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RHex Robot Shows Off Parkour Moves

Posted by timothy on from the leaping-about-all-nimbly-pimbly dept.

Zothecula writes "Parkour is all about hurling yourself quickly and efficiently past whatever obstacles are in your path while maintaining as much momentum as possible. It's a challenge for humans, so how would robots fare? In an effort to push the boundaries of robotic agility, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania decided to find out by teaching their RHex robot some Parkour moves." See the Kod*lab homepage for much, much more on the RHex family.

9 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Not much to do with parkour by Laxori666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The robot hardly jumps over anything, and when it jumps onto something it doesn't even keep moving. This robot has as much to do with parkour as a baby takings its first steps has to do with olympic sprinting. Actually that would be more related because at least the baby uses basically the same limbs. So let's say an alien baby. The video left me feeling sad and disappointed, at a lower hedonic level than previously. I cannot conceive why 1300 separate people chose to upvote the video. Unless perhaps they only watched the clip of the robot sprinting into the air. Which was cool the first time. But not the following ten times.

    1. Re:Not much to do with parkour by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Funny

      If that's how you post sleep-deprived, I suggest you post sleep-deprived more often. Hilarious.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Not much to do with parkour by crndg · · Score: 2

      Lack of sleep or not, I think you're being a bit unfair. Maybe the headline had us envisioning a humanoid robot performing superhuman, Spider-man parkour moves, but the accomplishment of the engineering team here is not trivial. They took a robot designed for a specific 6-legged gait, and pushed it beyond its original design in creative ways. They came up with several distinct "moves" and showed how those moves might be used to traverse obstacles the robot's designers probably never imagined possible. Sure, it's not a complete, ready-for-market product. But it's still pretty cool.

    3. Re:Not much to do with parkour by Seumas · · Score: 2

      Agreed. You can't sell a little six legged flippity-floppity robot leaping up one step or between two tables two feet apart by calling it something associated with this. When your robot can do something even remotely like that or even this, I will be massively fucking impressed.

      On the other hand, I now have a new marker by which to judge robots. When they're able to do legitimate parkour (imagine not only the energy, agility, and stability necessary -- but also the intelligence) I will be absolutely fucking blown away and readily submit to my overlords. Now I kind of really want to see a movie set in a dark dystopian future, where robots are everywhere and you have these ominous robots going after someone that just won't stop, no matter what. Imagine being chased by several robots that could move like that and follow you everywhere? Holy shit that would be utterly terrifying.

  2. My favorite by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Funny

    Parkour

  3. Bad video of a cool technology by Demonantis · · Score: 2

    The video is pretty poorly done. The editing will make people think they are trying to mislead people. It’s pretty amazing considering how light the robot must be. I was left wondering how it knew the obstacle it was attacking. It didn't have any cameras I could see. They probably had to set it up for each maneuver. It would have been neat to see a sequence of maneuvers performed.

  4. Re:Parkour by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 2

    Free running in theory is the more theatrical. The purist parkour is looking for the most efficient way to go from A to B which could involve jumping gaps, shooting through tiny holes, climbing walls, etc. So a parkour purist won't be doing flips and whatnot. Where the showing off comes is that A and B have a maze in between.

  5. Ah Parkour... by korbulon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Leave it to the French to invent the sport of running away.

  6. Re:really.. by Seumas · · Score: 2

    You're confusing parkour with freerunning. They are similar, but one is about efficient traversal from point to point. They're similar and both are cool, but parkour is something a robot would do, say, in pursuit of a human suspect that was running away. Freerunning is something a human would be more likely to do and especially, say, if it were in an Olympic event (which it fucking should be, damn it).

    source: I'm a fat old man with a bad back, but I watch the shit out of some youtube videos.