{"id":80441,"date":"2018-07-07T10:02:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T17:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/blind-cheetah-3-robot-can-climb-stairs-littered-with-obstacles"},"modified":"2018-07-07T10:02:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T17:02:22","slug":"blind-cheetah-3-robot-can-climb-stairs-littered-with-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/blind-cheetah-3-robot-can-climb-stairs-littered-with-obstacles","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Blind\u2019 Cheetah 3 robot can climb stairs littered with obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The 90-pound mechanical beast \u2014 about the size of a full-grown Labrador \u2014 is intentionally designed to do all this without relying on cameras or any external environmental sensors. Instead, it nimbly \u201cfeels\u201d its way through its surroundings in a way that engineers describe as \u201cblind locomotion,\u201d much like making one\u2019s way across a pitch-black room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many unexpected behaviors the robot should be able to handle without relying too much on vision,\u201d says the robot\u2019s designer, Sangbae Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. \u201cVision can be noisy, slightly inaccurate, and sometimes not available, and if you rely too much on vision, your robot has to be very accurate in position and eventually will be slow. So we want the robot to rely more on tactile information. That way, it can handle unexpected obstacles while moving fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers will present the robot\u2019s vision-free capabilities in October at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots, in Madrid. In addition to blind locomotion, the team will demonstrate the robot\u2019s improved hardware, including an expanded range of motion compared to its predecessor Cheetah 2, that allows the robot to stretch backwards and forwards, and twist from side to side, much like a cat limbering up to pounce.<\/p>\n

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The 90-pound mechanical beast \u2014 about the size of a full-grown Labrador \u2014 is intentionally designed to do all this without relying on cameras or any external environmental sensors. Instead, it nimbly \u201cfeels\u201d its way through its surroundings in a way that engineers describe as \u201cblind locomotion,\u201d much like making one\u2019s way across a pitch-black [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80441","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\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}