Robot Walks Like a Human, Requires No Power 195
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."
Perpetual motion!!!11one1! (Score:4, Insightful)
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To be even more reductive: wouldn't any sufficiently round rigid object achieve the same objective? Given a smooth enough surface, a drop of water can also pull this off (although the surface would also have to be hydrophobic).
Distilled, this is a dynamic mechanical object reacting to gravity (as opposed to a static object like a ball). It's very nice, and I'm sure this implementation wasn't easy to pull off, but it's nothing new.
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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.
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It is not powerless, it uses gravity.
No, it uses "slight gravity". We're given to believe that this object generates a frame of reference around it where gravity is some fraction of 9.8ms-2.
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that is uses human motion properties and no electrical power to stay in motion.
Oh? What happens if you take away the power to the treadmill?
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it...walks forward
Re:Perpetual motion!!!11one1! (Score:4, Funny)
Are we sure it is not repelled by the big bow tie worn by the old guy directly behind? I know I am.
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I don't know anybody that would be overjoyed to get a pair of these to ONLY walk downhill ...
Yeah, my life seems like it's uphill both ways.
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Actually, it's slight gravity *or* a push. Imagine you're quadriplegic, but can lean forwards/backwards slightly. This seems enough to give you forward motion. Imagine you're old and infirm but can still generate a bit of power in your leg muscles, this can reasonably help you take steps.
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No.
The quadriplegic will fall over if he tries it (because he's going to have to continue leaning forward in order to keep going forward unless the contraption is on a down-hill and eventually he will lean far enough forward that he tumps over)
The old-infirm guy would be a more likely candidate, but again the likelihood of falling over would be far greater than with a walker or a wheelchair, and falls when you're old and infirm can be very bad news.
One thing I learned when my dad slowly degenerated from a
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The quadriplegic will fall over if he tries it (because he's going to have to continue leaning forward in order to keep going forward unless the contraption is on a down-hill and eventually he will lean far enough forward that he tumps over)
Uhh no –this is the principal of continuous falling, and it's exactly how we walk, we lean a little forward, and then move our legs under us to keep us from falling forwards. We do this in such a way that we stay leaning forward just the right amount. This is exactly the motion that this invention is designed to duplicate.
The old-infirm guy would be a more likely candidate, but again the likelihood of falling over would be far greater than with a walker or a wheelchair, and falls when you're old and infirm can be very bad news.
Yeh... You might... end up in a wheelchair if you fell and broke something! Of course, if you have mechanical aids to walking, the likelihood of your weak legs giving way is vastl
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As pointed out, it requires the power of gravity.
"Consider what the effect of some weight above those legs can do, just by shifting that weight forward."
As pointed out, it requires a slope. Shifting weight forward doth not a slope make.
" It makes lifelike robotics a lot closer to reality."
Right up until they come up against a wall at the bottom of the hill, it should look "realistic".
You remind me of a teenage friend who spent the summer experim
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Fascinating. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Fascinating. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually the human part has more to do with the way we're wired and with one side being more dominant than the other
Do you know why that is? I understand why my right arm is more powerful than my left, because I use it for more things. I don't understand why my left leg is more powerful than my right.
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One of your legs tends to be dominant too, although it may not look as obvious as it does with your hands.
For example:
- If you start paying attention, you'll probably find that you tend to land on the same leg each time you jump.
- When sitting with your legs crossed, you tend to cross your legs in the same position, w
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No, the evidence from the Mythbusters showed that we wander in either direction. No consistency.
They were convinced they were on track to their target the whole time, but somtimes went left, sometimes went right, sometimes both, sometimes making loops only a few meters in diameter.
Fact is, without eyes or ears, we don't know we're veering from a straight path.
Which makes a lot of sense, looking at it now.
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During the Mythbusters experiment, they also showed them stating multiple times that they had the feeling they might be drifting slightly in a particular direction (even when this was not the case) -- Just 'compensating' for that feeling (whether consciously or not) would explain the seeming randomness to their wanderings.
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This was *sort* of covered in followup comments, but not exactly. It sort of sounds like you're talking about handedness/footedness or an analog thereof. At least on the Mythbusters episode, at least one of them was circling in *both* directions (i.e. a very wild path).
