IF YOU want a robot to move more gracefully make, it as lazy as possible. So says Oussama Khatib of Stanford University in California, who is looking ahead to a future in which humans interact more closely with robots, and where we will expect them to move more like us.
By modelling how people move, Khatib found that we naturally minimise the energy used by our muscles. 鈥淗umans are sort of lazy,鈥� he says. That is why we sip coffee with our arm at a 30 to 45-degree angle to our bodies, not with our elbow higher up or tight against our torso.
He then applied the same energy-minimising criteria to direct the way a computer model of a robot moves. In that way, he said, 鈥渨e are able to produce motions with the robot that look very natural鈥�.
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