At UCLA, Dennis Hong’s Mechanism and Robotics Laboratory RoMeLa has introduced a new robot design that is a novel take on bipedal walking. By practising this with anthropomorphic design and altering a humanoid robot sideways, they have been able to prepare an agile and stable bipedal design that is cheap and simple at the same time.

“Rather than mimicking human walking,” Hong informed. “We offer an elegant solution by introducing a new configuration using mechanical intelligence for stability, simplicity and speed, allowing effective and practical robot mobility for real time applications.”

RoMeLahas been introducing very humanoid – y humanoid robots for the years, comprising CHARLI, DARwIn, THOR and SAFFiR. All of such are conventional humanoid designs that attempt to mimic the entire shape and potentials of humans as closely as possible. The reason to do this is because we have optimized and created our world for us and so for robots to be able to do everything we require them to do they will need to do what we do, how we do it. It is was a crucial part of the idea behind DARPA and ATLAS Robotics Challenge, although, it is worth noting that of the three top finishers, two of them had single wheels and one of those was also a quadruped.

“Humanoid robots are till now too unstable, too complicated, too expensive, too dangerous and too slow,” Hong confirms. He also said that, “I do not believe humanoid robots would be able to utilized mainstream any time soon.” With that concept in mind, the options are somewhat constrained if you require a robot that can perform human – type tasks in human sort environments, which comprise among other things walking across and climbing stairs uneven terrain without regular fear of falling over.

Apparently, once Hong and his team comprising Jeffrey Yu, Joshua Hooks and SepehrGhassemi introduce a concept for sideways walking robot, building, testing and designing the robot only took two weeks. NABiRoS is an abbreviated form for ‘Non – Anthropomorphic Bipedal Robotic System’ and its non – anthropomorphicness that makes it better at navigating some otherwise complex human environments.

Conclusion