Robot Parkour

[ysabetwordsmith]

I was impressed with this video of robot parkour.  It's all the more amazing because they're still top-heavy, so the balance protocols have to work extra hard to compensate. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Link is giving me an error message.

Fixed!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Known bug, try it now.

Re: Fixed!

[(Anonymous)]

Works thanks.

[siliconshaman]

There's also a 'behind the scenes' video of them failing... which honestly makes it more impressive.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

At the bleeding edge of robotic development, it doesn't matter how often they fail, it matters what they can do at all. The Kittyhawk flight lasted only a few seconds.

Look at the development of the cheetahbot -- it started out tethered and running on a conveyor belt, doing random jumps, which was impressive. Now it runs free around the campus, climbing steps, wading through leaves, and doing backflips.

Once you've built a robot that can do something challenging on occasion, it's all about refinement: figuring out how it succeeds and why it fails, then tweaking the hardware and software to improve reliability.