University of Zurich Artificial Intelligence Lab is trying to give birth to a humanoid robot boy, called Roboy, which is actuated by tendons mimicking human muscles. It is a smaller counterpart to Kenshiro Humanoid Robot,  about which we had made a news entry just recently. It is an upgrade version of the ECCE robot, which was built a few years ago, but apart from its muscles and body resembling human anatomy, the previous one was looking “less human”. Roboy has a much more attractive and friendly looks in our opinion – first of all the appearance of the head was chosen with user votes on facebook. It has a height of 1.25 m and weighs 40 kg.

One of the most impressive things we saw in the brochure on roboy’s official website, was the goal of scalable production, where a 3D printing technology may allow the construction of a new robot in just a few days. As we mentioned, the robot is still in the works and, expected to be finished in the next 3 months. The team is still looking for sponsors in order to add more functionality to the robot. It will be on tour on March 8th 2013. 10 more companies or Universities are also supporting the project.

You can visit the official website at: roboy.org

We will try to find out more about the abilities of the robot and make another entry about it. Please stay tuned…