Sony Develops Small Biped Entertainment Robot With Ability to Adopt Its Movement to a Variety of Situations and Offering Rich Communication Tokyo, Japan - Sony Corporation today announced the development of a prototype small biped entertainment robot "SDR-4X" that can adapt its performance to its environment and situations found in the home to further develop the possibility for a biped-walking robot. Richer communication with people can be realized by a variety of sensor systems, performance control software based on memory and learning, and a flexible biped walking mechanism. While improving the output performance of small actuators that drive each joint, a newly developed "Real-time Integrated Adaptive Control System" controls a total of 38 joints in the robot's body in real time, based on information from various sensors gathered in real time. More advanced movements are realized by enabling biped walk on irregular and tiled surface plus posture retention control under external pressure. In addition, stable and flexible walk can be achieved by the real time production of walking patterns such as pace and rotation angle in accordance with various situations. Using two CCD color cameras for image recognition, the SDR-4X can detect the distance between itself and an object by processing the parallax of the two cameras. These cameras allow the robot to perceive the figuration of an object and range between itself and the object to automatically produce a route in order to make its way around the object.