Video Tuesday: BigDog, MABEL, and Quadrotors Landing on Quadrotors

Robots that walk, robots that run, robots that fly, and robots that amusingly fall all over the place: we've got videos

1 min read

Video Tuesday: BigDog, MABEL, and Quadrotors Landing on Quadrotors

It's been a while since we've gotten an update from Boston Dynamics about their BigDog quadruped. And this isn't really an update, I guess, as much as a video of BigDog's noble robotic lineage, with a whole bunch of, shall we say, "outtakes" thrown in for good measure:

[ Boston Dynamics ]

We know that the University of Michigan's MABEL biped robot is fast and all, but it's also had some issues in the past with taking the occasional bad step with painful results. It now looks like MABEL has learned some fancy new footwork, with this demonstration of her ability to not completely faceplant when confronted with a surprise 20cm step:

[ MABEL ]

And lastly, I hope you're not burned out on quadrotors yet, because this is pretty sweet. Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev, and Vijay Kumar at UPenn's GRASP Lab have taught a big quadrotor to act as a landing (and launching) platform for a little quadrotor. Oh, and there's a bunch of hula-hoop dodging with multiple quadrotors at the end, too:

[ UPenn GRASP Lab ]

The Conversation (0)