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Comment by rickmode | Hacker News Reader

The cables definitely look like training wheels. Even a very slight bit of tension could assist with balance. Of course that assumes the robot has some sort of kinesthetic sense.

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I'd assume it's probably easier to iterate and test without worrying if your ridiculously expensive robot is going to fall on it's face. Even something small like friction with the clothes or binding of cloth in a servo/joint could cause it to fall, I suppose.

I'm sure they wanted their proof of concept out just to be the first robot with clothes, but just didn't want to risk damage.

The cables are there to prevent the robot from damaging stuff during testing. If a human falls, it catches itself, or at worst breaks a wrist and spends a couple weeks healing. Unrestrained robots have far more spectacular failure modes; a falling humanoid typically lands on an outstretched limb and breaks it right in half, setting the project back months and costing huge amounts of money. Or it goes nuts but doesn't fall over immediately, instead flailing around on a short rampage that ends with the robot broken and everything nearby having been whacked by the limbed equivalent of a runaway golf cart.

Source: been there, done that, don't tell OSHA. :P

The early versions of BigDog had support cables to protect it in case it fell as well. Eventually the stabilization hardware + software got good enough to where they weren't needed any more.

These guys are legit. You put those on there because the robot is worth millions. And yes, it has a sense of balance and very very fast reflexes.

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