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by slug 5334 days ago
From what I learned from a BD engineer, Japanese legged robotics use mostly static equilibrium in contrast with the (more advanced?) dynamic balancing of US and European robots. Asimo might look cute, but if you compare the gait of any of the popular MIT, Boston Dynamics or CMU robots to the Japanese, you soon notice that the latter don't look very natural or adequate to unpredictable terrain.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Robotics#Loco...
1 comments
anigbrowl 5334 days ago
That's true enough, but only the military and EMS need robots that can instantly handle unfamiliar terrain. Meanwhile, the Japanese are most of the way towards a consumer product, since the interior of a building is highly predictable.
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FrojoS 5334 days ago
Good point, but if you don't need to handle unstructured terrain, you might just as well put the robot on wheels. The humanoids robot Justin from DLR [1] for instance has an omnidirectional wheeled platform that even allows for adaptive foot print. The only current advantage for ASIMO that I see at the moment, is that it doesn't have to take the elevator but can use stairs.

[1] Here is a good video from 2009 that shows that Justin is capable of the same tasks that Honda showed of today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPwpGpMoAxs

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anigbrowl 5334 days ago
Quite - and with 4 wheels, I imagine that stairs would be manageable for Justin as well. You might like this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1qJyAWZeV4

I think US industrial/product designers are seriously underestimating the market for consumer-facing humanoid robots.

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FrojoS 5333 days ago
> with 4 wheels, I imagine that stairs would be manageable for Justin as well

In theory yes, but not with the current design.

> You might like this too: Yes, ABB's Frida looks impressive, but so far there seems to be very little information about the technical data.

> I think US industrial/product designers are seriously underestimating the market for consumer-facing humanoid robots.

There is rumor, that Rodney Brooks's Heartland Robotics http://www.heartlandrobotics.com/ will release something similar to Frida soon.

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