A team of ambitious engineering students at The University of Western Australia is developing technology in a 140cm tall humanoid robot that may soon be able to welcome visitors to campus and guide them through UWA’s world-class facilities.

Named StUWArt, in a nod to UWA, the bipedal robot represents the next generation in a long line of humanoid robots developed at the University since 1998.

But unlike his smaller 30cm predecessors – Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, Rock Steady and Andy Droid – which were built entirely from the ground up at UWA, StUWArt utilises a commercial platform allowing the team to focus on developing sophisticated autonomous control software to allow him to move and talk.

Image: PhD student Oliver Zhang (left) putting StUWArt through his paces with Professor Thomas Braunl and PhD student Roy Kong.

Professor Thomas Bräunl, director of UWA’s Robotics & Automation Lab and the Renewable Energy Vehicle Project (REV), said StUWArt stood tall as UWA’s most ambitious robotic creation yet.

“It’s not only cutting-edge technology, but it also has an emotional component because this is what people think robotics is like,” Professor Bräunl said. 

“StUWArt allows us to bring all of our technologies into one component, into one robot, to show the capabilities we can develop – it brings everything together, and I think this is what people want to see.”

StUWArt can already walk and wave, but a team of two PhD students and four final-year automation and robotics students is working to enhance his capabilities to include speech and complex interactions using locally developed large language models similar to ChatGPT.

PhD student Xiangrui (Roy) Kong is focused on StUWArt's communication abilities using language models and text-to-speech technology. 

Image: StUWArt making his presence felt outside UWA's EZONE.

“If we feed knowledge into StUWArt, he’ll be able to answer questions and the next step will be to deploy our local language models into the lab server to improve his performance,” he said.

The project combines multiple engineering disciplines, with each student tackling different challenges. PhD student Oliver Zhang is working on StUWArt’s complex movement capabilities.

“I’m responsible for joints and there are more than 29 degrees of freedom in this robot, so we start with the two legs and then move to whole body control, using AI methods,” Mr Zhang said. 

“A major challenge is maintaining balance when walking, especially on uneven terrain like ramps or stairs, so we use motion capture to mimic what humans do, then remapping it to StUWArt.”

Honours student Travis Ryan is developing human mimicry capabilities, allowing StUWArt to observe and replicate human movements. 

“Technology like this wasn’t even available a year or two years ago – when I first came to UWA to study robotics, this was the sort of thing I was hoping I would be able to work on, it’s so cutting-edge” Travis said.

Fellow Honours student Joel Smith is creating StUWArt’s autonomous navigation system. 

“I'm working on path learning and mapping so he builds a map in his own mind of where all the walls are, where the obstacles are – without this technology, he won't be able to operate in any environment that’s not a test lab,” he said.

One of the project's most ambitious goals is to have StUWArt lead first year student tours through the robotics lab. 

“It would be fantastic if we could have him talking about all of the other projects without us intervening,” Joel said.

Image: Standing tall... UWA's humanoid robot, StUWArt.

Professor Bräunl sees unlimited practical applications for humanoid robots like StUWArt. 

“Companies are already testing these kinds of robots for manufacturing, but really, they can do anything a human could do – help in households, assist in shops – the applications are unlimited,” he said. 

“Robotics and automation provide some of the most exciting opportunities and biggest challenges of our times. 

“With new technologies being conceived every day, this is a rapidly evolving, exciting field that pushes the boundaries of what is possible and it is fantastic that our students are been given the opportunity to work on something as groundbreaking as StUWArt.”

The public is invited to meet StUWArt at the UWA Open Day on Sunday 30 March.