Apparently, robot designers are worried that they're not creating automatons that are creepy enough, because a team of engineers at Virgina Tech have put something together that will give even the toughest of men chills. The robot in question is the three-legged STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot, not to be confused with CMU's
Strider) which balances itself on two legs and then flips its body 180-degrees, bringing its third leg forward with the motion. According to project leader
Dennis Hong, "STriDER's gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today," adding, "This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing." It does seem to be true, as the robot has an eerily life-like quality to its movements. Don't believe us? Take a look at the video after the break and see the tripod in action.
posted September 20th 2007 5:24PM
No CG... The white dots seems to be from the video encoding. Original higher resolution movie clip at . Will keep it there for only a week...
Too late for it to overpower cho with a laser of hot screaming death
I for one, welcome our HALF-LIFE 2 overlords.
Yes, I did watch the video. I suspect the tripod is transported in http://youtube.com/watch?v=YdyQu5Zx8xw
Thanks for the warning engadget. I'm a Virginia Tech student and now I know to look out for this thing on campus. I'll be sure to stay away before it attacks me or something.
Anyone notice it's earily similar to the War of the Worlds?
Yeah, I nose that...
the walking robot has been done to death... and can this thing walk on anything other than a flat, obstacle free surface?. isn't it time to invest money into other areas of research? these guys get money to re-invent the wheel, or the bi-pod in this case. do something esle!!!
Erm, there seems to be a fundamental problem with this design and I am surprised no-one has mentioned it.
The body of the thing turns over with each step. And the axis of the turnover is not always the same.
How is it going to be able to carry anything?
You could strap cargo to it's upper legs.
"First "Dog" now the StriDER?
*grabs gravity gun*
BRING IT OOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!"
Can I have a link to the Dog thing, please? P=
Nevermind XD sorry
Now build it 50 feet tall and put a gun on it.
yeah imagine having to watch video footage from this thing? puke bucket anyone?
the only thing this could be usefull for is carrying post-it notes stuck on it's body from one end of the office to the other, provided it's on the same level, or that it learns to catch rides on the elevator
Its not meant to carry things, they intended it more for reconnaissance missions, possibly dropping it from the air and allowing its long legs to absorb the impact.
i don't think that would work... as soon as the legs try to point "down" the thing would become top heavy, and flip over... or like in badmington, i think they call it a bird..
Yeah, your right... huh I didn't think of it that way. I just remember watching one of their animations where they showed it falling and catching itself.
i think we can safely say this is the worst three legged BI-ped robot ever made....
lifelike, as in totaly drunk? this is cool, but walking with three legs like that looks totaly non-human to me, no matter how the knees work.
Does this remind anyone else of the Johnny Quest episode "The Robot Spy" ?
Why is it self-excited, or is that what the "3rd leg" is for? ;)
Self-excited actuation is based on self-excited vibration, a
phenomenon commonly referred to as flutter, which results when a
stable system is excited at one of its natural modes and driven to an
unstable state. The inverted pendulum model of the swing leg has two
natural modes, one where the links of the swing leg move in phase
with one another and a second where the two move out of phase. The
desired motion is for the thigh to swing forward as the shank swings
backward, so the second mode generated the necessary motion. Mathematically, self-excitation occurs when the
stiffness matrix of a system becomes asymmetric. By generating a
torque at the hip with negative feedback to the shank angle, the
stiffness matrix becomes asymmetric and the motion of the shank is
delayed approximately 90 degrees from the thigh motion
Gordon Freeman quoted as saying "Oh, fuck that."
If it didn't flip I'd say it reminded me of the Man-at-Arms from Pikmin.
But can it fly to the moon?
But can it fly to the moon?