Presumably from the department of shamelessly tempting the callous hand of fate:
From the writeup:
A three-legged robot with an unconventional and graceful walk has been developed by US researchers. Like humans, it exploits gravity to save energy with each step, but it also flips its entire body upside-down with each stride. The fearsome alien tripods in HG Well’s book The War of The Worlds are described as moving like “a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground”. STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot) has a far more graceful, and acrobatic, gait that sees its body flip 180 degrees with each step.
Looks awesome. Let’s build a couple and see if they can reproduce on their own. Just to see what happens, ya know.
References:
* Tripedal robot swings itself into action Movie Camera
* STriDER 2.0′s First Step [RoMeLaVT / YouTube]
Previously:
* Neat – Now We’re Teaching Robots To Climb Walls [Video]
* Neat – Autonomous Robots With Weapons Strapped To Them
* Video: Neat – Blueprint For The 21st Century
