STriDER, a Three-Legged Walking Robot

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a short article, New Scientist reports that researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a tripedal experimental robot. With its three legs, this robot, named STriDER — short for 'Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot' — is actually more stable than 2- or 4-legged robots. As said another researcher, 'It's like a biped with a walking stick.' This robot is intended to deploy sensors and cameras in difficult-to-access areas."

Comments

roland again?

[Brett Buck]

You hot-shot computer geeks at /. ought to b able create a new story filter - that permits any story with the string of random letters "Roland Piquepaille" to be filtered out. As a public service, of course. Clearly the Ed's aren't up to the task.

        Brett

Re:Hell of a comparison

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's a pretty crummy analogy anyways. A biped with a walking stick has two primary limbs and shifts its weight to leverage the third assistant limb. All limbs are equivalent in the video, plus the mechanics look inefficient as hell. Swinging the entire body and one limb to take a step? And, a step that's angled away from your intended direction? Bah.

Re:More human than humans

[Cassius Corodes]

I'm not an expert on this - but I'm sure there is a good reason why 3 legged things aren't popular in nature.