Hey Community!
When you think of a “bipedal” robot, chances are you would envision something with a roughly humanoid shape- this has been the focus of roboticists making bipedal robots for years on end and is well represented with robots like Darwin-OP3, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, Honda’s Asimo robot, and dozens more.
What would you say if you saw a bipedal robot shaped like this?
As one of the projects from RoMeLa lab at UCLA shows, it’s a better idea than it might seem! The NABiRoS project at RoMeLa does exactly this- reimagining bipeds into something new:
With a forward-backward orientation, the team demonstrates how these body styles can be viable for certain applications, and opens the door to further research and inspiration! Projects like these are some of my favorite because they really push the boundary of what we imagine when we imagine a robot!
Check out the full IEEE article for the project here!!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/nabiros-makes-us-wonder-why-we-all-dont-walk-sideways
How would you go about steering one of these? It’s an interesting future project idea!