WL-16RIII Robot Legs from tmsuk Co
Judy: “How are your legs?”
Howard: “What?”
Judy: “Never mind! Hop on.”
“What’s Up, Doc?” (1972)
Somewhat apart from personal mobility vehicles, like the iBot, and more like a lower extremities exo skeleton, Takanishi’s robotic legs are another small step for learning bipeds, another great step toward Mecha-dom.
MSN-Mainichi Daily News tells us that a Japanese researcher has engineered “a pair of robotic legs that can negotiate stairs and could eventually find use as a wheelchair substitute.”
At the demonstration in Tokyo on Wednesday, April 26, Atsuo Takanishi, an engineering professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, said “Elderly people using wheelchairs cannot get up and down stairs. We wanted to create a robot that could do that and walk around rough surfaces.” The robot was able to “walk” up and down a staircase and along a pebbly path outdoors.
Takanishi has been working on the machine since 2003 in conjunction with robot manufacturer tmsuk Co. Their goal has been to create a two-legged robot that can fully operate in a human environment. The latest version is the WL-16RIII, which bears some resemblance to the mechanical “Wrong Trousers” of Wallace and Gromit (1993) fame.
Thanks for a pointer from Slashdot — “Where the Smart Geek Shops for All the Gundam Wrong Trousers.”
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