Jin Lei is from the Temple of Cave Fei
Qubits | Official account QbitAI
He's coming, he's coming!
Station B Wild Iron Man (Zhihuijun), with his new bipedal robot, Nezha, finally appeared!
In Zhihuijun's own words, it is a combination of "cyber machinery" and "national style myth".
For example, the familiar "Fire Tip Gun", "Mixed Sky Aya" and "Hot Wheels":
Unlike the Boston Dynamics bipedal robots and various wheel-footed robots that everyone has seen, Zhihuijun did a flower job on the robot's feet this time:
The purpose of this is to combine the advantages of the traditional two robot feet, namely terrain adaptation/flexibility + high endurance.
Zhihuijun named this "wheel foot two-phase leg", and the effect is as follows:
The "foot" is the foot horizontally, and the wheel is vertically up, which is a feeling of "stepping on the hot wheel".
As soon as the video came out, it immediately attracted many netizens to watch, and even many doctors in the industry gave great affirmation:
If the joint has been checked, even in the field of structural design, it can be touched with our professional.
What is even more surprising is that this Nezha is not only a robot project, but also closely related to Zhihuijun's departure from Huawei to start a business.
To be honest, it feels like a bombshell is coming.
(Note: This article has been authorized by Zhihuijun himself)
How is "Nezha" trained?
Ideas are good after all, and difficulties are indispensable.
At the beginning of the project, Zhihuijun listed several major difficulties, such as:
How to physically implement a drivenable gimbal
How to optimize the inertia of the legs
How to identify and simplify the model
How the controller switches between different modes
……
After many attempts, Zhihuijun finally gave a more "elegant" solution.
In terms of structural design, he adopted the configuration of a series and parallel drive combination, and each leg still meets the minimum degree of freedom of the three-dimensional space complete constraint, six.
However, unlike conventional bipedal robots, Nezha's ingenuity is that the yaw angle freedom generally placed in the first joint of the thigh is transferred to the last joint.
In this way, the robot can replace the end joint with a free-rotating wheel while keeping the kinematics fully driven.
In terms of innovation, Zhihuijun summarized as follows.
The first is to use parallel connecting rods and universal joints to realize the drive of four and five axes, which allows the wheels of six axes to rotate freely in two directions.
In this way, Nezha's feet can switch back and forth between "foot" and "wheel".
Secondly, Zhihuijun also effectively reduced the inertia of the calf by moving up the four and five axes and two motors.
This is because the hub motor at the end of itself is heavy, and the four- and five-axis motor is transferred to the other side of the three-axis shaft, which can also achieve gravity balance by the way, effectively reducing the torque requirements for the knee motor.
Another optimization point is to move the motor of the knee up to the second axis, so as to reduce the inertia of the thigh; A pull spring has also been added to provide additional driving force.
Finally, the entire design of Nezha has also been lightweight, and the hybrid material of metal and carbon fiber is used to reduce the weight of the whole machine.
After the leg structure design, it is the design of the whole machine, and the following effect is finally obtained:
In this regard, Zhihuijun frankly said:
The most complex structure ever designed.
"Something big is in the works"
As for Nezha's more effects, Zhihuijun said that he will do more in future videos as the follow-up progresses.
However, careful netizens also found a detailed picture in the video -
Zhihuijun wears a headlight, and Nezha can keep the movements synchronized with the gods.
It seems that this may be one of the functions that Nezha will demonstrate in the future.
Not only that, Zhihuijun also spoiled an "Easter egg" at the end of the video:
If nothing else, Nezha will be an Easter egg later this year at the launch of a big event that we are currently preparing.
So this video is not the end of the project, not even the beginning of the end, but just the end of the beginning.
Moreover, Zhihuijun said that in the combination of general robots and AI LLM, the team will still have some actions.
All in all, the path to AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) is a direction that Zhihuijun will firmly explore in the future.
As for the press conference of Zhihuijun's team a few months later, it is worth looking forward to.