A Robot that can walk and fly
LEONARDO (LEg ON) is a robot developed by professor Alireza Ramezani and others, working at Northeastern University.This type of robot is something new to us. It can walk around, but also fly, which seems really interesting.
Ramezani helped create this as a postdoctoral fellow in California. “It was originally developed with the idea of designing explorers – systems that can combine legged mobility and fast movement in the air to explore autonomously,” he says.
This robot is about 70 cm tall, but has a body made of carbon fiber. It’s strong, but lightweight ( 2.7 kg) and easy to carry. On either side of its upper body are thrusters that can move it in either direction, although they’re not their primary function.
“The idea is not to create a quadcopter. The idea is to have a machine that can use its legs and its thrusters, for example, to enhance its jumping capabilities,” says Ramezani.
These thrusters can help prevent it from succumbing to unstable surface conditions or enable it to maintain stability. “This is the big challenge for legged systems or even humans: We can stabilize our body, but sometimes we fall. What if we had a robot that never falls?” he asks.
Ramezani is a graduate of the University of Michigan. When he was studying robotics, he researched how to build a robot with legs.He was thinking about how to design a “air-bag” to lessen the damage that can sometimes come with a robot falling.The idea came from birds as he mentions: Most robot models focus exclusively on one kind of movement, but birds can walk, fly and run.
“You can see engineering in its most perfect form in nature, and we can learn a lot,” says the researcher. Ramezani has also developed a flying robot based on the way bats fly.
The robot stayed behind at the Calterch Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies, where professors Sun-Jo Jung and Morteza Garib continued to work on it. Ramezani is now working on a redesign to use as a platform for learning by students.
“Think of a robot that never falls. It can move on uneven ground, it can fly, it can jump. A very capable system. We could use such a machine for exploration,” he says.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
