An article summing up a lot of challenges in a scientific career:
Author Archives: admin
Don’t break a leg
The control objective for bipedal gait is a matter of debate in the biomechanics community. Model driven studies suggested stability in the sense of aiming for returning to a previous steady-state after perturbation. Experiments with birds, the largest population of bipedal animals, in combination with a simulation study suggests that the control objective might be something else. Check out our new article in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Paper submitted
It took a while, but the paper on spring-mass walking with the ATRIAS robot is resubmitted to ‘IEEE Transaction on Robotics’. The new video can be found on the ATRIAS page in this blog.
On the road II – University of Twente
Enschede (NL). With our partners in the SYMBITRON project at the University of Twente we had the opportunity to test the LOPES exoskeleton and were trying to hop on a virtual spring.
Humanoid speed records
Comparing robots to each other is not an easy task given all the different design and control concepts. Furthermore a speed record, in my humble opinion, accounts more for human showmanship than for a scientific insight. Nevertheless, what robots actually run and at what speeds make frequently good lab discussions, and therefore I present a small ranking of humanoid robots and their reported speeds. Only human-size robots (based on my rather subjective judgement) are considered, the list will be updated. Continue reading
On the road I – TU Delft
Delft (NL). Visiting our Symbitron project partners in Delft we had the opportunity to play a bit with TULIP, a bipedal robot I have always been curious about. In Delft I joined my first Dynamic Walking Meeting and TULIP has been around back then.
It is a well engineered robot, suitable for dynamic tasks though maybe a bit underpowered. At an impressive weight of only 20kg at his height there is still a lot to do. Joost (left in the picture) is working on getting TULIP to walk in a limit cycle.
Postdocs…
…are a curious breed – graduated and passing a heavy selection process but far from having a permanent position or even a chance of obtaining one. Science mentioned some of the common post-doc struggles in its recent article “The stressed-out postdoc“
Statistics
An important tool in science which, if not used with caution, can lead to quite surprising results. Always check your correlation!
Dynamic Walking Impressions
A video from the robot demonstration at Dynamic Walking. See me in the Locomat (0:43).
Will you be a PI
Science magazine provides the PI-predictor. I don’t know about it’s accuracy, but its an interesting gadget.