Today has been an interesting day in the world of robotics with both Boston Dynamics and MIT putting out information on some of their new projects.
Firstly, we had BD put out news regarding two of it’s project today. The first of which was the WildCat.
WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits. The video shows WildCat’s best performance so far.
Secondly, BD had an update on their biped, Atlas. Atlas is an anthropomorphic robot designed to operate on rough terrain. The video shows Atlas balancing as it walks on rocky terrain and when pushed from the side. The balance and control system places the feet and swings the arms and upper body to stay upright. The controller uses inertial, kinematic and load data from Atlas’s sensors.
WildCat and Atlas are being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA’s M3 program which will eventually lead to military and aid uses. They will also, eventually bring us Transformers I’m guessing!
Speaking of Transformers, MIT have developed small cube robots that can combine together to build, well, almost anything. The M-Blocks have no external moving parts, meaning they can link together in a number of positions. Inside each one is a flywheel that spins at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute which gives each cube momentum to move in to another position.
If this technology could be scaled down, the ability to have objects reconfigure themselves with a command would be amazing and could replace a lot of items in life. Think of them as an early stage nanobots!
