Remember how that in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Princess Ariel decided to trade in her voice for a pair of feet so that she will be able to be on land with the prince who caught her heart? Well, she certainly had the help of Ursula the sea witch in getting her wish, which was a fair deal (albeit a bit naive on her side), but back to the real world, there are no incantations that will be able to give anyone a new pair of feet, but technology certainly could do something about it. Case in point, the AMBER robot from Texas A&M’s Amber Lab robotics team.
Apparently, there has been an approximation of those foot bones which allows the robo-Manziel to have the pivot-points required for a more natural movement that is as close as it gets to human movement at this point in time. The final product will not have anything to do with making synthetic legs stronger, and at the end of the video when you saw the legs stumble? That was done on purpose, to show that the attached boom offered lateral stability. What kind of strides would you like to see the robotics industry make in the near future?
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