University robots want to take a walk

You know when a consortium of universities like MIT, U of Michigan, Cornell, and Delft U in the Netherlands get together to mash out walking humanoid robot design principles, you're bound to get something good. So what was the result? Well, apparently our cute friend
Asimo (made by Honda), who we think walks pretty well all things considered, expends 10 times the amount of energy for its size as a human, and uses a large number of motors in a complicated system keeping its balance. (Now we're curious where
QRIO weighs in here.) These university researchers developed a robot walking system where natural equilibrium and weight dynamics make not only more efficient and fluid walking movement (read: more human-like), but also a robot that requires far fewer motors and juice to power them—apparently these bots are on par with human energy consumption for walking. What's it all mean? Well, besides laying a new groundwork for more energy efficient and realistically moving prosthetic legs and feet, we're now that much closer to being run down and slaughtered by our future-robot overlords.