http://gizmodo.com/tag/shigeo-hirose/
I'd seen clips of some of these neat robots before, however I had no idea that one man was behind all of this. Apparently all the robots featured in this montage were all projects run directly by Shigeo Hirose. Some of theses videos are almost 30 years old, and yet all of them seem very modern, even futuristic.
The physical technology used in any of these videos does not appear to be ground breaking in any sense, its just servos/motors/actuators/etc but yet each of these robots is striking in its own right. I think what is made obvious in all of these videos is a facet of technology that is readily dismissed to obtain better results, namely the art that goes into a piece of inspired technology.
Many of the robots move fluidly, even organically in some cases, which for those familiar with coding actuators/servos/motions in general takes a great deal of care and precision. Now the videos by no means show a full test of any of these systems, the vids could very well be just one case where the robot happened to perform beautifully. Its much more difficult to program a motion control system to respond gracefully to various situations than one preplanned case, however I doubt that the majority are programmed in such a manner. I tried to do more research as to who was doing the control systems and coding for these projects, but the majority of the information is in japanese. If it was primarily done by one man, he must be one hell of a programmer.
The exploration rover w/ detachable wheel robot and the roller skating robot both blew my mind, they are easily some of the coolest displays of robotics I've seen in quite some time, and they aren't even brand new. Look at these other videos to understand how marvelous that rollerskating robot is.
Also check out this lumbering monstrosity built out of the same lab.
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