Robots Can Walk On Two Legs Better If They're Based On Birds, Not Humans--Researchers

Robots these days are already far more advanced than they used to be, even just a decade ago. But for all the amazing things these machines can do now, they're still struggling with one thing: walking on two legs.

But maybe some researchers have at last found the silver bullet to this engineering problem.

In an article by Scientific American, it was revealed that researcher Alexander Bardi-Spröwitz from Germany's Max Planck Institute tried what many roboticists perhaps haven't tried yet: design a legged robot using the biology of birds. Bardi-Spröwitz argues that the main reason why bots find it hard to walk on two legs is due to biologists "not describing animal anatomy in engineering-friendly terms."

His theory would then find new life after meeting veterinary scientist Monica Daley from the Royal Veterinary College in the UK. Together, the two posited developing more agile robots using Daley's expansive understanding of animal locomotion and Bardi-Spröwitz's robotics skills. As a result, they developed something they call BirdBot-a two-legged bot far more agile than all other bipedal robots before it.

How BirdBot Works

Here is a quick video of BirdBot in action:

Daley and Bardi-Spröwitz published their findings in the journal Science Robotics, and they are pretty telling. They found out that much of the problem with bipedal robots is the sky-high energy requirements used to make them walk like humans. But if they designed these machines in accordance with birds (who also walk on two legs like humans), those energy requirements can be significantly reduced.

The end result is a super-efficient gait, that is stable, robust, and way simpler to control. The two researchers claim that their design is scalable to large robots, which they say can be used to explore hard-to-reach terrain which will put wheeled or treaded robots into a standstill. Think of a two-legged AT-ST walker from the "Star Wars" franchise traversing Endor, and you get a pretty clear picture of what they want to achieve.

Why Do Robots Struggle To Walk On Two Legs So Much?

The answer, according to FutureScienceLeaders, lies in evolution. There's a reason why humans are the only species of primates that can walk upright, and this is due to how evolution sculpted human bodies over millions of years.

Humans can maintain their balance while walking upright by controlling over 600 individual muscles. But in order to control these muscles, they require an ultra-complex system of body awareness, which allows us to "know" how our body is positioned relative to the ground, and how our limbs move to keep us from falling over.

In layman's terms, humanity's spatial awareness is leagues beyond that of even today's most advanced robots. Aside from that, the motors that serve as the "muscles" to move these bots around are still weaker and far less efficient than human muscles-who over time and repeated stress can grow even stronger on their own.

These are the two biggest problems in robotics that engineers and scientists still haven't solved for decades.

What About Those Parkour Bots?

Last year, Tech Times reported about Boston Dynamics' impressive parkour robots, who were seen crushing a pre-prepared obstacle course in a video:

But as impressive as the technical feat is, it still took Boston Dynamics' engineers several months to work on the parkour routine. Furthermore, you could see that the bots, while moving quite "human-like," are still nowhere close to actual human movement patterns. Their legs are always bent in order to maintain balance, because they're still finding it hard to stay upright, believe it or not.

As posited by an article on WIRED, designing bipedal robots to work well in human environments will not always need something designed to look very "human." It must focus more on building the most efficient movement platform allowed by the laws of physics.

This is already evident in the number of four-legged or wheeled bots around. They're far more stable and mobile than their two-legged counterparts, who often look like drunk college kids stumbling out of a frat party on a Saturday night.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce