First Full-sized Humanoid To Be Developed In The USA
Posted In: charli, First, Heavy, humanoid, light, robocup, robot, robotics, Technical Institute, usa, Virginia Tech
Comments: 2 Responses
Share this article
CHARLI-Light (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) was a development project being researched by RoMeLa at Virgina Technical Institute. The Light part is the version of the robot. The other version is the CHARLI-Heavy in which there are more sophisticated parts attached to the robot. The CHARLI-Heavy is geared more toward the educational side.
The purpose of the robot was to learn about how humans walk, balance, and do everything we do so well, but later on they decided to enter it into the Fullscale Humanoid sector of The Robocup. Another reason for the development of the robot is to create more human-robot interactions, which will serve well when robots serve us, or when we serve robots. Charli-Light weighs 12.5kg (27.5 lbs) at a height of about 135cm (4′5″) tall. Charli-Heavy is still in working.
The title is blatantly false. There have been many full-sized humanoids developed in the USA. My favorite is the SARCOS humanoid:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13008-flexiblejointed-robot-is-no-pushover.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
You would need to add a number of modifiers in addition to “full-sized” to make the title true, such as: “tether-free” and “bipedal.”
Ah, it appears PopSci got the official qualification:
CHARLI is the first full-sized, walking, untethered, humanoid robot, complete with four moving limbs and a head, to be built in the United States.
I’m excited to see what they actually do with the robot (beyond just walking).