The Chinese company Tencent has introduced a hybrid four-legged robot with wheels. He can not only walk on four legs, but also ride on four or two wheels: In the latter case, it behaves like a humanoid robot, standing upright and grabbing objects with both feet.
Since the 1990s, many groups of engineers have been actively exploring the possibilities of four-legged walking robots and consider them as an alternative to the classic mobile robots with wheels or tracks. First of all, developers are attracted to four-legged robots for their high cross-country ability and stability, because each leg can be placed separately at the desired point and height. But the efficiency of four-legged robots has always been lower than that of wheeled robots, so in recent years several groups of engineers have started to create hybrid robots that combine legs and wheels. Almost all such machines use a similar design, in which the wheels are located at the end of the legs.
Engineers from the Chinese IT company Tencent presented a new design that allows you to combine in one machine the properties of not only four-legged and wheeled, but also humanoid robots. Externally, the robot has the usual appearance for its class: it has four two-piece legs that can move both in the plane (forward and backward), and to the side.
The wheels are not attached to the ends of the legs, as in the analogs, but to the knee joints on the outside. To ride, the robot bends its legs and stands on the wheels. In this position, it can move at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour.
The wheels on the front and rear pair of legs are different: they are larger at the back than at the front. This is due to the fact that the robot can also stand on the two rear wheels, orienting the body vertically. In this position, he can ride and even grab objects by squeezing them with his two front legs, which essentially become hands. Despite the fact that in this form the robot does not look very stable, engineers have shown that in fact it is able to withstand the impact of a ball thrown at it and resist other disturbances.
Image Source: Tencent
The engineers also showed other features of the robot that have already been implemented in various analogues. For example, he can flip from the back, jump over small obstacles and perform flips.
The project of a humanoid robot standing on two wheels was also at Boston Dynamics. Later, it was turned into a two-wheeled robot Handle with a suction cup manipulator. Recently, Boston Dynamics bought South Korean Hyundai, which plans to create a production version of the Handle, and also develops its mobile robots, including quadrupeds with wheels .
Grigory Kopiev
