LittleDog robot learns how to traverse rough terrain

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By John Baichtal
Posted 2010/05/24 @ 6:38 am
Category Robotics

LittleDog, the cool, creepily agile robot that Gareth posted about in 2007, has received an upgrade.

This is the more advanced version of this robot, created by the University of Southern California. The robot is completely autonomous and trained by machine learning algorithms. The video is real-time, i.e., not sped up.

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4 Responses to LittleDog robot learns how to traverse rough terrain

EngineerZero on May 24th, 2010 at 8:04 am said:

Whenever I see something like this, I get depressed. It’s like someone is saying to all of organic life, “Show’s over, folks!”

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- Carnes on May 24th, 2010 at 8:33 am said:
  
  But maybe we can make a transfer from organic to in-organic? No longer alive but still sentient. Ghost-in-the-Shell style would be nice.
  
  I love the little leaps. John is right, creapy cool.
  
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Skyler Kehren on May 24th, 2010 at 7:04 pm said:

That sure is one creepy efficient little frog/insect bot.

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RocketGuy on May 25th, 2010 at 10:09 am said:

This is really awesome progress. It feels like they’ve solved about 80-90% of legged locomotion, so it’s almost frustrating to watch. You can see that a truly autonomous and smooth animal-equivalent motion is right around the corner.

The learning aspects are probably the most interesting part for me, but the rest of it is also really cool.

I’m still waiting for the day I go for a daily run with my robot dog, who is tracking my fitness and/or providing pacing.

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