Robots with mobility on display at TechCrunch Sessions

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Robots with mobility on display at TechCrunch Sessions

Robots are mastering something that has long been elusive for AI — walking. They were featured at TechCrunch Sessions last week on robotics, as part of series of events focuses on a single topic.

CGTN’s Mark Niu reports.

These robots are doing what many others fail to do — walk.

Meet NABi, ALPHRED and ALPHRED Version 2.

They’re from the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory, or RoMeLa, at UCLA.

Dennis Wong, Robotics Professor at UCLA says,” One of the reasons why it’s so difficult is that because your left leg and the right leg, it has this distance between them. And that creates problems, because your leg moves up and down, forward and backwards. It creates this unwanted twisting moments. But if you look at fencing or ballet, they always walk sideways. Because if you walk sideways, everything lines up.”

NABi uses that concept to walk forwards and backwards.

ALPHRED can walk and it has four limbs, which can be used for both locomotion and manipulating objects.

APLPHRED Version 2 has special actuators that will allow it to jump and roll in the very near future.

Atlas can already perform amazing jumping feats.

This humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics can now run out in the open.

Atlas is also being tested in the warehouse, where its capable of picking up and dropping boxes.

But it may take some time before we see Atlas on the assembly line.

One robot that’s ready to be your best friend is the company’s SpotMini.

Boston Dynamics announced it plans to start selling this guy commercially in 2019.

The dog-like robot has cameras that allow it to map its surroundings and treat stairs like obstacles, which it appears to have no problem overcoming.

The box on top of SpotMini will allow for both third-party hardware and software to be installed in the platform, meaning developers will be able to dream up whatever they’d like SpotMini to do next.