Two-legged robot mimics human balance while running and jumping | Hacker News Reader

Two-legged robot mimics human balance while running and jumping

news.mit.edu

60 pointsjpm_sd12 comments

while the headline is technically correctly phrased, it buries the lede on the interesting bit here: the bi-directional feedback mechanism. robots that walk/run/jump like humans have existed for decades, but a bipedal robot that literally mimics the movements of a particular human, and sends force feedback to that human for real-time control is novel. that’s the neat part.

I subscribe to a small channel on YouTube and the channel owner had a very impressive demo of low latency bi-directional teleoperation. He's got some Cheetah vids so I'm guessing he at least contributed some code here if not control/hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnQGPGG-vuQ

I feel creepy posting this for some reason but if you have even an inkling of the complexity it's a crazy demo that I had to share lol.

That channel owner, Ben Katz did the mechanical hardware, motor control PCB + firmware for the MIT Mini Cheetah as part of his PhD, here is his blog post on it[1], which links to a full technical report. The latest firmware is here [2]

[1] http://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2019/03/hello-there...

[2] https://os.mbed.com/users/benkatz/code/Hobbyking_Cheetah_Com...

Ah! That links to the thesis folks were talking about in the comments. Thank you!!!

Also, geez. That's a lot of (very impressive) work.

If you made a robot big enough to carry the human (and the human sensing/feedback machinery), you'd basically have Battletech, right?

Or instead of giant death robots, you could have remote-controlled first responders. They could be dispatched quickly by drone and not put a human at risk.

Personally, I'm most excited about the possibility of robot backup dancers.

>Personally, I'm most excited about the possibility of robot backup dancers.

I think Chuck-E-Cheese already tried that. Results were... not promising.

Totally agree. Much rather see giant robots fitted with construction, first responder, tree planting, wildfire fighting, etc. equipment.

I really love how the approach to solving the problem of 'how do we make it walk like a human' was to avoid solving the problem entirely and just use a human as realtime reference.

I love fictional giant deathbots. In reality, I'd be happier with giant robot gladiator fights.

The important thing is that it's not taking jobs.

Unfortunately we probably don't get to choose and I'm pretty sure we all know which of these is more likely to get funded (well, maybe not the giant part though).

I like how they treat the robots and the human on equal terms in the photo label :) No need for a second renaissance anyway.

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