Thursday, August 24, 2006

Robots Skating, Scooting

As robots are getting evermore human, the first of them are taking to using vehicles as a means of transportation.

From the high-end segment of robotics we learn that humanoid life-sized robot Hubo by Professor Oh Jun-ho of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology got himself a Segway Scooter and is now learning how to step on it by himself.
(via)

While from the tinkering frontier we hear of a Robonova-1 humanoid, who got a pair of hacked mini-skates. The 32cm bot overcomes his handicap of having only 17 degrees of freedom (which means in his case not being able to rotate the hip or feet accordingly to create a selfpropelled skating), by using a set of ski-poles to initiate motion.
Video
(via)

Even more interesting robot locomotion (without external vehicles):
Ways of Locomotion, Evolution reserved for Robots,
Ballbot I've been waiting for.

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