22 Degrees of Freedom

Like many of the popular humanoid kits on the market, the robot stands 33cm (13 inches) tall and tips the scales at 1.5kg (3.3 pounds). But that's where the similarity ends. The SPC-101C has expanded the typical 16to 17 number of servos (degrees of freedom) to 22. The additional servos provide much more realistic motion and give the robot the ability to mimic human body language very closely. For example, the robot can tilt its torso backwards and forwards at the hips just like a human. This capability saw practical use during our testing when we needed the robot's built-in camera to look at an object on the floor directly in front of it without losing its balance.
The video camera, mounted in the head, provides surprisingly good image quality. The camera can be panned using the head servo and adjusted up and down by tilting the torso at the waist. Dual stereo speakers are built into the torso sides and provide quite good voice and sound quality when the robot is still. Unfortunately, the whine generated by moving servos sometimes tends to degrade the overall audio experience a bit.