Using a set of simple rules for moving and two knifelike feet, a robot in Germany has learned not only how to walk with a remarkably human gait but also how to ascend a ramp. To be sure, C-3PO and his cinema cousins have been tottering across movie screens for generations, and real-life walking robots are nothing new. But the strides made by RunBot, reported in the July issue of the journal Public Library of Science Computational Biology, mark the first time a real-life robot has walked with such grace.
Until now, walking robots like Honda’s Asimo, which has an advertised ability to run four miles per hour, have relied on heavy-duty computational power, calculating the angle of the knees and ankles every moment of every step. RunBot, developed in the lab of computational neuroscientist Florentin Wörgötter of the University of Göttingen, takes a simpler, more human approach. “Humans do ...
