Gadgetory

the University of Manitoba's autonomous agents laboratory recently posted a video of their cross-country and Alpine Skiing robot known as Jennifer the video is part of the team's submission for the 2015 Darwin op humanoid application challenge at the ICR a 2015 robotics conference which takes place in Seattle Washington in May the lab said in a statement this is the latest extension of our work furthering our research into dynamic balancing and walking under realistic conditions the changing nature of snowy ground and the rapid control response required by Alpine Skiing present significant challenges to gate design a dynamic balancing and humanoid robots in the video the robot demonstrates cross-country skiing and 3 different types of snow and hard dry snow which provides good conditions for cross-country skiing deep wet snow which is difficult for Jennifer to operate and light powdery snow on a hard base which helps Jennifer travel easiest in a straight line the robot is able to adapt to each condition dynamically and we'll figure out a gait that better suits the snow conditions improving the robots forward movement due to snow Jennifer also demonstrated Alpine downhill skiing showing off your ability to make a snow plow or pizza position which helps a skier stop the robot is also able to use the edges of the skis to make turns down the hill like a real human skier wood you can read more about Jennifer the humanoid skiing robot at CNET's crave blog at crave see Netcom