Optimus Prime Robot Practices Riding a Motorcycle (Video)

Inspired by the Robot Magazine project to have a humanoid robot execute a world record motorcycle jump, Matt Bauer mounted his Robonova-1 based Optimus Prime robot on a motorcycle, and started practicing (see video below).

As you might predict, the robot had some difficulty in steering the motorcycle - after all this was his first ride ever. And, we have to admit that the robot did better than we did with our first motorcycle - much better.

Comments

[DirtyRoboto]

Matt. The end credits (info) was too fast to read.

[Matt]

Yeah, youtube chops the ends of the videos... I try to leave enough extra at the end, but for some reason this video was dramatically cut short. If you pause it before the end you can read the info. Basically, it wishes M5 Industries the best of luck (which they probably won't need w/ their tech. know-how), and explains how an accelerometer and/or gyro would have been be quite beneficial in this test... allowing the robot to lean back and forth.

The steering mechanism on the bike is really weak. This was more for fun, but I'm now curious to see how responsive we could make the bike if the steering is changed over to a HSR servo and tied into the RN-1 itself... using the RN-1's accelerometer/gyro so both compensate when off-balance. Hmmmmmm. If communication is fast enough, steering could be manipulated by the robot itself vs. the RC bike's remote. :-)