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The article (and you) are implying that adding power (even internal) defeats much of the purpose, and puts us into BIGDOG or ALPHADOG type territory; would there not still be a large efficiency gain over traditional walking robots, such that an internal power source is much more feasible than it would otherwise have been?
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Thing is, this thing only seems to be efficient in a very narrow scenario. When we stand up, we're in a very unstable equilibrium. It's like leaning back in your chair; you can balance it nicely for a bit but it will always fall one way or the other. Our muscles, eyes, inner ear, etc work constantly to make sure we stand up straight. We use the same concept to make robots that can balance on a single wheel (see Inverse Pendulum). It's a great exercise in feedback control.
Now this robot is in the same unstab
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Er, I think they fixed the ankle just to simplify the thing. Shouldn't be impossible to replace it with a pantograph and get a similar result.
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Well, none of this thing really mimicks a human. Our stability is 100% due to muscular action under balanced tension, not static mechanical linkages that maintain orientation regardless of force.
But, what they have is a good platform for making something that can modulate its stability without a lot of computation.
But, it's somewhat less impressive than your average strandbeest [strandbeest.com].
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That's not to say they don't have a ways to go with this thing. That demo of the guy with the walking contraption on doesn't look practical.
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To accommodate all the variety of our environment, we've evolved many degrees of freedom in our foot, ankle, pelvis, etc. So, if we want a robot that can do the same degrees of tasks as us, we need to add back those degrees of freedom to this robot, which in turn will make it fall over, thus defeating its purpose.
The point of the robot is to develop low-energy gaits similar to those that humans use. They can add the extra stuff back in and still maintain the same gaits. Why would it fall over? We don't.
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I think there is a video out there of a robot able to balance two sticks on top of each other by just moving the base.
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humans need external directional cues to maintain their own guidance (otherwise we wander and circle without realizing it
Hmmm I wonder if having a tail would correct that....
-looks at sleeping neighbor and stapler-
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Come on now, it is not that brilliant??
I have heard of reinventing the wheel (around 9000bc) but this is ridiculous?
We are reinventing walking now?! (200,000BC)
(Can I take my tongue out of my cheek?)
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> But to work on two legs it would need external guidance
The hill provides guidance.
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A little. If it's steep enough. If it's gradual and there's interstitial unevenness, you'll never know which way is up or down.
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Actually, they kinda suck at science, except for the simple fact that they test things and trust their evidence.
I'd like to see them do a little more of the math, then test their math against their evidence, too.
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Actually, they kinda suck at science, except for the simple fact that they test things and trust their evidence.
I'd like to see them do a little more of the math, then test their math against their evidence, too.
Given a choice between a show where people are doing math and a show where people are blowing up trailers with RPGS, I'll take the lattter.
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Discovery thought so too, which is why they started running shows that were primarily veiled attempts at just that.
All of which sucked. A lot. Because the sort of person who's more interested in blowing shit up than figuring things out is usually not the sort of personality that makes for good TV. In many cases they're the sort of personality that makes you go watch a shopping channel to get the moronicity out of your eyes. Same reason I can't stand watching the Punkin' Chunkin' thing. Cool toys, but a
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It's staying almost perfectly on course. Throw in a turning imbalance in each step, though, and I doubt that would happen.
My grandfather made one of these... (Score:2)
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.
Re:My grandfather made one of these... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050217_robotfrm.htm [world-science.net]
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.
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Yes, but this one is Japanese. Key distinction. That obviously makes it more betterer.
Funny, I would have gone with.
a) It's made out of aluminum therefor it's better.
b) It was made by scientists who noted what they did for the betterment of mankind.
c) It's bigger.
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It was made by scientists who noted what they did for the betterment of mankind.
As did the scientists in the 1980s that did the exact same thing. Somewhat interesting to watch? Sure. Groundbreaking? Hardly.
It does require power (Score:3, Informative)
It does require power, namely gravitational energy.
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It does require power, namely gravitational energy.
power : rate :: energy : quantity
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It does require power, namely gravitational energy.
And a push. And, if you watch the video, someone standing by to stop it from falling over.
Give me a long enough sloped surface, and I'll show you a ball that can go even further, without falling over, and with no need for a push.
This is just an old child's toy embiggened and made out of aluminum.
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made out of aluminum.
Aluminium golf clubs. Clearly the aim here is to build caddies for Japanese golfers.
