It’s a car. It’s a quadruped. It’s a humanoid. No, it’s a Swiss-Mile Robot! Swiss-Mile here are two things: It’s a spinoff of ETH Zurich, the academic institution behind the Spot-like quadruped robot called ANYmal and it is the name of an improved version of ANYmal – especially in the area of mobility.
As suggested, Swiss-Mile is quadruped but it has wheels too which it will leverage to roll on flat surfaces. However, when the terrain becomes impassable for wheels, it can walk like any quadruped. That just a start.
For some reason, the roboticists over at Swiss-Mile decided this robot should be a biped too, and thus, it was given the ability to stand on two. Though not demonstrated, we believe Swiss-Mile Robot is capable of both regular walking and rolling around like it is on skates.
Swiss-Mile claims that this unique wheeled-legged robot has exceptional locomotion skills – which after seeing the video, we have absolutely no doubt about that claim. In addition, it boasts “reinforcement learning driving” at speeds up to 6.2 m/s or about 22.32 km/h (or 13.87 mph).
To put things in perspective, the average human walking speed is about 1.4 m/s. So, this little guy here has both speed and the ability to overcome obstacles. How’s that not a win? Well, maybe except for the looks. It is not exactly the prettiest, IMHO.
Some of the Swiss-Mile uses of this robot could include delivery, and carrying of tools, materials, goods, and sensors, and doing so in environments that have challenging obstacles in the way. Here’s, after a look at this new kind of robot in action:
Images: Swiss-Mile/YouTube (Robotics Systems Lab).
via Tech Xplore.
