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Chairbot Walks You Around While You Sit

Posted by samzenpus on from the stop-using-your-legs-like-a-sucker dept.

Gary writes "What do you get when you combine a robot and a chair? The Hubo FX-1 chairbot, of course. In what is perhaps my favorite robot design yet, this giant chair with legs looks like it came out of some ridiculous 80's sci-fi movie or something, but it's very, very real. HUBO FX-1 is two meters in height, and weighs 150 kg. The person sitting can control the robot easily using the built in joystick. Each ankle has a 3-axis force/torque sensor which measures the normal force and 2 moments. Each foot has an inclination sensor which measures the angle of the slope. Also, the rate gyro and the inclination sensor of the body allow the device to stabilize itself."

2 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Spider car! by MaWeiTao · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm surprised no one has mentioned this thing. It's kind of scary to see it in motion.

  2. Re:One thought by paleo2002 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just wonder WTF would buy a 2m tall 2 legged monstrosity, when 6 short legs would be much simpler to control and balance. This thing is rediculously impractical.

    Whenever a new design for a 2-legged robot shows up, people immediately complain about how impractical bipedalism is and that the problem can easily be solved with more legs. But if that were the case, if there were no advantage to bipedalism, then bipedal organisms would not have shown up at all, let alone numerous times in separate groups of animals through history.

    Once the balance problem has been solved, bipedal robots will be as fast and agile as bipedal humans, dinosaurs (avian and non-), etc. And then Will Smith will have to save us all from them.