this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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While it is impressive, it's impressive in a "college robotics classes were doing this six years ago" way. The control loop would be interesting with how the human gesticulation interacts with the locomotion algorithm they're using, but that assumes that the robots can walk and chew bubblegum (or in this case, walk and interact with a crowd via teleoperation) at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the robots were entirely software controlled when walking. That seems like the case from what I'm seeing in these vids.
It has been a while since I went to college but I don't remember college robotics classes building robots capable of bipedal motion at all.
Not trying to be contrary here: have you taken any robotics courses? We do walking algorithms for our sophomore classes now, as an intro to complex multivariate simulation. Desktop sized, but motion tracking for telemetry control of end effectors is a common enough student project that we've started requiring people to modify their project proposals so they're not just implementing some online tutorial by rote. (SLAM on hexapods is another classic undergrad project, though one that doesn't have nearly as much direct applicability to the topic at hand)
I'm not trying to be contrary either - I really haven't had any exposure to this sort of thing in a long time. I'm not talking about software. Do undergrad-level classes really have access to hardware capable of bipedal motion now? I briefly looked up bipedal robots just now and I didn't find anything capable of walking other than the products of serious robotics companies (which I was already aware of).
Yeah, they do! The prevalence of 3D printing and cheap chinese harmonic drives has lead to a ton of open-source robotics platforms. A lot of the bipedal work we do is focused on how to construct a useful model for simulation so you don't have to watch the $20,000 humanoid robot trip down the stairs, but quite a few students have built very robust custom hardware using the uni's tools.
Do you have a link to videos of this? I'm asking sincerely.
(I'm sorry, I wrote this out then totally forgot to hit send:)
Oh totally! Here's a random sampling. None of these are quite as impressive as commercial ones, but they're all a neat intro to open-source robotics. Apologies that none of these are directly related to my classes, doxxing myself is fun and easy but also gets not fun real quick.
HASH robotics tutorial, this is something of a classic and is a good intro to desktop humanoid robots.
Open source bipedal robot by the Open Dynamic Robot Initiative, they have several platforms now and are SO cool.
This creator, Lethic Z, has been putting out incredible stuff lately, including a really high precision 3D printed servo. Cannot recommend them enough.
This is another great creator, RoboticLife. Not specifically about walking, mainly about torso+arm articulation, but still great. A lot of lego content as well, which is neat.
OSU bipedal robot, not exactly undergrad work but still really cool.
This is just a demo of a desktop robot using OpenCV, but it's really cute looking so I included it.