BREAKING SWEAT

YOU ARE not the only one to be breaking sweat during a workout. A robot does it too.

Japanese-made Kengoro and its cousin Kenshiro are the University of Tokyo’s way of understanding the human body better. Researchers built a human-like musculoskeletal nervous system and even a Linux-based brain into the machine and got it to do the sort of movements and exercises people typically do in a workout. That included crunches, neck rolls, squats, push-ups and more. As the robot heats up, it sweats. By design. The emission of fluid is, just as in humans, meant to cool it down.

More than the effort and the sweat, however, the engineers think the robots can provide insights into how movement is processed within the body. This, in turn, feeds into other fields such as vehicle testing where a more realistic dummy may be needed, or as an aid to creating better prosthetic limbs. Considering that the humanoids have everything, from synthetic muscles to brains, they can be put to many uses. There is not much artificial intelligence built into them, though, which may just be a good thing.