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University of Michigan's MABEL Runs Free

MABEL the bipedal robot from the University of Michigan may not have a head but it still holds the record for being the fastest robot which can move at 6.8 miles per hour. MABEL was created in 2008 by a then doctoral student at the Robotics Institute at the Carnegie Mellon University called Jonathan Hurst.

Biped Robot MABEL Runs Free!

Now at the University of Michigan professor Jessy Grizzle and doctoral students Koushil Sreenath and Hae-Won Park have spent some years training MABEL. The robot’s feedback algorithms have been worked on so that it can keep better balance while reacting to its environment in real time. The robot uses a guiding bar to navigate in the tiny gymnasium.

Not too many robots can actually run with such a human gait as MABEL. The weight of the robot is distributed like a human being’s would be. Although it has a heavy torso and light flexible legs that has springs to act like tendons. Like a real runner MABEL is in the air for 40% of each stride it takes as per Grizzle. MABEL may be ideal to take on a host of potential robotics applications in the not so distant future.

Grizzle added that the robotics community has been trying to come up with machines that can go places where humans can go, so a human morphology is important. She said that if you would like to send in robots to search for people when a house is on fire, it probably needs to be able to go up and down stairs, step over the baby’s toys on the floor and manoeuvre in an environment where wheels and tracks may not be appropriate.

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