Hybrid Robot Can Walk ‘N Roll
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 4 of September , 2007 at 3:42 am
By Evan Ackerman
Legs are great for adaptive walking over uneven surfaces, but moving fast on legs takes a lot of skill and coordination. Wheels, on the other hand, are good at moving quickly when it’s generally flat and level, but they don’t handle variable terrain all that well. So the obvious thing would be to combine walking legs and rolling wheels, right? Right. Enter the leg-wheel hybrid walking vehicle “Roller-Walker,” developed by Hirose-Fukushima Robotics Lab. It has four articulated legs with round footpads that are able to pivot 90 degrees and turn into wheels. The wheels are passive (no motors), but the robot has no trouble rolling around in the same manner as you do while wearing rollerblades. It can roll uphill, and even stop itself without brakes. Check out all three clips in the video below; the clips came with some weird background distortion so I put in Yo-Yo Ma playing a cello suite prelude, which goes along quite nicely:
[ Roller-Walker ] VIA [ Robots.net ]
Category: Research
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Comment by Rabdsquirlz
Made Tuesday, 4 of September , 2007 at 3:18 pm
Reminds me of the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell.
Comment by Jorge Fried
Made Sunday, 9 of September , 2007 at 9:45 pm
Amazing! this robot is control by someone?
Comment by bob
Made Tuesday, 4 of March , 2008 at 1:09 pm
sitgSq hi nice site man thx http://peace.com