Design principles of a human mimetic humanoid: Humanoid platform to study human intelligence and internal body system

Many systems and mechanisms in the human body are not fully understood, such as the principles of muscle control, the sensory nervous system that connects the brain and the body, learning in the brain, and the human walking motion. To address this knowledge deficit, we propose a human mimetic humanoid with an unprecedented degree of anatomical fidelity to the human musculoskeletal structure. The fundamental concept underlying our design is to consider the human mechanism, which contrasts with the conventional engineering approach used in the design of existing humanoids. We believe that the proposed human mimetic humanoid can be used to provide new opportunities in science, for instance, to quantitatively analyze the internal data of a human body in movement. We describe the principles and development of human mimetic humanoids, Kenshiro and Kengoro, and compare their anatomical fidelity with humans in terms of body proportions, skeletal structures, muscle arrangement, and joint performance. To demonstrate the potential of human mimetic humanoids, Kenshiro and Kengoro performed several typical human motions.