Study Applies Motion of Running Birds to Robotics
Researchers from Oregon State University, the Royal Veterinary College and other institutions have published a study that analyzes the benefits of using the evolutionary technique of running birds to create more efficient and safer movement in bipedal robots.
“Birds appear to be the best of bipedal terrestrial runners, with a speed and agility that may trace back 230 million years to their dinosaur ancestors,” says Jonathan Hurst, associate professor and robotics expert at OSU College of Engineering.
Even though many birds are designed to fly, they spend the majority of their lives on the ground, and a remarkable variety in size and species of birds have developed similar approaches to running that conserve energy, avoid falls and injury, and maintain speed and direction.
“We should ultimately be able to encode this understanding into legged robots so the robots can run with more speed and agility in rugged terrain,” says Christian Hubicki, doctoral student at OSU and coauthor of the study.
Modern bipedal robots are built with total stability in mind and force a strict and steady gait. The study points out that in the future, robotics control “must embrace a more relaxed notion of stability, optimizing dynamics based on key task-level priorities without encoding an explicit preference for a steady gait.”
