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Robot Walks Like a Human, Requires No Power
MrSeb writes "Today's groundbreaking entry into the Uncanny Valley is a pair of mechanical, robot legs that are propelled entirely by their own weight: they can walk with a human-like gait without motors or external control. Produced by some researchers at Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan, all the legs require for sustained motion (they walked 100,000 steps, 15km, over 13 hours last year) is a gentle push and a slight downwards slope. They then use same 'principle of falling' that governs human walking, with the transfer of weight (and the slight pull of gravity), pulling the robot into consecutive steps."
Oh wait - small caveat - requires a downhill slope. In the next article we will discover that scientists create a ball that also rolls downhill forever without a power source. OK, maybe it's a feat of balance and engineering but come on...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If it weren't for a recent episode of Mythbusters that showed that humans need external directional cues to maintain their own guidance (otherwise we wander and circle without realizing it) I'd say I want to see this thing work on just two legs. But to work on two legs it would need external guidance, which would eliminate the untethered, unpowered aspect.
So instead I'll say: okay, now make one that has a simple motor that can walk up that slope indefinitely.
Seriously.
He made a set of wooden walking bipedal mice for my father when he was a boy.
It was less impressive. But gravity powered walking toys have been around for decades.
It does require power, namely gravitational energy.
-- Cheers!
I've seen this kind of design before. In fact, you can make it yourself: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-A-Walking-Robot---Passive-Walker/
Some other prior art: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shc17/Passive_Robot/PassiveRobot_photos.htm
Obviously this is probably much better in certain ways but it's tough to call this thing groundbreaking
Stop calling these robots! Do you call Newton's Cradle a robot as well? What about the Drinking Bird or even the common Slinky? Just b/c it has a shape that is in two pieces like a leg does not a robot make, esp one that relies on gravity to perform any motion.
Falling down stairs.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
I guarantee this will become an extreme sport within a year. Either a special olympics event or perhaps horse jockeys. Or maybe full size physically healthy people doing some kind of ultra extreme surfing thing.
Would I run down a hill as fast as I can on my own two feet? No thats crazy, I would twist an ankle or a knee, maybe permanent damage... But if that were a robot ankle or robot knee, and I had enough dollars for sponsorship not to worry about it...
There are also military defense issues. If you could make them cheap enough to be disposable, any time you're pinned down on a hill you airdrop a thousand or so of them, and you have an excellent distractor for your escape. Heck put an anti-personnel charge in the decoys while you're at it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This is old news.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Passive walkers have been around for a long time. There was a fad for studying them a few years back, but it didn't lead to anything. The important issues in legged locomotion all involve handling difficult terrain. On flat surfaces, wheels work better.
That's nothing. Beavis & Butthead built a self-propelled giant truck tire that took out half of Highland.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
You're missing the point. The idea is that, because it walks passively, you only need to pump in a little extra energy to make it keep walking. Compare this with systems like the Honda Asimo, which don't really walk dynamically, never really build up any momentum, and need to expend a lot of energy just to continue taking steps.
Passive walkers are not entirely new. A tinker-toy passive walker was famous in the robotics community in the early '00s. But this one looks more refined.
Next, I want to see more effort going into powering these things in a way that meshes nicely with the idea of them walking passively. The closest stuff I've seen to that would be Boston Dynamics and MABEL.
Sure, it's a start, and it's cool . . . but I would have been more amused if they had build a massively parallel array of Slinkys instead. Maybe a Buckyball shaped scary looking thingie with cameras and minimal remote direction control.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wikipedia your groundbreaking ideas, guys, to make sure they're groundbreaking.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Passive_dynamics
20 years ago this was groundbreaking. Start with McGeer's work; then google "passive dynamic walking". You'll find a device which is nearly identical to this one.
I'm sorry, but to me it looks more like a gorilla swinging it's body, moving both feet forward between it's long arms. Just sayin.
So... a wheel?
So they made a two legged thing that duplicates what a wheel can do? How about trying to do better than an 6,000 year old invention. Yes, the engineering to get a two legged machine to duplicate what a wheel can do is interesting, but I would expect a high school kid to be able to do that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The idea is that, because it walks passively, you only need to pump in a little extra energy to make it keep walking.
Sure as long as you never run out if downward slope but how realistic is that? Come back to me when this can passively walk up an incline.
I had toys like that when I was a chid, some 50 years ago. Put 'em on a slope, give them a shove, and they shuffle down. Hours of fun.
Now, get off my grass...
That's not bipedal, this is bipedal.
I've been walking like that my whole life. In my case the middle leg doesn't quite touch the ground.
AHA! I have found the plot for my great sci fi novel.
Alien robots land on mountain tops all around the world... they start marching down- destroying all life as we know it- they appear indestructible- mankind is doomed...
Until mankind discovers their fatal flaw... they can only walk downhill.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
http://www.strandbeest.com/
Found this guy mentioned in a forum once, turns out he lives at walking distance from me. I think it's the coolest thing ever.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
this puppy is four-legged. this human is not.
That's alot of money to spend on what a BALL can do!
So, I'm the first to call out academic research as pointless. But I don't think this is.
Imagine two methods of moving an object back and forth.
The first is a playground swing. It can't power itself, but, by kicking it occasionally, you can get it to start swinging, and, once you do, you only need to put in a little extra power to keep that going.
The second is a little cart with powered wheels. It can drive forwards and backwards, and there's nothing to stop you from just driving it rapidly forwards and backwards over and over.
Which is more efficient?
