Robo-Ostrich Sprints to 100-Meter World Record

It has a weird limp in its left leg.

It also doesn't seem to have a very reliable expectation of how much ground force it is imparting vs its height above the ground. I assume as the software matures that it could probably get 50% faster on the same hardware.

Everything is software bound.

*edit, I think it just runs like a grad student.

> Pretty amazing stuff, even if it’s still slower than my grandma :)

Are you sure? https://world-masters-athletics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/..., page 18 shows a 60 year old female competitor clocking 23.15s over 100m, so I would think most 60+ year old women would be slower than that, and the median grandma that runs the 100m faster than this robot would be slower than this robot.

Ostrich's top speed is ~40mph, easily beats Usain Bolt :)

Well I don’t know the power consumption of this robot but did buy my kids a hover board for Christmas a few years back. The hover boards are 2 wheeled device you stand on and it moves you around as you pivot your foot at speeds of up to about 12km/hr. The battery is good for about 20-30km range which really surprised me. So for this robot maybe not as efficient as 2 wheels but I would guess it wouldn’t be hard to get a range of 10-20km quite easily with today’s current battery tech.

A bag of peanuts in a human is equivalent to a teaspoon of petrol, and equivalent to a stick dynamite

I read somewhere sometime in the last 50 years

ICE robots run on ethanol seem like a more fair comparison.

The rods allow the motors which move the joints to be placed higher up on the leg, closer to the pivot point that swings the motor. This reduces the torque required to move each section of the leg, which in turn allows for smaller motors to be used, which further drives down the torque requirement.

They provide much the same function as our muscles and tendons.

And in this case, I think it would be parallel to the shin and foot. The "thigh" would be the thing that has the name of the school, the knee would be where that meets up with the long orange bit, the ankle is the joint where the two bars meet, then foot, and toe.

Birds are weird. Or we're weird and birds are normal.

Many zoos and aquariums conduct scientific research, and may have breeding programs for endangered species.

it would be neat to have animatronic autonomous velociraptors wandering the streets of my neighborhood halloween night!