Few things dress up a tech event more than robots. At GITEX, which announced a future release in Europe, we got to see several robots, from cute helper and guide robots to robotic dogs of all sizes and colors, but there’s one that caught our eye because it’s 1) the one who walks the fastest in the world and 2) because it was designed to play soccer. And yes, we got to know him very closely. And not just a robot, but its creator.
And those are the two protagonists of this article ARTEMIS and Dennis Hong. Dennis Hong is a mechanical engineer and robotics specialist. He is a professor of mechanics and aerospace engineering at UCLA and is the founder of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory). ARTEMIS is his great creation, a semi-humanoid looking robot. he can walk, run, jump and play football. And yes, playing football makes a lot of sense.
Furbo’
If we look at the design of the robot, we will see that it has little or no resemblance to other robberies such as Tesla or Xiaomi. It’s not as aesthetic, but it retains that semi-humanoid look. Because? According to Dennis Hong, because “form follows function“. “I have a dream in which in the future robots will walk among us in these environments (referring to the fair).” To do this, the robot must be like a human, because the environment is designed and developed precisely for humans. Let’s think about stairs, handles, etc.
Moreover, in this robotic utopia, we certainly want the future robot to help us at home, and therefore a robot he must be able to perform the same tasks as us without having to change everything. A practical example Hong gives: “If we want a robot to bring us beer, we want it to be able to open the fridge for us, not that we have to buy a fridge for the robot to use.” From there, the idea of developing a humanoid robot, which in this case is in oven since 2018.
The robot is as tall as a small person and weighs about 38 kilos. The key to its design is how it works, and that’s that the vast majority of robots use servo motors, which Dennis sees as ideal for “precise and rigid movements.” but not for leg movement. Instead, ARTEMIS actuators are designed to mimic the functioning of human muscles. The actuators are electric rather than hydraulic, which Dong says allows them to “be quieter, more efficient and cleaner,” since “hydraulic systems are notorious for leaking.” “That’s the key to his great balance when walking over rough terrain and his ability to run, to lift both feet off the ground when he moves,” she says.
This allows the robot walking at a speed of 2.1 meters per second, the fastest in the world. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see it with our own eyes because the demo space was limited and the robot was controlled manually. They actually controlled it with Steam Deck with Linux. They also know it can run, but not how fast or for how long because they don’t have the lab space to test it. Something they also don’t know is their autonomy, as they have never exhausted it for security reasons.
What he can and actually does is play football. RoboCup is a project founded in 1997 to promote the advancement of robotics, and one of the competitions in this initiative is RoboCupSoccer, a soccer competition with autonomous robots. There are different leagues (small robots, big robots, humanoid robots…) and It’s a kind of benchmark for bots. A test that will show how robots perform on their own in controlled and demanding environments in which different technologies can be compared. And it’s a competition, so it’s also fun and people love it,” explains Hong.
That the robot has this shape and design is no accident. RoboCup has a set of rules and standards (here in PDF) that all participants must follow. For example, “all robot actions must be kinetically equivalent to human movements” or that robots have “sensors that are equivalent in human senses”. “These sensors should be placed in a position roughly equivalent to the placement of human biological sensors.” Would it be easier for a robot to have a rear eye to see its companions? Yes, but unfortunately people don’t have it. This is why ARTEMIS has dual cameras and not LiDARs to make things easier, or five legs.
In terms of movement, a robot It does not use artificial intelligence for everything, but is based on a model. “However, it has artificial intelligence in terms of autonomy, it has stereo vision for object recognition,” says Dennis, although everything related to movement is based on the model. Dennis tells us that the robot is also capable of jumping, but because it only uses 40% of its capacity for safety reasons, it does so at a low height, practically a hand’s width away.
And that all sounds pretty good, but going a little further, we asked Dennis about the limitations of ARTEMIS. “There are a lot of things we need to find out. Now we’re working on local movement and trying to get him to move with both legs (…) and well, look at him, he doesn’t even have arms.”
Detail of arm and hand of ARTEMIS | Image: XatakaHe also tells us that the robot won’t fall (and seeing Dennis kick a moving robot and see him hold on is impressive), “but one day he will,” says the engineer. “Now we have to see how we can safely make it fall, and if it falls, how to make it rise again.
And of course, we might think that if we have a role model right in front of the mirror (that is, ourselves), it will be easier to imitate our behavior and make the robot recover like us. The truth is, it’s not that easybecause just as there are a thousand ways to fall, there are a thousand ways to get up, and an infinite number of factors to consider.
Robots among us? Wait…
Dennis Hong poses with ARTEMIS | Image: Xataka.Dennis tells us that if we had asked him this question three years ago, he would have told us that “you’d be lucky to be alive to see it.” However, we’ve now asked him and he now thinks it will be “a lot sooner than I thought” but can’t give a date because, well, there are problems to solve. “Even if we have the technology, there are many other problems: cost (…) and security.”
Because let’s be honest, the idea of having a robot at home that cleans dust (not on the floor like a robot vacuum, but on the worktop, which is so lazy) or irons sounds good, too good. What doesn’t sound so good, however, is this robot it can fall on something or someone and crush them. Let’s think that the object detection system failed, they didn’t see our pet and the robot falling on it.
For now, we’ll have to make do with our robotic vacuum cleaner or small robots like the Amazon Astro. Furthermore, the first applications of humanoid robots can be expected to be in commercial or hazardous environments to perform heavy tasks. Progress has been made, but unfortunately we either dust off the furniture in the living room or no one dusts it yet.
Images | Xataka
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