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?"

Comments

Muscles, perhaps?

[Avyakata]

"...save energy by letting gravity do a lot of the work. Like humans, they pick up their feet and just let 'em drop."

That makes sense, but humans don't really just let their feet "drop." Our steps are actually quite controlled...if we just let gravity pull them down, we'd have pretty heavy footfalls, not to mention an awful lot of shuffling...

Re:Walk like a human?

[bigattichouse]

Its not about efficiency, its about "Creepy" factor. Robots that *look* or *act* human need all those little things that make us feel comfortable... they need to walk naturally, or blink at a normal rate - or you won't interact with them properly, and they give you a feeling of "Wrongness" .

Re:get on with it already

[Lord_Dweomer]

What an ignorant post. These are generic robotics problems that NEED to be solved if robotics are to evolve into what is today the realm of science fiction. The reason you keep seeing "yet another bi-pedal locomotion technique" is because scientists aren't satisfied with the current offerings.

Rest assured there are entire industries who make specialized robotics for the likes of the fast food industry, etc. What we need is more research into general robotic functions, such as walking, recognition, etc.

Re:Prosthetics

[DigitumDei]

While I think many of the worlds top armies are definitly trying to move towards that; the possible drawbacks are rather worse than many may assume.

Right now, a leader (lets call him bush for the duration of this example), has to be careful when waging war otherwise he will piss off his country thus ruining his and his parties reelection prospects. With the right application of patriotism a leader can get away with waging war, but its still by no means easy to keep up support when parents children are being killed on a distant battle field.

If the army became completely remote then this political backlash would be greatly reduced since the only loss for that country would be machinery and money.

War could increasingly become the first option rather than the last as the costs become more and more tolerable. This would result in a unbalancing of power that the world has never seen before. With one or two countries completely unafraid to send in the army while most of the smaller countries face a prospect of having to support huge human armies to counter the possibility of hi tech invasions.

Drawbacks would be...

* High civilian/armed forces casualties in lesser countries.
* Even more terroism as all smaller countries realise their armies can no longer protect them.
* The rapid destruction of many economies as countries try to keep up.

As harsh as it may sound, it is good that todays superpowers still have people in their armies. The deaths of those people are what keep politicians in check. Without those deaths, without the political drawbacks they bring, future goverments may make our current goverments of the world look like nobel peace prize winners.