Great Leapin' Bots
 

Toyota has unveiled a one-legged hopping robot. Darn! This would've been just the ticket for doing a slam-dunk on the Aim High center goal! Oh, nevermind - it can jump a whopping 4 cm.

Any bets on whether Dave will have one in his Kickoff animation this year?

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

Wonder if its name is Pogo.

I used to spend all my time on a pogo stick.

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

If Dave hasn't seen this yet, delete it quickly.

Otherwise wheels will be banned for 2007. :D

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

Muwha-hahahahaha!

Now I'll get to use my ultra-top-secret-patent-pending POGO-DRIVE! White paper pending after the Championship! :rolleyes:

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

All I can think about when seeing that is the Pixar lamp hopping on the "I" in "PIXAR" and crushing it.

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

hmmmm???? Makes me wonder.... :ahh:

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

It is nice that Toyota has finally been able to catch up with the work that Marc Raibert was doing twenty-five years ago.

Of course, Marc's one-legged hopping robots could not jump 4cm. -- all they could do was jump over a meter high, bounce untethered down hallways, and do back-flips while running/hopping. :)

-dave

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

So I guess this is just another case of someone reinventing the leg? Don't suppose you have any video? I'd love to see it do the back-flip!

Re: Great Leapin' Bots
 

Check the MIT Leg Lab web site. There is a good set of short, small video samples for some of their early legged robot work.

-dave