Can legged robots move like real animals? To answer this question, Swiss scientists have developed a new type of quadruped robot capable of doing parkour, aiming to push the limits of agility and narrow the gap between robots and humans/animals. The related findings were published on March 13th in Science Robotics.
A cutting-edge robot capable of parkour. Image source: ETH Zurich
Inspired by dogs, quadruped robots have been developed and proven to perform various tasks, showing greater agility than bipedal robots. However, they still can't quite match the prowess of real canines. The gap between legged robots and humans/animals lies not only in their physical capabilities but also in their ability to make quick decisions and exhibit agility, requiring robots to perform complex computations with limited onboard computing power.
A research team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland trained a nearly 50-kilogram quadruped robot named ANYmal to mimic human parkour movements, combining physical agility with swift decision-making.
ANYmal is constructed from ultralightweight carbon materials and equipped with 12 motors. It utilizes laser sensors to perceive its surroundings and create maps, enabling autonomous path planning.
Researchers employed a neural network consisting of three independent modules to enhance the robot's locomotion, perception, and navigation, training the model using data from human parkour athletes. With this capability, ANYmal can automatically adjust its behavior based on the type of obstacle, swiftly recognizing and reacting to a series of obstacles.
A video shared by the team depicts the red robot first climbing a small wooden staircase, squeezing through a narrow gap to land on another platform, then diving under an obstacle, swiftly pushing itself up, and vertically ascending another slightly taller box.
Reportedly, ANYmal completes the parkour task at a speed of 2 meters per second, even when obstacles are arranged in different sequences.
Researchers state that training agility through parkour allows for a better understanding of the limitations at each stage, from perception to actuation, enabling strategies to mitigate these constraints and gradually improve the robot's capabilities. This, in turn, paves the way for many new applications such as disaster search and rescue, extraterrestrial exploration, and more.
Nikita Rudin, one of the paper's authors and a doctoral student at ETH Zurich, expressed his personal passion for parkour, which he fully utilized during the research process.
"Before the project began, some of my colleagues believed that legged robots had reached the limits of their development potential, but I had a different perspective," Rudin said. "Legged robots can do better."
Related paper information: https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi7566
