One Leg, No Arms, and Famous

No, we're not talking about the armless, one-legged man who led Florida police on a high speed chase last week. Yesterday the Robot Hall of Fame inducted their new members. Both real and fictional robots were inducted to the Hall of Fame at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition, which is being held at the Hynes. A self driving car (real), Star Trek's Lt. Cmdr. Data (fiction), Lego Mindstorm (real), and the Boston area's own Raibert Hopper (real) were this year's four inductees.

"When roboticist Marc Raibert established the Leg Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon in 1980 (he would move it to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986), he believed robots, just like humans, needed to rely on motion for stability — the principle of dynamic balance — if they were ever to become speedy.
The one-legged Hopper was ideal for studying dynamic balance because it could not stand still, but had to keep moving to stay upright. "The Raibert Hopper was the visionary effort that set the entire field of robotic locomotion in motion," Mason [director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute] said. The lessons learned with the Hopper proved central for biped, quadruped and even hexapod running. Raibert is now president of the robotics firm he founded, Boston Dynamics."

The original 3D One-Leg Hopper led to a quadruped and bipedal version, demonstrating one, two, and four legged versions were all possible. CNET features all three in their photo gallery of the Robot Hall of Fame inductees. The MIT Leg Laboratory has a whole host of examples of the progression over time of the different technologies. We're looking at Raibert as the head of Boston Dynamics for sweet innovations in robotics – last year they released a video of "Big Dog" a pack mule type of robot that is advanced enough to react when it's kicked. Check out the video demonstration of Big Dog below – at 35 seconds in you'll see the slow-mo replay of the kick.