Aerial-Biped Robot Uses Legs for Increased Agility

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have designed a bipedal robot by essentially slapping a pair of legs on a quadrotor drone for what they call “entertainment purposes.” While the Aerial-Biped robot looks somewhat unusual and comical, it does have another purpose — bipedal agility.

According to lead researcher Azumi Maekawa:

“We developed a biped robot for entertainment which can move agiler than ever before. We used the legs of the robot in order to realize the appearance features seen in bipedal walking, and we used a quadrotor as a means of movement.”

The Aerial-Bipedal robot features a quadrotor body (it’s not specified, but my guess is it’s a Himoto HI6039C), with a pair of flamingo-like actuating legs strapped underneath that mimics the gait of bipedal animals. The legs don’t support the quadrotor but are utilized to provide a physical representation of natural movement and agility.

It’s walking movement isn’t programmed either, but done through AI reinforcement learning using a physics simulator. The system takes the velocity of the quadrotor as the robots input, and then generates leg movements to match the drone.

The idea of using the drone in their design was to create a robot that won’t fall over using a bipedal platform, as the body remains airborne during movement. While the Aerial-Bipedal robot is just a proof-of-concept design, the researchers envision using the platform for entertainment purposes, including animatronics and various kinds of dance performances. Strangely enough, to me, the robot’s movement reminds me of how marionette puppets move, now imagine that on a larger scale but without the strings.