We all know that humanoid robots roaming the streets aren’t that far away, but there are still plenty of kinks to be worked out of the designs. The AMBER 2 Robot does its best to emulate human foot movements, with the goal of making a machine that can walk on all sorts of terrain.
The AMBER 2 Robot from Texas A&M Amber Lab has almost all of the pivot points necessary to mimic human-like locomotion, which is very complex. You’ll note the purposeful stumble at the end of the video, which was intentional to show that the boom only provided lateral stability.
I want to see when these kinds of legs will be integrated into a real walking robot. Hopefully, Skynet won’t use them to help exterminate us all.
Why sail when you can paddle, and why paddle when you can walk? Isn’t that the proverb? No? Well, it should be if you’re going to pull a cool watery stunt, like Chris Todd here. He built the contraption you see above and called it the Treadalo. It’s a human-sized hamster wheel fused to a catamaran hull, and is propelled by a walking human. We think the name is a play on the word “pedalo.” We like pun-y names like that. And we like that he thought he could use it to walk across the 66 miles that separates Wales from Ireland. Chris believed he’d do the trek in two days and actually got halfway there before he was done in by waves that were too big for the vessel to handle. He was forced to tow the Treadalo back to Wales with a rescue boat and the thing broke on the way back. It’s sad because Chris wasn’t doing this just for fun: he was trying to raise money for charity. But a broken Treadalo is not failure, merely a setback. The man is already working on making a second attempt later this month.
[ Project Website ] VIA [ Inhabitat ]