These Mechanical Cat Legs March Us toward The Robopocalypse

with the intention to higher be aware cats, researchers on the college of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan constructed robot cat legs. the result of their labors is documented on this video, which presentations the terrifying prospect of disembodied pussycat legs rendered in metallic, leaping to 1.three times their own peak.

the trouble with mimicking animal movement is that the entire physique contributes to motion, not just the muscle tissues and linkages of the limbs themselves. This makes decoding the motion tough. “talents such as tree mountaineering, comfortable landing and excessive pace locomotion are some of their feats which baffle biologists and robotic researchers,” say the paper’s authors, Andre Rosendo, Kenichi Narioka, and Koh Hosoda. “For more than one hundred years, researchers had been trying to pinpoint the key for such fascinating talent, however as a result of highly advanced and redundant muscular buildings, this organic conundrum, so far, have no longer been absolutely defined or mimicked.”

Their solution was once to build legs which are extra biologically trustworthy than different robots. This was performed by way of making an reproduction of the leg, after which tweaking it, and tinkering whereas gazing unless it the leg’s efficiency matched that of the unique. thus could nature’s mechanisms be higher understood. And it appears to have worked. take a look at the component to the video the place the robotic lands on a disadvantage, as positive-footed as any pussycat.

in fact, what the researchers failed to understand is the chance inherent in marrying our most malevolent house pets with the never-tiring, relentless march of a laptop. If a cat mind was once ever transferred into a cat robot, it could be recreation over for humanity, with just a few of use saved alive as slaves, used best to make balls of wool, and deliver on-demand ear scratches.