoïd robot of its class to move in France, did not stumble at the time of its official presentation, Friday June 30 in Toulouse, at the Analysis laboratory and architecture of systems (LAAS-CNRS). The bracket to which there remains connected by the shoulders, like a puppet of Japanese manga, will thus not have been useful. Not more than the case of emergency stop to which the machine is constantly connected.
“You will be disappointed by what you will see”, Jean-Paul Laumond, his “adoptive father” had prevented. HRP-2, for “Humanoïd Robotics Project” is indeed only in its first steps. Its “humanity” could indeed let hope for a more elaborate behavior, just as the characteristics of this concentrate of technology of 58 kg for 1,54 m in height. Not less than thirty engines actuate its articulations. Its four cameras are used to him as glasses with double hearth - a pair for navigation, another for the handling of objects. Four sensors of effort, in the wrists and the ankles, enable him to better control its movements, as well as the gyroscope and the accelerometer essential with its balance.
But this breaking edge mecatronic, resulting from a long-term research program financed by the Japanese ministry of the economy, needs a brain to become autonomous and interact with the human ones and a “natural” environment. It is all the stake of collaboration between France and Japan, established between the LAAS and the national Institute of the science and advanced industrial technologies of Tsukuba, which, after the Honda pioneer, conceived HRP-2, manufactured by the company Kawada Industries.
Fourteenth of the name, on the fifteen specimens produced to date, the French HRP-2 cost 400.000 euros, financed to 75% by CNRS, 15% by the LAAS and 10% by industrialists affiliated to the Toulouse laboratory. It will constitute a platform of study open to the French laboratories. Fifteen projects emanating of ten teams were already adopted, “but there is still place for others”, ensures Jean-Paul Laumond.
The topics approached are very diverse, that it is of the biped locomotion itself or the establishment of sensory capacities. One of the first missions given to HRP-2 will be a simplified hunting for the treasure: to find a familiar object in a part where one will have had the unknown objects. “It is reasonable to reach that point within one year or two”, hopes for Jean-Paul Laumond. With this intention, the humanoïd robot will have to borrow many knowledge already acquired by “platforms” of less flattering aspect - cans and boxes on casters - but which already proved reliable, like Rackham, guide in the Cité de l'Espace ("City of the space") of Toulouse.
But HRP-2 learns quickly. It was already possible to graft a vocal order to him. However the way will be long before making an “intelligent” machine of it, warns Rajah Chatila, person in charge for the pole robots with the LAAS: “To recognize in a generic way a bottle or a chair is still an open question.” For the researcher, the arrival of HRP-2, with its great latitude of movements, will raise new questions of management of complexity - which interest also biology, for the folding up of the molecules. The other interest of HRP-2 relates to the relations with the human ones. “A robot remains a machine with sensors and actuators, notes Rajah Chatila. It is more in the eye of human than the things will change.” The Japanese created the humanoïds robots in the hope to make the auxiliaries of a growing old population of them. But if the technique allows it one day, still will be necessary it that the human ones are ready to accomodate them. HRP-2 is their ambassador.
