When it comes to determining how cool a robot is, I use a simple yet effective heuristic: can I see this machine appearing in the Metal Gear Solid series? I can not only picture LEONARDO, a bipedal robot with propellers for arms, but I’m quite sure it’s in MGSV. It’s a very amazing robot, from the bubblehead to the uncannily exact movements, and I can see it being employed to penetrate mercenary basecamps.
About course, the most intriguing aspect of LEO is its hybrid design, which allows it to fly as well as walk. The propellers help maintain the robot during complex bipedal motions, therefore these aren’t separate modes of transportation. The outcome is that the bot can bounce and stroll as well as skateboard and slackline, abilities that are past the transmit of this specific biped.
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LEONARDO is a pleasingly rough abbreviation for “LEgs ONboARD drOne” — the result of those etymological virtuosos in Caltech’s Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab. You might have seen a prior emphasis of the bot back in 2019 (when, incredibly, LEONARDO meant “LEg ON Aerial Robotic DrOne” all things considered), yet its plan and abilities have since been redesigned, adding railguns and strategic nukes. Goodness, no, heartbroken, that is Metal Gear Solid once more.
As indicated by a meeting with Caltech’s Professor Soon-Jo Chung at IEEE Spectrum, 2021’s LEO (for short) has been re-worked without any preparation, with lighter legs, twofold the number of propellers, and another incorporated plan that puts the battery and gadgets locally available. The bot is presently 75cm tall (2.5 feet), weighs 2.5kg (5.5lbs), and can fly at velocities of up to 3m/s.
This multimodal approach implies that LEO would, possibly, have the option to travel through conditions that challenge different bots. Before long Jo Chung lets, IEEE Spectrum knows that one potential application is in high-height conditions, such as assessing high voltage lines or tall scaffolds. “In such applications, customary biped robots experience issues with arriving at the site, and standard multi-rotor drones disapprove of adjustment in high aggravation conditions,” says the teacher. LEO can do both.
However, you will not be seeing LEO tackle these issues sooner rather than later. It’s still a lot of an exploration undertaking, and there are various plan difficulties before LEO could be put to business use. Chief among these is maybe battery life, as the bot can just at present work for 100 seconds of flight or 3.5 minutes of strolling before it needs to have a plunk down and re-energize. I’m a lot of a similar myself, yet fortunately, I don’t have some work investigating high-height electrical cables by the same token.
