Sarcos: A robot that dances and balances

Do you remember the Hollywood movie Terminator? When I first saw the movie Terminator, I wondered if robots would have motor movements. How can a robot balance itself from falling to ground when received a hard blow? This question kept me engaged my mind for weeks together after watching that movie. Later, I came to a conclusion that it can happen only on screen and not in real. However, I was astonished to note that a student of Robotics proved that robots could not only walk but dance besides balancing their bodies.

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The student who created the robot that we are talking about is one Ben Stephens from Robotics Institute, who has been involved in Cargenie Mellon research for quite sometime now. He christened his humanoid robot as Sarcos. It is known that all humanoid robots cannot balance their bodies like Sarcos. The special feature of Sarcos is the full body. Unlike many humoid robots, Sarcos has two proper legs with which it can move freely without falling when received blows. The hydraulic actuators fixed in Sarcos makes it possible.

How does it learn dance?

The main idea behind teaching dance to Sarcos was to balance itself when pushed by someone. The dance--recorded from the human motion--is being programmed in the robot. According to Stephens, it was near to impossible to program human dance with hands and therefore he had used the real dance to record it and program the same.

As mentioned earlier, the central idea of teaching dance to Sarcos was to make it stand steady when it receives a punch. The video below depicts as to how Sarcos was balancing himself while dancing. From the motor movements it had learnt from the dance, Sarcos manages not to fall when it receives a big blow even when not dancing. Watch this exclusive video of Sarcos dancing.

Source: Geek, io9