This Robot Relies on Human Reflexes For Balance

Contrary to what science fiction predicted robotics in 2019 would be like, robots are nowhere near being autonomous yet (although they are able to do some pretty cool things). It's taken researchers a long time to get robots to be able to walk like humans - so getting them to respond to different environments with fast reflexes is even further away than our hopeful ancestors imagined. But these researchers are looking at things in a different way, and a robot that can walk and balance like a human may be closer than we thought it was.

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via Scientific American

Bipedal robots (robots that walk on two legs) are the prototype for the humanoid robot we've been imagining since robots were first conceived. However, it's much harder to teach a bipedal robot to walk or balance than a quadrupedal or wheeled robot. Although scientists can sophisticated algorithms to keep bipedal robots upright, sometimes it's not enough.
So researchers at MIT and the University of Illinois-Champaign got together to do something a little differently. They put together a hybrid human-robot system which is bipedal (well, it's only a pair of legs at this point) and it's called Little Hermes.
The researchers were inspired to create Little Hermes after watching footage of the 2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster. They thought that if a robot could have entered the nuclear power plant, things would have turned out very differently.
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via Giphy

Little Hermes is hooked directly to a human operator who stands on a pressure-sensing plate and wears a force-feedback vest. The robot follows the person's movements: not 1:1 but through interpreting the movements in terms of the center of gravity and force vectors. If the robot encounters an unexpected slope or obstacle, these forces are conveyed to the human operator through the vest, to which they can respond with the instincts we have developed over thousands of years of evolution - an advantage that robots don't have.
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via Scientific American

The researchers at MIT and the University of Illinois-Champaign think that this feedback loop could make on-site rescue robots, and other robots that might walk on unstable ground, more reliable. In the future, the researchers are hoping that similar feedback systems can be set up for hands and feet, so that grip and mobility can be further improved. The way things are looking, it will be a long time before I, Robot bots will be assisting us in our homes and lives. And that might be a good thing.