Technologies are constantly evolving, and the development of robots can be considered as one of the most interesting and promising techs at the moment. Today, Robot dogs are able to move quite well on their own, but they do it extremely unnaturally.
However, it seems like this will soon be a thing of the past because the Virginia Tech’s research team is developing a combination of algorithms and sensors that enable legged robots to walk and run more like humans and animals.
This technology uses a combination of encoder sensors to read the position of the joints and inertia measurement unit which is useful for measuring the orientation of the body parallel to the ground. The result is a mechanical dog that can walk, run, jump around and have the same speed.
The cameras and LiDAR that prevent the robots from collisions or obstacles play a big role in such projects. Robot dogs can help people. You can learn the details of the project from the video of the researchers.
Kavel Hamed and his team, who are hopeful of the mechanical dog that can walk and run faster than real animals and people, have achieved positive results from the first study. However, there’s a lot of work left before you could see this in robots beyond the lab.
Researchers said that though more legged robots are being built every year, the field has a long way to go before robots can match the agility of their two or four-legged sources of inspiration.
