System Integration for Component-Based Manzai Robots with Improved Scalability

This paper describes system developments for integrating control systems of Manzai robot duos that automatically generate Manzai scripts from Internet articles based on given keywords, as well as improvements in the scalability of the integrated control system. Component-based Manzai robots controlled by RT-Middleware have been developed. However, conventional Manzai robot systems, the control systems of which are individually developed, experience some difficulties in interface integration and system maintenance as well as in scalability. In this study, we built a Manzai robot system excellent in reusability, maintainability and scalability by separating the common part from the hardware-dependent part by using the RT components of RT-Middleware. We also verify the reusability and scalability of the hardware-constrained component groups by implementing the Manzai robot control system into ready-made robots with different types of mechanism. We proved the effectiveness of the developed Manzai robot control system on its implementation results.