Contact us at: CustomerService@innovationessence.com
Google owned Schaft unveils new bipedal robot
Posted on by
SCHAFT’s new bipedal robot
According to Hornyak, SCHAFT’s new robot (which hasn’t been named yet) “is designed to be a low-cost, low-power, compact device to ‘help society.’ ” It can lift 60 kg, travel over uneven terrain, and even tackle stairs, which are notoriously difficult for robots.
The DARPA Robotics Challenge held its inaugural competition last December, and by most accounts (including ours), it was a success. The DRC Trials drew huge public interest, and the teams and their robots performed surprisingly well. Overall, it was a big win for DARPA and for robotics as a whole, but without question, the biggest winner of all was SCHAFT, the Japanese company that utterly dominated the competition and that had been acquired by Google just months earlier. SCHAFT put on a nearly flawless performance, ending at the top spot with the most points and, we guess, leaving Andy Rubin (the Google executive leading its robotics program) with a big smile on his face. It also left many observers curious to learn more about the company, its origins, and its robot.SCHAFT traces its origins to the JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, where legendary Japanese roboticist Hirochika Inoue did some of his pioneering work. The lab is now led by another influential roboticist, Masayuki Inaba. Under Professor Inaba, SCHAFT’s cofounders Junichi Urata and Yuto Nakanishi started working on humanoid robots about a decade ago. They joined a project to develop a humanoid called Kotaro around 2004, and later went on to work on other similar projects: Kojiro, Kenzo, and Kenshiro. These were bio-inspired robots, with actuation systems that mimic human muscles, bones, and tendons. The robots were extremely hard to control and were able to perform only limited movements. But along the way, Urata, Nakanishi, and their colleagues came up with many innovations. In particular, they designed powerful new actuators. In 2010, they reported the development of a compact liquid-cooled motor and a high-output driver module capable of producing both high speed and high torque without overheating, a common problem for motors in robotics.
