Sunday, February 8, 2015

Robot Goes Cross Country Skiing



Published on Jan 30, 2015
Jennifer, the world's first ice hockey playing humanoid robot, takes to the slopes and tries out cross-country and alpine skiing in our application for the 2015 DARwIn-OP Humanoid Application Challenge.

The cross-country skiing gait is based on the linear inverted pendulum model and is inspired by walking and ice skating gaits developed for the DARwIn-OP robot.

We have only begun studying alpine skiing, but have demonstrated rudimentary braking and arcing using simple control of the skis' edges.

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.

Filmed outdoors at the University of Manitoba over several days (with wildly different temperatures and snow conditions).