Toyota’s running humanoid robot

Ellipse

Ellipse

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Awesom-o
July 20, 2009 at 2:52 AM


We all know of Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot and its amazing walking and running capabilities. Other research labs though are not far behind developing robots just as capable. In fact, Toyota has an excellent and very advanced robot in the making even though they entered the game much later than Honda.

Toyota’s most recent humanoid robot prototype (one of many partner robots the automotive giant is developing) stands 130cm tall and weighs 50Kgr. Its legs have 7 degrees of freedom and it can run at an average speed of 7 km/h. In contrast, ASIMO’s maximum speed is 6km/h. The Toyota researchers had to develop new real-time methods for balance control. These methods make it possible for the robot to remain balanced when an external force such as a push from a human is applied when in motion.

The below video from Toyota demonstrates the running capabilities of the new humanoid robot. The robot takes a step every 340ms and has no contact with the ground for 100ms of that. Notice in the video how the robot remains balanced even after pushed by the human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv35ItWLBBk&feature=player_embedded

Finally, even though this new robot is impressive, it is still limited on moving over flat surfaces and it can only recover from small external forces. But then again, even Rome was not built in one day!


http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/2009/07/toyotas-running-humanoid-robot.html
 
At some point not so far into the future someone is gonna say "hey, what if we put a gun on it" and then "what if we put it on guard duty and let it fire on anyone without an RFID chip" at which point some other guy is gonna say "sounds great! let's do it!". The rest, as they say, has been shown on the silver screen too many times...
 
foofighter said:
At some point not so far into the future someone is gonna say "hey, what if we put a gun on it" and then "what if we put it on guard duty and let it fire on anyone without an RFID chip" at which point some other guy is gonna say "sounds great! let's do it!". The rest, as they say, has been shown on the silver screen too many times...
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Yeah, that last video is totally frightening! And, I'm sure, what you are suggesting is exactly where we're headed! But, let's say for a second that police/military applications are prohibited. How many HUMAN jobs are being eliminated by these advanced robotics? Of course, the argument is, only boring, repetitive jobs are being taken over, thus freeing humans for more interesting, higher capability jobs. Funny, I don't see it working that way--do you? Unless, of course, you are an engineer that designs robots! And with police/military applications back on the table, how many police/military jobs will be eliminated? How many young people are currently enlisting in the military because they have no other options? How long before there won't be any jobs due to advanced robotics and technology? Then these robots can just herd us into those giant pens, feed us the Frankenfoods, and collect all that misery/pain induced bounty along with actual slaughtered bodies for our 4D STS overlords! :O
 
Ellipse said:
Notice in the video how the robot remains balanced even after pushed by the human.
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Notice also that she hardly pushes it at all? A good shove would have it over no problem.... :rolleyes:

I've been interested in robots and AI (and computers/electronics) for as long as I can remember.
I remember seeing MIT walking robots in 1996....
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjVV7AWaGM

Robot snakes...
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJuNe50uuzk&feature=related

The most impressive one I've ever seen however was a pneumatic spider robot, about 6ft wide that was (to be?) used to inspect ships hulls from the inside.
It could walk up the walls of the ship! I've never been able to find footage of it though...
All of these I watched on an episode of Equinox back in 1996 or there abouts....

Oh, don't forget (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency sponsored) robot cars.....
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpEY3mAjpdk

All we are seeing in the way of robots etc is what the PTB let us see anyway.

JEEP said:
Then these robots can just herd us into those giant pens, feed us the Frankenfoods, and collect all that misery/pain induced bounty along with actual slaughtered bodies for our 4D STS overlords! :O
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Why bother with robots when people will do (and have done) that for the dictators of the past?
 
And the Big Dog :

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHJJQ0zNNOM

This one is really creepy...
 
This one is really creepy...
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As you say Polonel this one is creepy, still as I was watched it, I had the thought that the dog will stop by a tree to drop some oil :lol:

All we are seeing in the way of robots etc is what the PTB let us see anyway.
Click to expand...

My thought too, this may only represent the tip of the iceberg.
 
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