Now here is a unique robot that will certainly make you sit up and take notice – I am referring to this four legged robot that does not hail from some sort of military set up in the US, but rather, it is a group of Chinese researchers who banded together to construct this unique robot. What’s so special about it, you ask? Well, for starters, it is able to walk a whopping 83 miles on a single battery charge, now how about that? Just to put this particular achievement into perspective, the previous record when it comes to distance covered by a quadruped robot was 41 miles, achieved back in 2011. Xingzhe (also known as “Walker”) No. 1 pays homage to the Ranger robot whose record it broke by following certain design cues.
Li Qindu, a professor attached to the College of Automation under the Chongqing University of Post and Telecommunications, kicked off research on the Xingzhe robot in November last year, with the main goal of studying and improving ambulatory robots’ efficiency, durability and reliability. Do bear in mind that Xingzhe is able to navigate flat terrain only, as all of the 83 miles it traversed comprised of more than 1,405 laps of an indoor track on a gym floor.
It will not have the ability to maneuver around obstacles that it comes across, and you can be sure that it will lack the stability of the BigDog. However, the trump card of this world record holder would be its longevity and energy efficiency, which would make this useful in certain situations – perhaps monitoring the corridors of a building, or traversing the length of a highway as a scout for the highway maintenance operators?
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