IIT's Hydraulic Quadruped Robot 'HyQ' Goes Outdoor For Walk

The Engineers at Department of Advanced Robotics of IIT (Italian Institute of Technology) have developed a completely torque-controlled, hydraulically actuated quadruped robot called HyQ. It can walk on rough roads and can jump or run with different gaits. And though it headless and weighs 70kg and is 1m long, it is capable of achieving high joint speeds and torques using a combination of hydraulic cylinders and electric motors that actuate the robot’s 12 active joints. When the HyQ's developers took it for a stroll outside the lab for the first time last week, they tried some interesting things with it like making it run over obstacles.



The tests previously conducted involved HyQ running over a treadmill at a speed of 1.7m/sec. But when they took it outdoors in fresh air, it achieved a new record of 2m/sec on a 20m long road. It's important to note that a safety harness was installed above the robot and a tether for the hydraulic power. Their team which is led by Professor Darwin Caldwell is going to discuss the recent improvements made to the robot's control system at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul, Minn.

You might want to watch it the video of HyQ'sbalancing and outdoor tests where it walks over unperceived obstacles using active compliance and IMU for stabilization -



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