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Stories filed under: "mabel"

DailyDirt: More Walking Robots

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Honda’s ASIMO and other walking robots don’t really look like much of match for catching up with people running away from them. But like zombies, robots never get tired and can just keep walking slowly towards you (as long as their batteries last, that is). Here are just a few examples of some robots that are starting to walk a bit more like us.

• Boston Dynamics has been working on a 6’2″ tall humanoid robot named Atlas. It can walk over rubble, and someday it will say, “I’ll be back” in an Austrian accent. [url]
• Researchers at the Humanoid Robotics Institute have designed a robotic leg with many of the same joints and features of a human leg. It’s actually not that easy to get a robot leg to have all the same range of motions as a real human leg. [url]
• Robot legs using a neural network to mimic human walking has created one of the first biologically-accurate models of the human gait. This research could help us understand how babies learn to walk and how people with spinal cord injuries might learn to walk again. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: asimo, atlas, biomimicry, bipedal, gait, humanoid, locomotion, mabel, robots, terminator, walking
Companies: boston dynamics, darpa, honda, humanoid robotics institute

DailyDirt: Robots Making Their Move…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Robot locomotion doesn’t seem very natural so far — and there’s almost an “uncanny valley” for how some robots move that make them look undead. But it won’t be long before robots are moving more fluidly. Here are just a few projects that are developing machines that can move like animals and people.

• Low-pressure air pumps can power “soft robots” that mimic the locomotion of invertebrates like starfish and squid. Watch them wiggle. See them jiggle. [url]
• The RoboBee is communicating with bees in their own “waggle dance” language. This robot bee isn’t quite fluent yet, but it can almost give directions to real bees — and it doesn’t get attacked as an intruder to the hive. [url]
• The University of Michigan’s MABEL biped robot can run a little over 6 mph — beating Toyota’s walking robot and ASIMO by a pretty good margin. MABEL will probably catch up to human marathon runners soon, but it isn’t a wireless robot yet… [url]
• To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what’s currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: biomimicry, biped, locomotion, mabel, robobee, robots, soft robots