Legged Locomotion Meets Skateboarding | Hacker News Reader

Legged Locomotion Meets Skateboarding

umich-curly.github.io

156 pointsjam37 comments

Circa 2004, we undergrad tagalongs on CMU's robot soccer team were in charge of two things: the Sony Aibo dog's post-goal victory dance, and getting it to ride on a little Sony-provided skateboard. Clearly "dogs on skateboards" never gets old. :)

But from the title I was hoping to see a "skateboard with legs" instead. Imagine a little eight-legged horse for your feet, you know?

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Pretty cool! At first I wasn’t that impressed because it’s mostly just pushing to get some speed then “passively” riding down some ramps and steps. Then I realized that riding down steps is not a passive activity — most humans will fail their first time and need to learn to maintain balance while the board bounces over rough terrain.

I think most inanimate objects would fall off a skateboard when pushed down steps, so it’s an impressive display of balance and tool-use in my opinion!

> most humans will fail their first time

it's easier on 4 legs

And lower center of gravity

And multiple takes

Maybe it's this part of the abstract?

>Our approach incorporates a beta policy distribution and a multi-critic architecture to model contact-guided motions, exemplified by a challenging quadrupedal robot skateboard task

I'm not an expert on this but maybe someone here can explain it a bit about a beta policy distribution and a multi-critic architecture and how come that is good to model contact-guided motions?

I really want to have something insightful to say, or perhaps something predictably pessimistic about robotics and AI.

But I just can't get over how cute the little fucker is. Little robodog skateboarding around living his best life.

This is the kind of twee, midwestern robotics research that we all need today.

sure,fine,true, but it makes me twitchy, and I start trying to think up socialy acceptable ways to pass off walking around with a pump gun as just a thing

This is the unitree go1 robot dog which sells for $2700. Wasnt sure whether these were shipping/in the wild but obviously they have been for at least a few months!

Imagine your pet robot suddenly appropriating your kid's skateboard after its last update

Do a kickflip!

Aw, I was hoping for a skateboard that replaced the wheels with legged locomotion— like a cilia skateboard

I'm not an expert, but if I understand the abstract correctly, the big deal isn't the skateboarding at all. This is a modal behavior where both the individual behaviors and the mode transition decisions were trained at the same time. Is this correct?

I know very little in this field, but does this mean they the LED color is serving as debug/log messages for the training process? It sure seems so to my naive reading, and seems so clever.

    We use different LED lights to indicate transitions between dynamic modes
    in the automata. Similar to segmentation techniques in computer vision, 
    the learned hybrid modes can help us analyze motion patterns more 
    systematically, improve interpretability in decision-making, and refine
    control strategies for enhanced adaptability.

Cool! Next step roller skating. It could be even useful in real tasks like delivery as it's more energy efficient and fast in urban environment.

I'm reminded of all those "dog rides skateboard" animated gifs and videos.

but the two-legged scooby-doo windup is amazing!

I watched the teaser video and was disappointed to see that — despite half a century of precedent — these so called experts failed to include, and focus on, some really gnarly stacks, nosedives and face plants.

Love the video's ASMR vibes

2025 and we still can’t flawlessly instantly play a web video when play is pressed.

What are we doing here?

Cue the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater music.

Based on the title alone, I thought this might be a skateboard that moved on millipede style legs, rather than wheels.

Me too. Visions of Terry Pratchett's luggage from Discworld.