A two-legged robot inspired by birds can walk, skateboard, fly and balance on a , which is like a loose tightrope. It could potentially become a new tool to monitor infrastructure in hard-to-reach environments.
The robot, named LEONARDO by its creators at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Northeastern University in Boston, is a human-like machine with knee, hip and ankle joints, but rotor blades for arms that give it upward thrust.
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LEONARDO is 75 centimetres tall, weighs 2.6 kilograms and walks at up to 20cm per second. It is 鈥渢he first robot to achieve seamless integration of walking and flying without human intervention鈥�, says at Caltech, one of the research team.
Using inputs from sensors on its feet and a real-time view from an embedded camera, the robot follows a simple model of how walking works.
鈥淯sing that model, we generate a walking profile for the centre of mass of the robot and the two feet, then design individual trajectories for all the leg joints,鈥� says team member , also at Caltech. The propellers on the arms add additional stability not just when walking, but when on a slippery surface, slackline or moving skateboard.
The design equally balances the demands of walking and flying, says at Caltech, also on the team. 鈥淔ocus too much on walking and the robot becomes too heavy for flying,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f you purely focus on flying, the energy consumption would be too great.鈥�
鈥淲alking robots can struggle with uneven terrain, wheeled robots don鈥檛 like debris, flying robots are normally stationary on the ground,鈥� says at the University of Sheffield, UK. 鈥淭he ability to mix these locomotion techniques makes the development of this robot a curious and exciting prospect.鈥�
Two of the researchers have since moved to other positions: Spieler to NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Kim to a company working on flying cars. Spieler hopes LEONARDO could walk without using its propellers, making it potentially useful for interplanetary exploration.
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