| > People limping might serve as example that a 'state of the art, well trained neural net' can't achieve good motion with less than perfect hardware. I think that people limping has more to do with avoiding pain than damaged 'hardware'. An example being people who are on large amounts of drugs being able to push through pain and further injuring themselves. > So how much of this is actually adressing the wrong problem I think this paper addresses the right problem. By modeling the robot as a flexible system instead of a rigid system, performance improvements can be made in many scenarios. Because there is no such thing as a perfectly rigid material (well at least within the realm of feasibility), even if the robot was designed to have extremely rigid and perfectly optimized joint angles and limb lengths, this technique would be beneficial. Of course, where it really shines is when applied to a low cost, low weight system like the ones demonstrated in the paper. In the world of engineering, keeping things simple, low-cost and light opens many doors for using cheaper hardware and simplifying the design process. If every time Disney wanted a new animatronic robot they had to get custom fabricated joints and limbs, the costs would be exorbitant. If instead they could just reach into their standard limbs box and slap it together, and then let the software fix it they save money and effort. |