Gravity was a key consideration when designing Myon, the robot created by the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (NRL) at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin.
The robot is designed to consider gravity as he navigates his environment. Lab director Manfred Hild (pictured) showed how Myon deals with this in the first session on ‘Exponential Technologies’ at the IFA+ Summit 2016.
This creation, with its head moving around in a friendly fashion as its artificial eyes assess its surroundings, is able to speak, but this is of secondary importance. As a whole, Myon is able to stand up straight, walk, or sit down, and if he falls over, he can pick himself up again.
His arms can hang down beside him or be used to balance out vibrations. The limbs act autonomously in their response to gravity. Myon has far fewer cables and therefore risk factors affecting his reliability than if he had to be controlled by a central computer. On top of this, each of his six body parts – the four limbs, the torso, and the head – can all move independently.
Myon boasts an impressive total of 32 degrees of freedom. “But that doesn’t mean that he already has all the capabilities he would need to, say, brush his teeth,” Hild adds. This requires a high degree of physical intelligence, “even if it doesn’t seem particularly intelligent to us.”
IFA+ SUMMIT, City Cube, Hall A