Humanoid robot Jennifer hits the slopes
Why should humans have all the fun in the snow? The University of Manitoba's Autonomous Agents Laboratory tests out its robot's abilities in cross country and Alpine skiing.
It's already impressive that Jennifer the humanoid robot can play hockey, but according to her maker, the University of Manitoba's Autonomous Agents Laboratory, now she can ski too.
Jennifer's cross-country and Alpine skiing efforts will be the university's entry for the 2015 DARwIn-OP Humanoid Application Challenge at the ICRA 2015 robotics conference, which takes place in Seattle in May.
"This is the latest extension of our work furthering our research into dynamic balancing and walking under realistic conditions," the lab posted.
"The changing nature of snowy ground, and the rapid control response required by alpine skiing, present significant challenges to gait design and dynamic balancing in humanoid robots, as does the challenge of operating this equipment in cold weather."
It's entertaining and rather endearing to see the little bot make her way downhill as she manuevers her tiny skis and poles.
"Improving the control of the alpine skiing is our primary focus, with improving the cross-country gait and allowing the robot to dynamically switch from cross-country to alpine skiing when it detects a change in inclination corresponding to a hill," Chris I-B, a researcher from the lab, wrote on the video page.
Here's hoping we will one day see Jennifer and her robo-cousins skiing their little metal hearts out in a future Winter Robolympics.