One of the things that we learned from the DARPA Robotics Challenge is that it's useful for robots to have legs to walk, but it's even more useful for robots to be versatile and adaptable, with multimodal locomotion capabilities that they can deploy depending on the situation. At the DRC, we saw all kinds of different designs, but one of the more unique approaches came from the University of Bonn, in Germany, with their robot Momaro. Momaro used a "centaur" design, with four legs that had wheels on the bottom (like a wheeled quadruped) coupled to a humanoid upper torso with a head and arms. It was the top-ranked European robot in the DRC, completing an almost perfect run in just 34 minutes. We've since been wondering whether the centaur design would inspire other disaster robots, and now we know the answer is yes.

Since the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals in June of 2015, roboticists at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have been working to improve the capabilities of their custom made humanoid disaster robot, WALK-MAN. WALK-MAN is part of a much larger European Commission-funded project, which involves a variety of research institutes and universities all contributing to the development of different aspects of the robot, from simulation to perception to locomotion to manipulation. After a solid five years of work, the WALK-MAN project is now at its final validation phase, and it's gotten one last major upgrade to help it prepare to be helpful in the disasters we're certain to have in the future. For background on WALK-MAN, make sure and check out this in-depth article that we posted in 2015, just before the DRC. The version that IIT is announcing today has a number of hardware improvements, starting with a redesigned frame made of aluminum, magnesium alloys, and titanium.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. ANYmal was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where it got cold feet. Robot arm maintenance in space is much more difficult than robot arm maintenance on Earth, but you get quite the view.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robot videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Opportunity is 13 years old! The hydraulic high-power muscle has been developed by Suzumori Endo Robotics Laboratory at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Bridgestone Corporation as part of the Impulsing PAradigm Change through disruptive Technologies program (ImPACT) Tough Robotics Challenge which is an initiative of the Cabinet Office Council for Science, Technology and Innovation. The muscle is 15 mm in diameter and generates 700 kgf contraction force.