Every step requires balance and the ability to adapt to instability in a split second. It requires quickly adjusting where your foot will land and calculating how much force to apply to change direction suddenly. No wonder, then, that until now robots have not been very good at it.
Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot created by Boston Dynamics, a company that Google acquired in December 2013. It can walk across rough terrain and even run on flat ground. Although previous robots such as Honda’s ASIMO and Sony’s diminutive QRIO are able to walk, they cannot quickly adjust their balance; as a result, they are often awkward, and limited in practical value. Atlas, which has an exceptional sense of balance and can stabilize itself with ease, demonstrates the abilities that robots will need to move around human environments safely and easily.
Robots that walk properly could eventually find far greater use in emergency rescue operations. They could also play a role in routine jobs such as helping elderly or physically disabled people with chores and daily tasks in the home. Marc Raibert, cofounder of Boston Dynamics, pioneered machines with “dynamic balance”—the use of continual motion to stay upright—in the early 1980s.
As a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he built a one-legged robot that leaped around his lab like a pogo stick possessed, calculating with each jump how to reposition its leg and its body, and how aggressively to push itself off the ground with its next bound. Atlas demonstrates dynamic balance as well, using high-powered hydraulics to move its body in a way that keeps it steady.
The robot can walk across an unsteady pile of debris, walk briskly on a treadmill, and stay balanced on one leg when whacked with a 20-pound wrecking ball. Just as you instinctively catch yourself when pushed, shifting your weight and repositioning your legs to keep from falling over, Atlas can sense its own instability and respond quickly enough to right itself. The possibilities opened up by its humanlike mobility surely impressed Google. Though it’s not clear why the company is acquiring robotics businesses, it bought seven others last year, including ones specializing in vision and manipulation.
Atlas isn’t ready to take on home or office chores: its powerful diesel engine is external and noisy, and its titanium limbs thrash around dangerously. But the robot could perform repair work in environments too dangerous for emergency workers to enter, such as the control room of a nuclear power plant on the brink of a meltdown. “If your goals are to make something that’s the equivalent of a person, we have a way to go,” Raibert says. But as it gets up and running, Atlas won’t be a bad example to chase after.
The newer robots are also becoming less expensive, which makes them attractive to small and medium-sized plants. “We’ve seen the uptick in interest in robots for small to medium businesses. They got left out of the automation revolution. They don’t have the big machines or people to program their automation,” said Lawton. “Their products are high mix and low volume. Now there’s a robot that’s really cheap and you can move it around from job to job. So these folks are now getting into it.” One major advantage of small robots with embedded software is that it doesn’t need to be customized for each deployment. Users can move the robot around to teach it what needs to be done. “In the past, robots have been customized per installation. They had to be programmed every time you put them to use.
These new robots don’t need that customization,” said Lawton. Given that a user can take the small robot and teach it what to do, it's often surprising how the robot is used. “Customers send us videos of what the robot is doing. We look at that and think, ‘I wasn't sure we could do that,’” said Lawton. “We’re learning a lot as we go. Eager customers are trying new things. It’s part of how the industry is going to roll out over the next two to five years.” Lawton noted that the startling advances in robotics are coming from smaller robots. “Traditional robots are very mature and well understood.
Those high-volume robots are improving, but it’s incremental,” said Lawton. “The space with collaborative robots is where you can do things in really different ways. You have all this artificial intelligence and the ability to combine the different forms of technology.” Design engineers and professionals, the West Coast’s most important design, innovation, and manufacturing event, Pacific Design & Manufacturing, is taking place in Anaheim, Feb. 10-12, 2015. A Design News event, Pacific Design & Manufacturing is your chance to meet qualified suppliers, get hands-on access to the latest technologies, be informed from a world-class conference program, and expand your network.
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