Yes, I know its only got 4 legs, but you can’t say it doesn’t look a little bit spidery.
Built by scientists from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, this quadruped robot scans and analyses its immediate surroundings. Like a daredevil rockclimber, each surface is scrutinised for the potential to be the next foot or handhold. While one wrong move could mean certain death for a climber 1000ft up, the robot’s actions are a little less hardcore. In the video above, you can see it traversing a not-so-dangerous world full of stacks of paper. By tilting its body, and reaching out using its adjustable legs, it can cross a whole range of different landscapes. Other tests show it crossing large boulders, while in virtual simulations it could cross large crevasses, balanced on tiny ledges.
The scientists created algorhithms to determine where the best foot forward was. These calculations were not done based on where just one leg was going – like older methods – but on the position of all the legs. This let the robot be much more creative and fluid in its movements, crossing obstacles other robots could never even contemplate.
Loc, V., Koo, I., Tran, D., Park, S., Moon, H., & Choi, H. (2011). Improving traversability of quadruped walking robots using body movement in 3D rough terrains Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 59 (12), 1036-1048 DOI: 10.1016/j.robot.2011.08.007