The Japanese robot sheep are coming! Can walk people and drive in all directions

Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)

Compile the | Yang Chang

Edit | Three Norths

Recently, at the biennial Tokyo International Robot Show in Japan, Japanese robot company Kawasaki (Kawasaki) launched a four-legged robot Bex. Bex looks like a wild goat, and like a horse, it can drive people around.

The Bex robot is a four-legged robot with wheels on its knees. The design allows the Bex to either walk around like a Boston Dynamics robot dog or drive like a car after crouching down and locking on to a joint. Bex robots are also capable of carrying up to 100 kilograms of cargo together.

First, shaped like a goat, can walk and drive

According to foreign media IEEE Spectrum, the robot developed by Kawasaki is inspired by the goats living in the mountains of Africa and Eurasia. The robot's shape was created by engineers to resemble a goat, with a pair of pointed horns, a strong body and strong four legs.

Bex robots have a bench-like device underneath the body, and a seat and handlebar are designed on top of the body to facilitate safe rides on it.

The robot is not fast when walking on four legs, but it is still relatively stable.

The relevant person in charge of Kawasaki pointed out at the Tokyo International Robot Show in Japan that the four-legged walking configuration of the Bex robot is to adapt to uneven terrain. The research team puts stability first. When the Bex robot walks, its gait remains at least two feet (about 0.61 meters) above the ground. This design reduces the requirements for robot computing, making it safer to use Bex robots when there are people around.

The Bex robot switches from four-legged walking mode to four-wheel drive in one go, first slowly squatting, and then after the wheels of the leg land on the ground, the calf part is raised and retracted inward, followed by a motor that drives the robot to drive like a car.

The robot moves forward on wheels much faster and feels more stable than when it walks on its legs.

At the show, the Bex robot also showed the state of movement when carrying people.

Second, the by-product of humanoid robot research, legs are the focus of research

Bex robots mainly move according to human commands (passenger handle manipulation or remote operation) and data calculated by sensor information such as gyroscopes mounted on the robot.

Since 2015, Kawasaki has been working on a humanoid robot project called Kaledo's "Robust Humanoid Platform (RHP)," a derivative of the RHP project.

Masayuki Soube, who is in charge of the development of the RHP project, said in an interview with the media that when they developed the humanoid robot, they felt the difficulty of studying bipedal humanoid robots, which are the same as human shapes and have versatility, but it takes a long time to put into practical application.

On the other hand, they are also developing a robotic service robot Nyokkey that uses wheels for movement, but wheels are not suitable for moving on uneven ground.

So they thought that there was something to be studied in the middle between the humanoid robot and the Nyokkey robot, and the RHP project team began to develop the four-legged walking robot Bex. At the same time, they believe that the gait technology developed during the development of humanoid robots can be applied to four-legged walking robots.

The base of the Bex robot is a humanoid robot, but the upper body, that is, the "sheep's head" part, is not fixed, can be adjusted according to the actual application, and can be used in cooperation with the construction site or factory where the robot is used, and they can customize it.

The four legs of the lower body of the robot are the parts that Kawasaki will continue to focus on, and Kawasaki will also provide it as an open innovation platform.

Third, the construction site farmland can work, Bex robots can wear several jobs

Masayuki Soube also talked about several possible uses for Bex robots.

One application is to carry lightweight cargo, and the researchers wanted to design a Bex robot that could transport materials on construction sites.

The second type of application is inspection, where in a giant factory, Bex robots can look around and remotely check the surveillance footage of cameras to check what the instruments are in.

Bex robots can also drive people to harvest crops in farmland.

In addition to bex robots, at the Tokyo International Robot Show in Japan, Kawasaki also showed a humanoid robot RHP Friends. RHP Friends can work in factories and can do a variety of tasks such as disaster relief and nursing home care.

▲RHP Friends

The use of robots to replace people for repetitive or hazardous activities has become an option for more and more institutions.

Especially since the new crown epidemic, service robots have played an increasingly important role in catering, hospitals and other occasions.

The global demand for industrial robots is also growing steadily, according to the "World Robots 2021 Industrial Robots" data released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), there are 3 million industrial robots working in factories around the world, an increase of 10%.

Conclusion: Four-legged and wheeled robots usher in new "partners"

Bex robots combine the performance of a four-legged robot with a powered car or wheeled robot, and the ability to switch back and forth between the two also increases its range of use.

In recent years, quadruped robots and wheeled robots have become closer and closer to our lives, such as four-legged inspection robots in factories, logistics robots in parks, and so on. Although Bex Robot is not the first robot to take care of both forms, it has also added some new design ideas to the robot industry.

Source: IEEE Spectrum, TechXplore, Kawasaki official website