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These Robot Legs Are Made For, Well, Walking
You can't have realistic Terminator robots without robotic legs that present accurate representations of human gait. University of Arizona engineers have done an amazing job of replicating human leg motions.
(Biologically accurate robot walking legs)
The body is based on principles derived from human muscular architecture, using muscles on straps to mimic agonist/antagonist muscle action as well as bifunctional muscles. Load sensors in the straps model Golgi tendon organs. The neural architecture is a central pattern generator (CPG) composed of a half-center oscillator combined with phase-modulated reflexes that is simulated using a spiking neural network. We show that the interaction between the reflex system, body dynamics and CPG results in a walking cycle that is entrained to the dynamics of the system. We also show that the CPG helped stabilize the gait against perturbations relative to a purely reflexive system, and compared the joint trajectories to human walking data.
Researchers hope that a better understanding of human locomotion will help develop new therapies for disabled people.
Update 28-Feb-2025: In his interesting 1949 story The Cybernetic Brain, science fiction writer Charles Recour describes a prosthetic leg with a brain:
It was an artificial leg, so cleverly and so artfully designed that it could hardly be told from a real one. Dr. Schmidt handed it to Larry. “Feel it,” he said, beaming, “it’s made of plastic and titanium. It doesn’t weigh very much.”Larry hefted the incredibly real contraption. To the touch, it felt as if it were made of human flesh. Its lightness was due to its being made of titanium, a metal as strong as steel, but much lighter. Its upper portion carried a web strap-and-belt arrangement for attaching, to the thigh.
('The Cybernetic Brain' by Charles Recour)"[Dr. Clydestone] will bring out the desired nerve endings from the end of the stump. He’ll connect them through platinum wires to little cable connectors... to seven nerve-endings protruding from his flesh, terminating, in ordinary electrical connections!"
But it was not the leg itself which was the real impressive agent; rather it was the electronic brain and the servo-mechanisms servicing it. Servomechanisms were simply electric or hydraulic motors whose motion was precisely controlled from a distance by electronic means.
The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg. It might be said that the artificial leg was a robot.
End update.
Via MedGadget.
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