Humanoid industrial robots are always a little confusing for me. The human form is not best suited for industrial tasks, and by making specialised robot arms, you could improve efficiency etc. It's only if you need to interact with systems that were designed for humans, and can't be modified to work with a more efficient robot that you need humanoids
Looking at the video at the bottom of the page, the robot looks like an old man, especially in the trash bag throwing sequence. Compare that to the recent Chinese kung-fu robots video...
Completely different situations. The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability. While visually impressive, they are highly tuned to perform that specific sequence of actions. If you walked in front of one it would have zero awareness of you and you’d be hit. They’re essentially “blind”.
The last video here is likely demonstrating a teleoperated humanoid.
> The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability.
That is not true. The routine is preprogrammed, but there is adaptability. If there wasn't they would fall on the ground in the first 5 seconds. The movement involved in the routine we saw requires continuous adjustment. You can't just record the movement as you would with a video game animation, real physics get in the way and you end up on your back on the ground trying to do a jump and a backflip.
The robots motion is not preprogramed at all, see how much more smooth the motion is?
Thats because boston dynamics are using an approach where they try to calculate and take the dynamics of motion into account, just like Unitree.
The kawasaki approach is clearly to use overwhelming torques in an effort to cancel all the dymanics and produce fully controlled movement. Exactly what an old man does as well or a robotic arm in a factory. It's honestly embarrassing it looks like kawasaki has no progress in the last 30 years their robots still move like its 1996.
Humanoid industrial robots are always a little confusing for me. The human form is not best suited for industrial tasks, and by making specialised robot arms, you could improve efficiency etc. It's only if you need to interact with systems that were designed for humans, and can't be modified to work with a more efficient robot that you need humanoids
Looking at the video at the bottom of the page, the robot looks like an old man, especially in the trash bag throwing sequence. Compare that to the recent Chinese kung-fu robots video...
Completely different situations. The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability. While visually impressive, they are highly tuned to perform that specific sequence of actions. If you walked in front of one it would have zero awareness of you and you’d be hit. They’re essentially “blind”. The last video here is likely demonstrating a teleoperated humanoid.
> The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability.
That is not true. The routine is preprogrammed, but there is adaptability. If there wasn't they would fall on the ground in the first 5 seconds. The movement involved in the routine we saw requires continuous adjustment. You can't just record the movement as you would with a video game animation, real physics get in the way and you end up on your back on the ground trying to do a jump and a backflip.
If you think I am wrong, sure I could be but have a look at atlas, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1dke3Cf7I
The robots motion is not preprogramed at all, see how much more smooth the motion is?
Thats because boston dynamics are using an approach where they try to calculate and take the dynamics of motion into account, just like Unitree.
The kawasaki approach is clearly to use overwhelming torques in an effort to cancel all the dymanics and produce fully controlled movement. Exactly what an old man does as well or a robotic arm in a factory. It's honestly embarrassing it looks like kawasaki has no progress in the last 30 years their robots still move like its 1996.
Have a look here https://underactuated.csail.mit.edu/intro.html for a more indepth explanation of the difference between the two approaches.