Life-Size Humanoid Robot Is Designed to Fall Over (and Over and Over)

Roboticists worldwide are spending an obscene amount of time and effort trying to teach large humanoid robots how to not fall over. We rejoice every time there is even the smallest incremental bit of progress towards success, because not falling over is super hard, especially if you want your robot to be doing something useful. And even though some large humanoid robots can occasionally survive falling over, most of them don't enjoy it very much. Led by Kei Okada and Masayuki Inaba, a team from the University of Tokyo and Kawasaki Heavy Industries is working on their own life-sized humanoid robot, and they've come up with a new strategy for not worrying about falls: not worrying about falls. Instead, they've built their robot from the ground up with an armored structure that makes it totally okay with falling over and getting right back up again.