This Robotic Centipede Will Teach Robots How to Walk

There is something inexplicably joyful about watching humanoid robots fall. This probably has to do with our meatbag inferiority complex, or a psychic defense mechanism to ward off the knowledge that even though these robots may be falling now, it's only a matter of time before the takeover begins. And thanks to new research coming out of Kyoto University, we are now literally a few steps closer to the roboapocalypse—or at least robots that won't fall over as they walk.

As the researchers point out in their recent paper for Nature, one way to improve the stability of a moving robot is to give it more legs. One need only compare the huge difference in stability between a bipedal humanoid bot and a quadruped like Boston Dynamic's hellish BigDog to see the advantage the researchers are alluding to. Adding even more legs only improves the robot's stability and raises its tolerance for leg malfunction.

Yet multilegged robots come with their own unique engineering challenges which must account for the complex dynamics resulting from so many separate legs interacting with one another across diverse terrains. To better understand how to build a competent multilegged robot, the researchers took a cue from the natural analog: the centipede.

All centipedes have at least 15 pairs of legs and some species have up to 191 pairs. This requires a high degree of coordination on the part of the insect, but according to the researchers "the underlying mechanism for generating agile movements by using many legs remains unclear from biological and engineering viewpoints."

So in order to better understand how a biological centipede is able to walk, the researchers designed a robotic centipede of their own. The six-legged robot is exactly as creepy as it sounds, but also offers the potential to provide significant biological insight which could then translate into design principles for robotic locomotion.

Ultimately, the researchers found that the key to dynamic motion in a multilegged robot involves incorporating a certain degree of instability into the robopede's forward motion. Like most things in life, the solution required a tradeoff and what was lost in stability was made up for with quick turns and generally improved maneuverability. So enjoy your robot fail compilations while you still can because it won't be long before robots are better than you at walking, too.