Yoshihiro Shibata - Thunderbolt Robot Hip/Leg Design For Effective Walking Gait скачать в хорошем качестве

Yoshihiro Shibata - Thunderbolt Robot Hip/Leg Design For Effective Walking Gait

Most humanoid designers try to model their robot’s body on the human example. It’s a good place to start, but they quickly run into limitations because the number of joints they can incorporate into their designs is typically just a small fraction of the degrees of freedom available to us humans. Our bodies have well over 100 degrees of freedom, even if we don’t tend to put them to good use. The average humanoid robot has about 20 to 25 degrees of freedom in total, and usually 5 or so per leg. Over the decade+ that the ROBO-ONE initiative has been active, designers split into two camps. One type of competitor modified their designs to build robots that excel in the ring, in combat, even though the overall robot form strayed quite a bit from what we would normally classify as human-like. In contrast, the other type of competitor tried, as much as possible, to remain true to human-like body structure and motions. One of the most well-known and respected leaders in that group was Yoshimura, who gained a lot fame in the robot community by being the lead designer for the original Kondo KHR-1. Yoshimura’s hip and leg designs provided for considerable flexibility over more mainstream robots. One of Yoshimura’s followers, Yoshihiro Shibata, picked up on the advantages of the design and kept refining and improving it year by year. All of Shibata’s humanoid robot designs have incorporated aspects of that innovative hip/leg design, even though some of them came to market with more limited degrees of freedom. The Kyosho MANOI AT-01 is a good example, since the additional hip degrees of freedom were offered as an optional upgrade kit. The most striking example of Shibata’s work, at least at the moment, is his Thunderbolt competition robot. Thunderbolt features 23 degrees of freedom, plays soccer, competes in ROBO-ONE and Robot Pro Wrestling events, and can even jump rope. Thunderbolt’s walking style is strikingly realistic. He immediately attracts attention as he struts with attitude across the floor. Amazingly enough, Thunderbolt can actually walk with a gait that places one foot almost directly in front of the other, just like a human does. What’s next? We’ll have to wait and see how Shibata improves and evolves Thunderbolt. Version 2.0 will be awesome, no doubt. We can hardly wait!