Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “One giant leap for the mini cheetah”.
Narrator, A new control system designed by a team of researchers at MIT’s Improbably AI Lab, enables four-legged robots to traverse across discontinuous terrain in real time.. They tested their system on the MIT mini cheetah, a powerful, agile robot built by their collaborators at the Biomimetic Robotics Lab at MIT., Unlike other methods for controlling a quadruped robot. This new system does not require the terrain to be mapped in advance.. They’Re.
Novel control system is split into two parts: one that processes real time; input from the video camera mounted on the front of the robot and another. That translates that information into instructions for how the robot should move its body. A novelty of their new system, is that it adjusts the robot’s gait.. If a human were trying to leap across a wide gap, for example, they might start by running to build up speed and have a powerful leap across.. In the same way, the robot can adjust the timings and duration of its foot contacts to better traverse the terrain.. The way in which the two separate parts or controllers work together make this system, especially innovative..
There are robust and effective blind systems where the robot isn’t using vision. However, they only enable robots to walk over continuous terrain and other systems that do incorporate vision usually rely on a height map of the terrain, which must either be preconstructed or generated on the fly., A process that is slow and prone to failure. If the height map is incorrect., Essentially, this new system combines the best elements from blind systems with a separate module that handles vision in real time.. They conducted simulations of the robot running across hundreds of different discontinuous terrains. And over time, their algorithm learned, which actions were successful.. For example, when the robot approaches a gap, it can compute based on learned behavior the best way to move across using visual information as its guide..
While they were able to demonstrate that their control system works in the lab, the researchers note, it still has a long way to go before it can be deployed in the real world. In the future. There are plans to increase the robot’s computing power and to improve its ability to navigate in different lighting conditions, thus increasing its ability to maneuver in real time.
[ MUSIC PLAYING ] .