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Robot Unravels the Mystery of Walking
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jul 12, 2007 04:32 PM
from the ha-ha-i've-been-walking-for-years-now dept.
from the ha-ha-i've-been-walking-for-years-now dept.
manchineel writes with a link to a BBC article on the lessons learned from a project in locomotive robotics. 'Runbot', as it is known, is the result of a modern technology combined with a 1930s physiology study into human locomotion. The study found that walking is largely an automatic process; we only engage our brains when we have to navigate around an obstacle or deal with rough terrain. "The basic walking steps of Runbot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine. These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time."
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Crawl before walk (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, indeed. None of these walking are that impressive, if you think about it. What would really catch my attention is a robot that gradually learns how to crawl, walk and run on its own, from scratch, just like humans do. Now, that would be something to write home about. In the meantime, I wish those builders of pre-programmed robots the best. Just have fun and keep the grant money flowing but don't tell me you are doing research in AI
Re:Crawl before walk (Score:5, Funny)
Except that 18yrs later it gets drunk and smashes your flying-car forcing you go down to the station in the middle of the night where you get to deal with the cop-bots, admin-bots, legal-bots, insurance-bots,...
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Planar Walker i.e. 2D only (Score:5, Interesting)
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Of course, I may be missing something in your definition of "2D only", but it was probably lost in the translation to a page of useless google search results :)
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Re:Planar Walker i.e. 2D only (Score:5, Funny)
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Frist psot (Score:5, Funny)
what awesome bodies we have (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially considering we appear to be a result of dumb luck and retarded fish monkeys..
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For reference [discovermagazine.com]
Yuur missing a piece (Score:2)
it should be:
"Especially considering we appear to be a result of dumb luck, retarded fish monkeys, and time.."
People just can't or don't take time into account naturally. You see it all the time.
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You can tell if you are doing the former if you trip when your foot catches something. The latter method is recommended for use by aged people due to the decrease in response time and hence increase risk of falling (falling having a higher risk of injury in the elderly
learn from mistakes (Score:2, Funny)
Mixed signals (Score:5, Funny)
"How does Runbot walk?"
"The basic walking steps of Runbot"
"When Runbot first encounters a slope these low level control circuits 'believe' they can continue to walk up the slope without having to change anything."
"Runbot walks in a very different way from robots like Asimo, star of the Honda TV adverts, said Prof Woergoetter."
"The first step in building Runbot was creating a biomechanical frame that could support passive walking patterns."
"So using the information from its local circuits Runbot can walk on flat surfaces at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second."
"Prof Woergoetter said Runbot was able to learn new walking patterns after only a few trials."
"Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human."
And last but not least:
"Four other scientists - Poramate Manoonpong, Tao Geng, Tomas Kulvicius and Bernd Porr - are also involved in the project, which has been running for the last four years."
Sorry guys, but it really isn't living up to it's name.
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pfft (Score:2)
S E G W A Y
Someone had to say it.
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Obvious? (Score:2)
imagine a beowulf cluster of human brains!
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That's called Internet, and the results have been mixed so far.
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That's called the "Borg Collective." For some reason, Star Trek didn't depict it in such a good light, although I thought the borg queen was "hot" in a Hellraiser-type of way.
Re:Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Walking isn't an unconscious process because it's too complex for consciousness -- what kind of argument is that? The most complex thinking that humans do (inventing new math, plotting the course of a rocket, designing a 10 million line software system, etc.) is all done CONSCIOUSLY. According to your argument, these tasks should be happening UNconsciously.
Walking is an unconscious process because it doesn't HAVE to be conscious. Why pollute our conscious minds with thought processes that are irrelevant, when all we're trying to do is walk to the fridge and get a beer?
Thought processes tend to be made unconscious once they have been learned and refined to the point where the conscious mind is no longer needed to supervise and correct mistakes. I've noticed this first hand when writing code. I no longer find myself thinking "Okay, I need to declare a variable called x," it just sort of comes out of my fingers, while my conscious mind thinks at some more abstract level. Didn't used to be that way. The ability to place tasks into your unconscious mind is a learned skill, I think.