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Yep, it's a fancy Slinky.
Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [instructables.com]
Some other prior art: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shc17/Passive_Robot/PassiveRobot_photos.htm [cmu.edu]
Obviously this is probably much better in certain ways but it's tough to call this thing groundbreaking
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While I respect their accomplishment, I agree, I wouldn't call it "groundbreaking." Of course, very little academic research actually is.
The same goes for other areas of society. Gutenberg wasn't the first to use movable type; Columbus wasn't the first European to make it to the New World; Taylor and MacLaurin weren't the first to use their eponymous expansions; Jacobi, it turns out, scooped the Hungarian Algorithm (but his manuscript was lost until recently); the Ming dynasty had clocks with mechanical e
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Of course, I won't deny them the credit they deserve. Their system looks well engineered. And in their defense obviously the writer of the article is using the term "groundbreaking"
But at the same time I don't see a paper anywhere and I don't see any citations on prior work so this sort of thing should really be noted. This is especially true in an area like robotics (my field) where terms like innovative and groundbreaking get thrown around a lot. When really, it's just a rehash of an idea used in another
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This is especially true in an area like robotics (my field) where terms like innovative and groundbreaking get thrown around a lot. When really, it's just a rehash of an idea used in another discipline applied to robotics.
Yeah, I know the feeling.
Even great, celebrated, actually-(somewhat)-useful ideas turn out to be simple applications of other ones. Take the Kalman Filter. If you come at it from a least-squares point of view and focus on the word "optimal" -- as it was first explained -- it sounds extremely impressive. But if you explain what a Bayes Filter is (after which people say, "ok, that's simple enough"), and then specialize it to Gaussian noise and linear systems (again to the reaction "ok, that's easy"), you'v
Why does it require so much attention? (Score:2)
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I thought that myself when I started watching the video. If you keep watching, there's a shot of it walking perfectly fine all alone, and it's stated that it's walked unaided for something like 32 hours straight. It wasn't smart of them to start with that shot, though. If you're not patient enough to watch it through, you really get the impression that it can't walk without someone catching it every few seconds.
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Whereas powered legs were demonstrated in "The Wrong Trousers" in 1993.
Please! (Score:5, Insightful)
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+1
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Would you accept the term android then? That's a word derived from its similarity to humans.
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How about apparatus, thingamajig, whatchamacallit, whosimawhatchit, thingamabob, or doohickey?
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I thought Google had trademarked the term Android
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Robot (n): Any machine we choose to anthropomorphize.
Can you come up with a better definition? I think that one's the truth.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_dynamics [wikipedia.org]
Extreme sport? (Score:2)
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 co
Passive walkers are old news (Score:3)
This is [youtube.com] old news [umich.edu].
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Passive walkers, again. (Score:2)
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.
So it's a pimped Slinky . . . (Score:2)
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.
It goes downhill without any power (Score:2)
So... a wheel?
Gentle push + downward slope = joke (Score:2)
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.
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Excerpt this isn't anything like that at all. Outside of possibly using more modern materials nothing they do is revolutionary or groundbreaking.
This is going to be the basis of my novel... (Score:3)
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.
Reminds me of.. (Score:2)
http://www.strandbeest.com/ [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.
"Pair"? (Score:2)
How is this more than a rolling pin? (Score:2)
If I put a rolling pin on a treadmill on a downward slope, I achieve the same effect.
Is it truly a "robot"? Or just an ingredient? (Score:2)
My slinky "walked" 13,000 miles, too (Score:2)
All without external power! Using only gravity!
Almost human? (Score:2)
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/
Walking Table (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR931mtC3l4 [youtube.com]
I'm fascinated by all these kinds of mechanics.
Day O' The Dead (Score:2)
Explains soulless zombie walking.
Old news (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK8IFEGmiKY [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Q2Lx8O6Cg&feature=related [youtube.com]
Old timer rant (Score:2)
The Wrong Trousers (Score:2)
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That's nothing. Beavis & Butthead built a self-propelled giant truck tire that took out half of Highland.
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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
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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.
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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 b
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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.
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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 sho
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Seriously what? Passive walkers have been around for nearly 3 decades.
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most of them are bumbling around DC
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Any Amish or Mennonites online who could point us to earlier designs?