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

sites

[r84x]

Here are the homepages for the biped labs of the three universities represented in the article.

Delft

Cornell

MIT

Prosthetics

[BWJones]

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.

Re:Prosthetics

[BWJones]

We scientists are always making stuff the defense department is interested in. You would absolutely be amazed at the possibilities that people think of for basic science research. In fact, I am going to be meeting with a bunch of DOD folks in a couple of months because they are interested in what we are doing. Not everything the DOD does though is involved with taking of life. There is a considerable interest in battlefield medicine and such. At any rate, this is an aspect of the Bush administrations push to applied as opposed to basic research that troubles me. We should not push basic research to the sidelines because that is where advances start from that yes, even the DOD can take advantage of.

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.

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:Muscles, perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Muscles, perhaps?

[cnettel]

Also, remember that a leg is not dropping. I know you indirectly said so by mentioning the energy stores and so on, but I think it's important to make it an explicit point.

We approximate a pendulum rather than letting the foot be some kind of ball attached to a "string" (the leg) bouncing up and down. Human movements without a proper grasp of angular momentum gives strange interpretation, like that of the OP.

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" .

Please.

[mctk]

Oh sure, they can walk like me. But what's their record on Dance Dance Revolution?

Why not?

[lawpoop]

"And hey, why not send them to Mars to look for those microbes?"

Probably because there are much more efficient ways to locomote. Bipedalism is risky, especially if you want to bend over a lot to pick things up.

I'm in favor of a radially symmetrical spider-like walker that can turn in any direction, or even invert it legs and continue walking if it gets turned upside down. This would make it much more flexible in navigating the Martian environment.

You could have a central ring with legs attatched all around it, and then a rotating body that includes sensors, power supply, and a grappling hand. The single grappling hand descends from the center and pulls samples up into the body for storage/analysis.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bipedalism is risky, especially if you want to bend over a lot to pick things up.

Speaking as an ex-convict I advise taking this man's words to heart.

Re:But why....

[badmicrophone]

well, it's a migration strategy.

If we want our robots to live in a human world in our homes and cities they more or less need to fit our form factor. Additionally, if you want the robots to take over jobs like construction then, at first, they will need to be able to drive the decades old machinery - back-hoes, delivery trucks...you get the picture.

Going past that stage there is also the psycological consideration: a robot with whom you can shake hands is going to garner more emotional investment from us then the tank treaded claw-mobile.

when robots become the new automobile we WILL see them in much more "functional" forms: more machine like and specialized. but there will always be a place for the humanoid robot in our homes.

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.

Logical conclusion

[EmbeddedJanitor]

We're somewhere along the following evolutionary parth for war:

One king doesn't like the other king so he goes beats him up. Unfortunately he also gets hurt in the process.

Hey instead of **me** being hurt I'll send some blokes (==soldiers) over to beat up the other king.

The other king doesn't like to be beaten up, so he puts his soldiers in the way. We now have two armies beating eachother up.

Hey let's not send our soldiers into the battlefield to get hurt, let's send robots. Nobody gets hurt. Soldiers can sit at home and eat pizza.

The enemy then gets pissed that these robots beat up their people and build their own. Now we have robots beating up on robots.

Next, the one army gets pissed that their robots are getting beaten up and start hacking the enemy comms to stop the other robots. The enemy responds by hacking the hackers...

So what's the logical conclusion? Is war going to just end up being a big computer simulation with nobody getting hurt? Perhaps the kings should just go decide over a nice game of chess!

bah!

[MistabewM]

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein

Several different approachs.

[WindBourne]

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.