![]() Navigating built space is especially desirable, though, since the military is interested in developing robots that can clear buildings-a notoriously dangerous procedure. You can walk on concrete but also on sand." "You can walk in anything," he says, "perfectly flat terrain, up stairs, or up the side of a mountain. Different movement systems are better for different types of terrain-wheels are fast but need flat surfaces, tracks sacrifice speed for the ability to mount rubble-but human legs are versatile. Most robots didn't even get in the front door-which they didn't even have to open.īut according to Singer, legged systems are still a prize worth pursuing. The 2008 TechX Challenge in Singapore offered a $700,000 prize to any team whose robot could autonomously enter a building, go up some stairs, and press an elevator button for a specified floor. In fact, researchers are currently trying to build robots that can navigate basic human architecture. "If you're thinking about a robotic system to move through a building," says Singer, "Guess what? We designed the building for people of a certain height or shape. Given the rate of urbanization and population growth in coastal cities, the Army War College predicts that the coming decades will see more battles in heavily urbanized environments-in other words, spaces specifically built for things that look and move like humans. But in the future, anthropomorphic robots will almost definitely deploy to the battlefield. Part of the fixation on humanoid robots is a failure of imagination, a clinging to what we've seen on screen. "Legged is still in science project, the other forms, we can go touch them, we can see them operate, we can buy them." On the other hand, other kinds of military robots-ones that move on wheels, tracks, wings, and propellers-are already seeing use on the battlefield. Many can't function for long without being tethered to external power sources. While anthropomorphic robots look promising in the lab, he says, right now they're mostly good for making cool YouTube videos. "Not one of them has been shown in working prototype form at a trade show. "There's work going on but not a single one of them has been deployed," says Singer. This complexity means walking robots-even the most famous versions like box-carrying Atlas at Boston Dynamics-are in what Singer describes as the "science project" phase. A single step requires dozens of muscles, joints, and ligaments working in concert from toe to hip, with the brain and body making instinctive adjustments on the fly. Reality has, in fact, given us the opposite-you probably have a "talking" Q&A bot in your pocket, but science has yet to master the biomechanics of human movement.Īccording to Doctor Singer, legs are an engineering challenge because they combine the tasks of movement and balance. In "Robbie," the opening story of Isaac Asimov's 1950 collection I, Robot, Asimov postulated that by 1998, robots would walk well enough to be a child's playmate, but a "Talking Robot" would be an unwieldy thing confined to a museum. The contrast between practical robotics and science fiction has existed since the birth of the genre.
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