What is the hardest part of designing and building a leg that works like a humans?
(Asked by several viewers) One of the hardest parts is to figure out what to use instead of muscles. Muscles, like most of the “machinery” that nature uses is very impressive when compared to the machinery that engineers can choose from. Your arms and legs are very compliant. If you relax, they’ll flop around. If you bump into something, you bounce off it. Many old robots aren’t like that. If they bump into something, like a wall, they’ll go right through it. In order to make a robot that walks like an animal or human, it is important that the limbs can be floppy so if something unexpected happens – like hitting a bump, the robot doesn’t fall down or break itself. In our robot, we try to make the motors behave more like muscles by adding springy-ness to them. We add springs between the motors and the joints on purpose, so that if we want, we can let the joints be compliant. The other hard part is controlling the legs. After the robot is designed and built, it takes a lot of hard work t
