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One Giant Step for Humanoids
An anonymous reader writes "There are a few robots that do amazing things. Honda's Asimo can walk backward and climb stairs. Sega's idog can dance to music. A tougher nut to crack has been making robots walk like humans. Today, scientists introduce three humanoid striders at the annual AAAS meeting. Unlike other robots that have to power every move, these three save energy by letting gravity do a lot of the work. Like humans, they pick up their feet and just let 'em drop. Engineers say they'll inform the next generations of humanoids and also improve design of robotic prostheses for people. And hey, why not send them to Mars to look for those microbes?"
Delft
Cornell
MIT
Karma: Can there be a void?
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Robotic or semi-robotic prosthesis are going to be more and more in demand because ironically of advances in battlefield armor. Current flak jackets (body armor) and helmets are protecting the vital bits of our soldiers, but often limbs (and necks) are sites of damage from explosions and firearms. Many of these soldiers are undergoing amputations either in Iraq or more commonly in Landstuhl, Germany and coming home with prosthetics of varying sophistication.
There are a couple of interesting recent additions to the Internet that cover these issues. One is an article by Steve Silberman in Wired and the other very interesting site is Stuart Hughes blog. Stuart is a world news producer with the BBC who unfortunately stepped on a landmine covering the Iraq war and now writes fairly frequently about "stumpy" and his prosthetic leg.
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there are probably better forms to send there. The rovers are interesting, but they can not cover a large amount of terrain at a time. It would probably be better to have some sort of a flyer, so that it can move quickly for long distances.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
you speak of the uncanny valley, methinks :)
Humanoid had to be the worse design as far as robots go. For animals it works because it would be hard for there to be an organic life form with wheels. Maybe something like a self driving segway would work well. They have that other segway wheelchair that climbs stairs and everything. If they spent more time designing the robots to do actual task like identifying objects, picking them up, and operating them, instead of spending the time trying to make them walk, we'd be a lot further along.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually, what you say *seems* intuitively right but is proved not-quite-correct by research in passive-dynamics. The energy required to make precisely controlled steps (i.e., muscularly-actuated) is much greater than the energy humans (or any other legged creature, for that matter) expend on walking. Bipedal walking for animals of our size is possible only because humans have evolved adaptive, energy-saving strategies for bipedal motion (for instance, the long tendons and ligaments of our legs are used as passive energy stores).
However, this is not to say that human walking is not a complex coordination of many muscular systems. It's just that steps are not as controlled as we'd like to think. This is by design, so that we can adapt quickly to unpredictable surfaces. Robots that try to be very controlled in walking usually are very slow because they must do many dynamic calculations that humans simply don't do because of the way our legs are designed.
It is *far* from solved.
There was an article not so long ago about a robot that can stand up from lying on the floor. That was some pretty big progress. However, even that robot is still very far from a human. It needs almost two minutes for that!
Current robots barely walk properly. They still have a long way to go until they can do things like jumping on one leg, which are trivial for humans.
For those of you looking for more details, here's the research paper published in Science (may need institutional subscription) and videos of all three robots.
Here's the abstract text:
Efficient Bipedal Robots Based on Passive-Dynamic Walkers
Steve Collins, Andy Ruina, Russ Tedrake, Martijn Wisse
Passive-dynamic walkers are simple mechanical devices, composed of solid parts connected by joints, that walk stably down a slope. They have no motors or controllers, yet can have remarkably humanlike motions. This suggests that these machines are useful models of human locomotion; however, they cannot walk on level ground. Here we present three robots based on passive-dynamics, with small active power sources substituted for gravity, which can walk on level ground. These robots use less control and less energy than other powered robots, yet walk more naturally, further suggesting the importance of passive-dynamics in human locomotion.
Well, here's one that was made in the 80s:
Odex 1
Large and strong, this dude could pick up the end of a pickup truck and move it around.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
If you are doing a real flyer, you would need huge wings as the atmospere is thiiiinnnn. But, use some helium/hydrogen in a collapsiable wing, combined with small rockets, it is very doable. Think in terms of a vtol aircraft such as the british harrier. Small wings.
Of course, a small number of ballons with small camera might produce some very intersting results. While we would not have good control over where they went, they would be close enough to the surface to take some very good pix that could be relayed from sat. above.. These ballons could then be landed with small amounts of equipment, but obviously, this is more of a serindipity approach to checking the surface.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.