Toyota’s running humanoid robot

We're getting closer to I'Robot and SkyNet! Yes, human destruction is imminent, but it's still pretty cool =)

Source: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics - Toyota’s running humanoid robot | By Awesom-o

We all know of Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot and its amazing walking and running capabilities. Other research labs though are not far behind developing robots just as capable. In fact, Toyota has an excellent and very advanced robot in the making even though they entered the game much later than Honda.

Toyota’s most recent humanoid robot prototype (one of many partner robots the automotive giant is developing) stands 130cm tall and weighs 50Kgr. Its legs have 7 degrees of freedom and it can run at an average speed of 7 km/h. In contrast, ASIMO’s maximum speed is 6km/h. The Toyota researchers had to develop new real-time methods for balance control. These methods make it possible for the robot to remain balanced when an external force such as a push from a human is applied when in motion.

The below video from Toyota demonstrates the running capabilities of the new humanoid robot. The robot takes a step every 340ms and has no contact with the ground for 100ms of that. Notice in the video how the robot remains balanced even after pushed by the human.

Finally, even though this new robot is impressive, it is still limited on moving over flat surfaces and it can only recover from small external forces. But then again, even Rome was not built in one day!