{"id":123570,"date":"2021-06-08T11:23:49","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T18:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/mit-is-building-a-dynamic-acrobatic-humanoid-robot"},"modified":"2021-06-08T11:23:49","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T18:23:49","slug":"mit-is-building-a-dynamic-acrobatic-humanoid-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/mit-is-building-a-dynamic-acrobatic-humanoid-robot","title":{"rendered":"MIT is Building a Dynamic, Acrobatic Humanoid Robot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-3jMROamWpk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This small-scale humanoid is designed to do parkour over challenging terrains.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>For a long time, having a bipedal robot that could walk on a flat surface without falling over (and that could also maybe occasionally climb stairs or something) was a really big deal. But we\u2019re more or less past that now. Thanks to the talented folks at companies like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.agilityrobotics.com\/\">Agility Robotics<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostondynamics.com\/\">Boston Dynamics<\/a>, we now expect bipedal robots to meet or exceed actual human performance for at least a small subset of dynamic tasks. The next step seems to be to find ways of pushing the limits of human performance, which it turns out means acrobatics. We know that <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/humanoids\/ihmc-developing-new-gymnastinspired-humanoid-robot\">IHMC has been developing their own child-size acrobatic humanoid named Nadia<\/a>, and now it sounds like researchers from <a href=\"https:\/\/biomimetics.mit.edu\/\">Sangbae Kim\u2019s lab at MIT<\/a> are working on a new acrobatic robot of their own.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen a variety of legged robots from <a href=\"https:\/\/biomimetics.mit.edu\/\">MIT\u2019s Biomimetic Robotics Lab<\/a>, including <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/robotics-hardware\/mit-cheetah-robot-bounds-off-tether-outdoors\">Cheetah<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/robotics\/humanoids\/human-reflexes-help-mits-hermes-rescue-robot-keep-its-footing\">HERMES<\/a>. Recently, they\u2019ve been doing a bunch of work with their spunky little <a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2019\/mit-mini-cheetah-first-four-legged-robot-to-backflip-0304\">Mini Cheetahs<\/a> (developed with funding and support from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.naverlabs.com\/mini-cheetah\">Naver Labs<\/a>), which are designed for some dynamic stuff like gait exploration and some low-key four-legged acrobatics.<\/p>\n<p>In a paper recently posted to <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2104.09025\">arXiv<\/a> (to be presented at <a href=\"https:\/\/humanoids-2020.org\/\">Humanoids 2020<\/a> in July), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/matthew-chignoli-991a351a4\">Matthew Chignoli<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/dhkim0821.github.io\/\">Donghyun Kim<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elijah-stanger-jones-216b10126\">Elijah Stanger-Jones<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/meche.mit.edu\/people\/faculty\/SANGBAE@MIT.EDU\">Sangbae Kim<\/a> describe \u201ca new humanoid robot design, an actuator-aware kino-dynamic motion planner, and a landing controller as part of a practical system design for highly dynamic motion control of the humanoid robot.\u201d So it\u2019s not just the robot itself, but all of the software infrastructure necessary to get it to do what they want it to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This small-scale humanoid is designed to do parkour over challenging terrains. For a long time, having a bipedal robot that could walk on a flat surface without falling over (and that could also maybe occasionally climb stairs or something) was a really big deal. But we\u2019re more or less past that now. Thanks to the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}