Image credit: Techcrunch
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed a quadrupedal robot called Dribblebot that can successfully play soccer on grass, mud, and sand. This is a significant feat as past approaches have made a modeling assumption of flat, hard ground, and the robots were generally bipeds. Dribblebot has extended recent advances that have enabled better outdoor locomotion into this compound task, which combines aspects of locomotion and dexterous manipulation together.
The robot is designed to perform complex tasks on uneven and changing terrain, adding another level of difficulty to the task. The robot's motion is more dynamic than previous versions; it can run and manipulate the ball simultaneously, making it more challenging. It can perform on potential terrains like grass, sand, gravel, mud, and snow.
The training process involves the robot being regarded as a "digital twin" and getting put through its paces as computers run 4,000 simultaneous simulations of different environments. This method has broader applications beyond robot soccer and can aid humans in disaster scenarios like flooding, earthquakes, or search and rescue processes.
However, the Dribblebot has its limitations, such as stairs and inclines, which still present a challenge for the robot. Nonetheless, the development is a significant step towards creating legged robots that can traverse a range of terrains.
Check out the robot in action in the video below
