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Dr. GIY Out To Set New Robot Speed Records (Video)

Most of the humanoid robot builders, including ourselves, think they are lucky if they can keep their robots standing, or perhaps walking slowly. But, there are a few builders that really excel. They build, or hack, humanoids to the point that the robots performance is really surprising.

A recent case in point is the Kyosho MANOI AT01 robot modified by Dr. GIY. One of the key events in the Kyosho Athlete Humanoid Cup competitions is a 5 meter dash. It's challenging enough to get your robot to walk in a straight line, much less run. And, with only 17 degrees of freedom, the stock AT01 robot usually takes some difficult, and time consuming, course corrections.

But, through a liberal application of his own special magic, Dr. GIY has hacked his AT01 to the extent that it rockets down the 5 meter sprint course in 10 seconds, and course corrects on the fly without loosing even a millisecond in wasted moves. Even more amazing - when it reached the end of the course it literally stops on a dime!

We don't have any inside information, and can only make educated guesses about Dr. GIY's magic hacks.

It's pretty obvious that he has upgraded the robots leg servos from the stock KRS-4024s to either KRS-4013s or KRS-4014s. That would provide faster response, and much higher torque to support the faster running motions.

The on-the-fly course corrections are probably accomplished by taking advantage of the RCB-3 controller's ability to act in a master/slave configuration. Using that approach, assuming we're right, Dr. GIY would be able to steer the robot on a real time basis, almost as if it was one of the R/C cars that he used to race at the championship level.

The abrupt stop at the end of the sprint is much more difficult, especially since the robot has significant momentum built-up. We're going to guess that he has pre-programmed at least three, and perhaps as many as five to seven, intermediate stopping steps into the robot to compensate for the tendency of the robots upper body to keep moving forward on its own.

Posted by Lem on March 11, 2008 | Permalink | Email this post

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Comments:

Awesome and inspiring!

Posted by: Rob Farrell | Mar 12, 2008 12:15:47 AM

I'm impressed with the smoothness of the walking.
I would guess that gyro's are being used?

Posted by: human | Mar 12, 2008 3:09:46 AM

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