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."

Comments

Re:Perpetual motion!!!11one1!

[prefec2]

Well the slashdot post is misleading. It is not powerless, it uses gravity. The interesting thing is, that is uses human motion properties and no electrical power to stay in motion.

It does require power

[tsa]

It does require power, namely gravitational energy.

Groundbreaking?

[Missing.Matter]

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

Re:My grandfather made one of these...

[savuporo]

No kidding. A random article from 2005
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050217_robotfrm.htm
But researchers at Cornell University in New York State, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Holland’s Delft University of Technology have built robots that seem to more closely mimic the human gait -- and the Cornell robot matches human efficiency, their designers say. The researchers’ inspiration: simple walking toys that fascinated children in the 19th century.
....
Researchers at each of the three universities have built walking robots, differing slightly but based on the same principle. They are an extension of several years of research into “passive-dynamic walkers” that walk down a shallow slope, very much like simple walking toys that have been around since the 1800s and developed more scientifically starting in 1988.