A four-legged machine could soon be on the front lines in rescue efforts and disaster recovery situations. The HyQ quadruped robot, designed by a team from the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, now has even more dexterity then when it was first introduced five years ago, according to Reuters.
The team has been testing an arm that will help the robot maneuver around difficult situations.
"With the two arms, the robot can be deployed to the real area where it needs to do any maintenance work or turn a valve in a rescue scenario or pick up a sample in a contaminated area or just clean up radioactive materials; there's a lot of potential future applications where manipulation is really important," Claudio Semini, head of the Dynamic Legged Systems lab, told Reuters.
The arm is hydraulically triggered, and the hope has been they will add a locomotive platform.
"It's also pretty fast with the hydraulics speeds. You can use it as a counter force if you apply an external force on the body of the robot. You can use the arm as a tail as well to counter the external forces," said Bilal Rehman, the Ph.D. student behind the arm design.
HyQ can carry about 20 pounds, and the robot's joints are moved by software not hardware. It has 12 joints, eight that are triggered by hydraulic cylinders, reported Gizmag. It can walk, trot and kick, according to IEEE Spectrum. Researchers have also tested it by throwing a 50-pound punching bag at it. HyQ demonstrated that it was able to take the hit and also avoid the bag crashing on its face. When it was first built, the robot was clocked at speeds of up to 15 kilometers per hour, according to Gizmag.
Members of the team said they are now working on algorithms that will help the robot function better.
"Compared to other teams in China and the U.S., we have focused a lot on the versatility. So this (HyQ) platform can do many different motions ranging from very fast motions like a run or a jump. But it can also do the more careful navigation on rough terrain where we need to plan really one foothold after the next. And this is important, once we see the 3D map of the environment, we can start to understand how to best move through that environment," said Semini.
