Presentation of LEO, a skateboard and tightrope walker robot

Every week, it seems, robotics experts are creating new ways to terrify us with their work. In the past, they have created mockery of nature that dance of strange mechanical dances, teeth chatter like possessed mannequins, bravo to the sports teams, and play pretend superhero in theme parks. And now, thanks to a group of Frankensteinian researchers at Caltech, we’ve been brought in to witness a small, slender monster that can walk a tightrope, fly through the air, and ride around on a skateboard.

LEONARDO, who is apparently a tortured acronym for “LEgs ONboARD drOne” and also responds to LEO, is “a bipedal robot that combines walking and flying to create a new type of locomotion” according to Caltech. In a video uploaded on Wednesday, we can see LEO’s abilities for ourselves in all their perverse majesty.

The robot is shown tiptoeing like a baby xenomorph before rising into the air in the foregrounds. Then we see him trying to gain the love of humanity by doing a tightrope balancing circus routine and rolling around on a skateboard.

The researchers behind LEO say the way birds combine flight and jumping movements to move over power and telephone lines served as inspiration for their work. They also explain that the baffling feature set of the metallic creature is intended to overcome the problem that bipedal robots cannot hunt human prey on “rough terrain” by giving it the knack of flying.

Although LEO is only 2.5 feet tall, he walks with the help of “four propeller thrusters” that hold him upright and let him fly. Just in case you were wondering, they also prevent it from falling out when “you … poke or push [it] with great force ”, according to the co-author of an article about the robot. As work continues, a future version of LEO may be able to “make its own decisions about the best combination of walk, flight or hybrid movement it should use” when on the move.

Learn more about this mechanical threat in a published article on the Caltech website.

[via Mashable]

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