Teaching robots to stand is hard. SCHAFT, a company headquartered at the University of Tokyo, is trying to solve the problem by abandoning the idea that robot legs need to look like human legs.
The company made headlines in December of 2013 by winning the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials with a top-heavy bipedal robot, but they’ve changed the shape of their bot to resemble something from Interstellar. The tall legs that stretch higher than the robot’s torso seem to give it better stability and maneuverability. SCHAFT has been pretty quiet since their win at the DARPA Robotics Challenge, but they showed off their new robot at the New Economic Summit (NEST) in Tokyo in early April.
This robot doesn’t have a particular skill set: instead, SCHAFT’s co-founder and CEO Yuto Nakanishi says it’s designed to “help society” and go where few robots have gone comfortably before: namely, up and down stairs. It doesn’t have a name yet either, but a video shows it demonstrating impressive balance on uneven terrain and performing some household chores. SCHAFT says it can lift up to 60 kg (132 pounds.)
Don’t expect to see this robot mopping floors in homes soon, though: a SCHAFT representative told the IEEE Spectrum that “[The video] wasn’t a product announcement or indication of a specific product roadmap. The team was simply delighted to have a chance to show their latest progress.”
SCHAFT is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company