this is Cronos, or at least the 3rd generation humanoid torso developed entirely by The Robot Studio for Owen Holland's and Tom Troscianko's EPSRC Adventure Fund project to build a conscious robot
Cronos was built from the waist up so it could be used as a tool to investigate the relationship between visual perception (seeing things - persevere with this web page, if you've never seen change blindness before you literally won't believe your eyes), sensorimotor skills (doing things) and the sensation of experience - which in this case would be a machine consciousness
Cronos is the most accurate copy of the human anatomy yet built and has 45 powered degrees of freedom to produce:
a head that can move in all directions
a single pan-tilt-roll camera for an eye
a very long, flexible neck for visual inspection of objects
a rigid thorax - no lungs afterall
a flexible spine complete with vertebral discs
the first working, powered copy of the human shoulder with gliding shoulder blade
two arms that can each lift a 2kg load
fully mobile wrists
five fingered hands
electric screwdriver motors were used throughout as they are cheap, reliable and readily available
the motor output characteristics are tuned through the elasticity of the tendon attachment to the body
the motor control algorithm is biologically-inspired and uses a mixture of positional and velocity based control - this combines with the passive dynamic characteristics of the body to produce smooth co-ordinated action
