Mabel, the world’s fastest two-legged robot
September 26, 2011 – 12:33 am
By Kanchana Devi | Permalink
London, Sept 25 (TruthDive): Scientists have built a two-legged robot called Mabel. A robot in a University of Michigan lab can run like a human — a feat that represents the height of agility and efficiency for a two-legged machine. With a peak pace of 6.8 miles per hour, MABEL is believed to be the world’s fastest bipedal robot with knees.
Mabel can run like a human. The makers of the robot predict that the technology they are refining will bring amazing benefits for the human race.The project has been led by Jessy Grizzle, professor of electrical engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. “I’ve been studying robotic locomotion for many years, and I’ve never seen a machine do anything like this,” he said. “It was surprising even to me.”
He also stressed how useful human-like robots could be. “It’s stunning,” said Jessy Grizzle, “I have never seen a machine doing a motion like this.”
Though it is a bit noisy, MABEL runs quite gracefully. The robot has both feet in the air for 40 per cent of each stride — like a real runner — and her feet are lifted quite high off the ground for a robot. For example, whereas most other robots lift their feet about one sixth of an inch off the ground, MABEL’s feet are three to four inches in the air as she runs around the track.
MABEL was designed to mimic a human’s weight distribution, and has springs that act like tendons in the human body. The robot weighs-in at 143 pounds (65 kilograms), and like a human, most of the weight is concentrated in the upper half of the body. That keeps the legs relatively light, so they can quickly move forward and backward for fast locomotion.
MABEL was built in 2008 in collaboration with Jonathan Hurst, who was then a doctoral student at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Grizzle and U-M doctoral students Koushil Sreenath and Hae-Won Park have spent the years since racketing up MABEL’s training. They’ve been progressively improving the feedback algorithms that enable the robot to keep its balance while reacting to its environment in real time.
MABEL started off walking smoothly and quickly over flat surfaces. Then it moved on to uneven ground. It took its first real jog in late July, and with that, Sreenath met the ultimate goal of his research just days before he was scheduled to defend his thesis.
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