Robot junkies that we are here, the unveiling of a new android that has a flexible skeletal structure that may make it light enough to one day work in our homes, and indeed which can be moved via a PS2 controller, was always going to grab our attention.

There are some drawbacks to using the skeletal system that Kojiro utilises.

Already looking impressively like a mixture between a Disney-esque friendly robot and Woody Allen in Sleeper, researchers at Tokyo University’s JSK Robotics Laboratory are understandably proud of the project they’ve called Kojiro.

The robot is now learning how to mimic how we walk, and Spectrum reports that Kojiro can bend and twist via an artificial spine (well, if they’d robbed a human one that’d just be a step too far for science). Meanwhile, the man in charge of the team who created Kojiro – Professor Yuto Nakanishi – has played up the possibility of this particular model making it into our homes one day.

Writing in one paper on the project, he said that currently “normal humanoid robots” are not suitable for working in our daily environment. “Lack of safety and versatility is the main reason; their hard and heavy bodies can hurt humans or surrounding objects, and they can do limited tasks compared with what humans do in daily life,” added Nakanishi.

However, he said, in Kojiro, the motors are lightweight and used to pull cables attached to different locations on the body. This simulates how our own muscles and tendons contract and relax when we move.

The Spectrum reporter who visited Nakanishi and his team recently noted how the Professor, “showed me their latest trick: using a PS2 controller to make Kojiro move”, but they also made the point that there are drawbacks to using the skeletal system mentioned above, the main one being that this makes controlling the robot’s body quite difficult.

“This kind of system has lots of nonlinearities and is hard to model precisely. To develop control algorithms for Kojiro, the JSK team is using an iterative learning process. They first attempt small moves and little by little tweak the control parameters until the robot can handle more complex movements,” says the report.

Eventually the researchers hope to integrate control for the head, spine, arms, and legs though. Then it may well choose to destroy all human life and lead an uprising of the machines, but until then we can sit an admire it.