The idea, making an analogy, is that a leg design like this is to walking, as a playground swing is to moving an object back and forth. One way to pump in energy is to make it walk downhill. But another would be to start adding some self-powering capability. I agree with you insofar as I would like to see that happen. Where we disagree, I think, is just in that I'm not dismissing the passive, mechanical side of the work, because I think it's an important part of making that happen.
I'll also acknowledge that passive walkers are not themselves new. But this is one of the better-executed ones I've seen.
It's especially hard to call it groundbreaking when it requires a guy standing next to it touching it every few seconds. I don't think he left it alone for more than about 5 seconds, and the attention was a little unnerving. Is it really that fragile?
Please help metamoderate.
Jesus, I'm much drunker than I thought.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If I put a rolling pin on a treadmill on a downward slope, I achieve the same effect.
So, these people discovered you can use gravity to go downhill? Um...great?
You seem to be missing my point which is that the claims of the summary and the linked article are hugely hyperbolic. While this set of legs might be well-engineered this is neither groundbreaking nor does it walk with "no power". And how it has any relevance to "uncanny valley" is also a mystery.
If it has no on-board power or control, does it make sense to call it a "robot"? It might be a useful demonstration of "simple legs we could put on a walking robot", and demonstrate that comparatively simple motive devices could move it in the same linear way that gravity does, but I think "robot" is stretching the envelope . . . on the bottom.
This isn't new or cutting edge at all! - Cornell have been doing work on passive dynamic walking for over a decade, they produced exactly the same systems years ago (just without the polish of the Japanese one) and there is a ton of publications available on-line documenting the work. Those of us who have been following this type of work have frequently asked - when the hell are the Japanese going to catch up!
A lot of the work done by Boston Dynamics is building on the earlier work on passive dynamics (including similar work done in the MIT Leg lab) - they are adding power and control.
but my slinky stopped on the very last step. Can you believe it! Couldn't try it again cause I had to catch a plane to find some nasty bat.
All without external power! Using only gravity!
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
This is why treadmills are worthless for keeping you in shape. It takes very little effort to keep up with one.
So, it's walks on a treadmill that is in a delcined position. So, as the foot lands forward, it is taken back to the back of the treadmill which is higher off the ground than the front thus having more potential energy. And it repeats.
Propelled by their "own weight". Not even close.
They can only "walk like humans" if they can't walk in a straight line! They just tested out that 'myth' on mythbuster of humans not walking straight unless they can see where they're going. It was really interesting to see, even the swimming portion. If you haven't seen it, check it out:
WALK A STRAIGHT LINE
Premiere: Oct. 12, 2011
Is it impossible for humans (without a point of reference) to walk in a straight line, such as when they're blindfolded? Will binary explosives, well, explode in the case of a fender bender? The MythBusters are on the case.
dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-walk-a-straight-line/
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
.. will contact them shortly claiming prior art.
Theo Jansen Mechanism
It doesn't use potential energy but it uses wind. But motion is much cooler.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR931mtC3l4
I'm fascinated by all these kinds of mechanics.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
It's not so much a "slope" as "giving it small amount of momentum".
This is aimed directly at the elderly market in Japan, that is exploding. Many elderly can give such a machine attached to their legs momentum that is sufficient for it to walk, but insufficient to propel themselves without the help of the aid. That is the commercial application, and if they succeed while keeping price relatively low in comparison to competing hardware (which is where lack of external energy source comes in), they have a shot at having a best seller on a very wealthy market.
Try again: Power (physics), the rate at which work is performed or energy is converted.
The fact that it is using gravity as a power source does not mean that it requires no power. It would be just as ridiculous to say Hoover Dam generates electricity, no power required.
Explains soulless zombie walking.
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Jesus was a liberal
Big deal. I had a plastic toy when I was two that would do the same thing. Wobble down an inclined plain. Big woop!
These ones do it on two legs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK8IFEGmiKY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Q2Lx8O6Cg&feature=related
This is stupid, the treadmill is providing the momentum to move the legs, they simply fall into place as they are driven backwards. Dumb
It was a pretty cool worm robot that pretty much did the same thing... Here's a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZL6RGkPjws
I think Rodger Waters can show prior art and steal their patent.
Did anyone else think about that?
[insert rant here about the road to somewhere being "uphill both ways"]
it's a slinkey, you know the spring we once played with when we were kids remember how it would go down stairs
Well, I'm with you there.
what this gadget needs is an Escher infinite staircase.
http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/wrongtrousers/about.html Beware our walking leg overlords!
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When I was a tiny kid of 6 or 7, I had a toy camel that walked down a slope like this. That was half a century ago.
a ball would work even better. Needs no power, just a slight slope. And a ball is much cheaper to make
That explains why my daily walking from a far corner of the parking lot to my work have no effect on my weight: I lose no calories!
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
When I was a child in the 60s (and dreams could be held through TV) we had plastic toys that were just like miniature versions of this.
They were made by Marx, I think, and we called them "wickety wackety walking toys".
George Jetson's dog
Pluto the Pup
Barney and Fred Flintstone in a compromising position
Mickey Mouse shamefully abusing Pluto
I had all these except the (apparently rare) Mickey bestiality one, and half a dozen more. They walked down a ramp, swinging their legs, but with no knee flexing. Google "Ramp walker" for more. They'd walk forever if you had an infinitely long ramp or an inclined treadmill.
Either my memory is faulty, or this is really old. Anyhow, not worth the effort to check. It's old and unexciting. My third leg doesn't quite reach the ground, and is not articulated as far as I know. I never seen a human walk like this.
As usual, slashdot gets it all wrong. Of course it requires power to move. Just because it doesn't have a battery doesn't mean something is not putting energy in to it.
Slashdot really has degraded in to total shit.