PEAR corner: Meet King Kizer Best of Show in RoboGames 2012

King Kizer, one of the most famous humanoid combat robot of Japan and multiple times winner of competitions like ROBO-ONE and ROBO-ONE Grand Prix, visited the United States to participate in the ROBOGAMES last April, where it won three gold medals by competing in the Kung-Fu Middle Weight, Biped Race, and Best of Show events.

King Kizer is the creation of Naoki Maru with his two sons Ryoma and Kenta, who also are in charge of control the robot during the competitions. This family started competing around 2005. At the beginning, they used a Kondo KHR-1 kit. The KHR-1 was released in 2004, and cost around $1650.00, being one of the least expensive robots in the market. They made some modifications to the robot, including its appearance, and decided to call it Shinning G. The first version was tethered to a PC for control, but for the second version they built a master/slave body harness to control it, so the robot would mimic the movements made by the operator.

Kondo KHR-1

Shining G*

Based on all the knowledge and experience acquired with Shinning G, they started to think about a new robot. According to Naoki Maru, in an interview made by Robot Magazine, he stated that they wanted to design an original character, but with some similarities to the traditional anime robots. The first versions of King Kizer were based on the KHR-1 model but with some modifications in the frame geometry.

First Version of King Kizer*

Since King Kizer D (fourth model designed by the family) some important improvements where done making the robots didn't look like the KHR-1 anymore. Among these improvements was the design of the knees. This time a double servo configuration was added to allow faster motion. This improvement was a key point to succeed in the ROBO-ONE 9 challenge which consisted in skip a rope.

Through the time, the amount of degrees of freedom of the different King Kizer versions has varied between 17 and 25 (except for King Kizer Puchi that only has 6). The servos used are the KRS-4000 series and they provide the pitch (forward/back), and roll (side to side) movements. To control the servos a Kondo Motion Processor Controller or MCP is used.

King Kizer has also been provided of a series of sensors to control its movements. For pitch and roll axes' balance and stability are used gyro sensors like Kondo KRG-1, and some models includes an accelerometer, for example the Kondo RA-1, to detect if the robot is falling and if its position is prone or supine.

In addition, some robots have been provided with distance sensors. This was done because the operators are located at one side of the ring and sometimes it’s difficult for them to calculate the distance and position of their robot’s opponent, so its very common to see a robot throwing punches to the air. Moreover, due to heat of the battle it can also be possible that the operator press the wrong button. To avoid this situations and improve the performance of the robot in the battle two Sharp distance sensors, GP2012, have been added on both sides of the robot, and the program was modified, so the robot with the help of both sensors can know where its opponent is, and in case the operator makes a mistake, in example asking the robot to hit to the left when the opponent is on the right side, King Kizer can take the final decision based on the sensor lecture and do the right movement. Furthermore, an additional distance sensor has been added in the chest area. This sensor is used for external control. During the demonstrations King Kizer executes a series of movements and waits until the operator puts his hand in front of its chest to perform the next part of its routine.

Except for the Real King Kizer, all the versions of the robot have been controlled using one of both, a remote control or master/slave harness + remote control. The master/slave mode consists of a harness that is worn by the operator. This harness has a series of potentiometers that sense the movements of the operator and send them to King Kizer via Bluetooth. The harness only controls the robots' upper half of the body so a remote control is used to control the other half.

Kenta controlling King Kizer with master/slave harness during the final match in RoboOne 10**

The most recent version of King Kizer, Real King Kizer inspired in the Real Steal movie, is controlled using the Asus Xtion Pro Live (device very similar to Kinect). Although in the firt demonstrations of its performance shown a small amount of delay, this was corrected as it’s shown in the following video.

Since 2005, King Kizer has competed in many events. Among its victories is being the first Triple Crown winner of the ROBO-ONE games. In an interview Naoki Maru, he explained that the reason behind the success of King Kizer is that they participate as a family team and the support that everybody gives to each other is very important, he also said that in the future he hopes that his sons will build the robots and become engineers and made useful robots for society. So, based on his words we can expect that King Kizer will keep surprising us for a long time.