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Atlas Walking over Partial Footholds
Atlas is an iconic humanoid robot but until now simply walking like a human was a tough problem - it still is but progress is being made. Now Atlas can walk over rough ground using the same technique a human does. Not as fast but it still manages it.
"The Atlas Humanoid walking over small and partial footholds such as small stepping stones or line contacts. After each step the robot explores the new foothold by shifting its weight around its foot. To maintain balance we combine fast, dynamics stepping with the use of angular momentum (lunging of the upper body). The control algorithm was developed at IHMC, the robot was build by Boston Dynamics."
Octobot A Soft Autonomous Robot
At the other end of the spectrum from the heavy hard Atlas we have Octobot, a completely soft robot. What is remarkable about Octobot is that it is built using 3D printing and some clever manufacturing techniques. The robot has a fluidic control system that directs gas generated by a chemical reaction to move the arms. Take a look:
At the moment there are no sensor circuits and this limits what it can do. Also notice that the movement in the video is 15 times speeded up so there is some work to do there. The point is that this is a different manufacturing approach to robotics and it might be the way to create organic-like robots.
This is more an advance in mechanics than robotic software or control systems. Salto jumps very high and is a possible way to get a robot to negotiate rough terrain in a rescue or relief mission. The plan is that having got the basic mechanics worked out the next step is to see if the software can make Salto imitate the moves of a human parkour expert.
SALTO weighs 100 grams (3.5 ounces), is 26 centimeters (10.2 inches) tall when fully extended, and can jump up to one meter. Salto’s maximum jump height was roughly 1.008 meters (3.3 ft). For the wall jump, Salto attained an average height gain of approximately 1.21 meters (3.97 ft). Other robots can jump higher than Salto in a single leap. For example, TAUB, a locust-inspired jumping robot, can leap to 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) in a single jump.
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