It’s no secret that China has been making great strides in the field of robotics and – despite the dystopian panic over all-powerful android overlords – there’s no denying that the lifelike animatronics of recent advancements are pretty cool. Chinese robots can play the piano, clean your house, unlock your front door, catch criminals, sort packages and even plaza dance with more coordination than half your neighborhood aunties.
Researchers at Guangdong University of Technology, however, have stepped things up a notch, revealing an exciting new prototype which takes an ordinary bipedal walking robot, then adds friggin’ jet engines to its feet – a move that greatly improves the bot’s flexibility, balance and range, Gizmodo reports.
Effective bipedal bots have been something of a holy grail for developers lately – with scientists in countries from the US to Japan all taking a crack at the difficult design challenge.
While it’s not hard to program a mechanical leg that approximates the motions of a human stride, the tricky part is making sure the robot doesn’t fall over. Unlike humans, who have learned to shift and shuffle to maintain balance while negotiating obstacles, robots tend to tumble when forced to step over or around something, resulting in priceless GIFs.
That’s where the jet fans come in. Developers at the Guangzhou university’s School of Automation realized that by adding the small duct-fans to their robot’s feet – each of which produce around 2 kilograms of thrust, about a third of the bot’s body weight – they could easily overcome the changes to its center of gravity that come with taking longer strides.
In normal conditions, the robot was able to amble along with a stride of about 9 centimeters. But when the opportunity presents itself for the bot to extend its leg further – say, to step across a gap or over an obstacle – the fans fire up to compensate for the shifted center of gravity.
Tests found that with the fans equipped, this Chinese-built animatronic acrobat was capable of crossing distances of 45 centimeters: a factor of five and also nearly the length of the robot’s whole leg. In other words, these folks designed a robot that could do the splits.
On top of improving flexibility and balance, the added thrust of the jet fans can also help the robot to jump higher and soften the shock of impact during landings.
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