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Muscle Memory (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to play an instrument and sing at the same time, or play two independent instruments at once (piano and especially organ are close enough to qualify, as is something like a Chapman Stick or Megatar), you have to rely on muscle memory that much more, as you now have twice as much to deal with. Doing all that and singing at the same time is more difficult still, and there are plenty of great musicians who never learn this particular stunt. The only way I can play and sing at the same time is to drill one or the other (usually the instrument) until I can do it by habit alone, then layer the other one over it and hope it holds together. Fortunately, woodwind players are not frequently asked to sing while playing, or to play two instruments at once, and if I do have to sing while playing, it's not really an independent act but part of coaxing a particular sound from the instrument.
As is the case with walking, the trick is to practice (a lot) and to accept that you will fall down (a lot) until you get the hang of it. Most of us just don't remember how hard we had to work to learn to walk. Some have to re-learn and could tell you how tough it is, and others still bear the scars of learning in infancy -- I have a scar in one eyebrow from falling into the edge of a table while still learning to walk (and a matching one in the other eyebrow, from learning to fight, but that is another story).
Mal-2
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runbot homepage (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, here's the cited paper. [plosjournals.org]
This isn't that novel. It's very much like Randall Beer's insect work [iu.edu] from a decade ago. It's hierarchical control using controllers built from control blocks the authors call "neurons". It's a pure reflex system, with no explicit prediction.
Also notice that it's a planar biped, constrained so that it can't fall sideways.
There's better locomotion and balance work going on in Japanese hobbyist robotics.
It's good that people are working on this stuff again. There was
Cats do more or less the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cats do more or less the same thing (Score:5, Funny)
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Walking Research (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w [youtube.com]
It's nice to see the Runbot "has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe".
Backyard ant experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Arm yourself with a box cutter, straight razor, razor blade or scalpel
2. Capture your favorite back yard ant.
3. Cut off the ant's head. Be careful not to hurt anything else, don't smash any legs and don't crush any other body parts. If you don't get it right with the first try, try again on your next favorite ant.
4. Discard the head as neither you nor the ant can use it anymore.
5. Let go of the rest of the ant
The ant should now right itself and stand as if awaiting movement instructions.
Some fun experiments:
1. Blow gently on the ant. It should sway in the breeze but generally remain upright.
2. Flick (or blow harder on) the ant without smashing it so that it tumbles some distance. It will right itself and patiently await further instructions.
3. Place the ant on a piece of paper, wait for it to right itself and then flip the paper over. The ant should stay attached to the paper.
Ants are truly miniature engineering marvels.
Re:Backyard ant experiment (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Backyard ant experiment (Score:5, Funny)
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TFA say, humans are fully autonomous too. (Score:2)
Fastest walking human? (Score:3, Interesting)
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It should be called "moving as fast as you can while making contact with the ground so that no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact occurs." Granted it's wordy. Rave Walking uses different muscles, and different movement of the legs.
average walking speed is 4-5 MPH. I walk a ten minute mile, and I am considered quick.
Not to imply in anyway 'Race walking' is easy, it's just different then actual walking.
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and it'll never get out of the lab (Score:2)
So if I want a bipedal robot I have to duplicate your work. Maybe I can read your scientific papers and that will give me 10% of the knowledge you gained in doing this project, but I still have to turn theory into practice.
Commercialize your research already.
The mystery of falling over. . . (Score:2, Funny)
Almost got it.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I prefer the Wabian-2 (Score:4, Funny)
Swiveling hips are the way of the future. ^_^ Here is a demonstration video. [youtube.com] (The giant mech shooting balls at people afterward is unrelated...)
Also check out the related robot Kiyomori. [kiyomori.jp] Because nothing says "We are here to protect you" like traditional armor and GLOWING EYES.
Asimo (Score:3)
Based on what I've read and seen, this article is wrong about the Asimo. The Asimo is the only robot I've seen that looks very human in the way it moves. It can walk, run (with both feet leaving the ground), jump, perform a complex dance, get up after a fall, adapt to changes in the terrain, and maintain its balance if something unexpected pushes it. It also treats walking/running as a controlled fall.
It looks like runbot can't even get both feet off the ground, which means it's not running, it's power-walking. The only thing new here may be its "local circuits", which simply means that it has extra CPU's to take the load off the primary CPU.
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It would be interesting to see if people with a higher level of