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Hyperion4 Ridable Robot Tiptoes Around, Haunts Dreams

by Warren Riddle on June 20, 2010 at 05:00 PM

Hyperion 4 Ridable RobotGiven the unabashed awesomeness of robots, criticizing any type of bot elicits deprecatory feelings of shame. The prodigious robot specialists from DARPA and Boston Dynamics (BD) produce such astounding and extraordinary mechanical creations, though, that otherwise impressive feats of engineering sometimes seem pedestrian and outmoded. Such is the lamentable fate of one sad robot from Japan's Chiba Institute of Technology.

Videos of Chiba creations recently arrived on YouTube, but -- despite the fact that the clips demonstrate operable robots that actually walk and hop -- the devices just can't compare to the intimidating climbers and navigators from DARPA and BD. Being overshadowed by those formidable robot pioneers certainly isn't disgraceful, but the apparent insignificance of Chiba's plodding, four-legged Hyperion vehicle is devastatingly compounded by another, similar creation.

The Mondo Spider monstrosity also carries a driver, but it moves faster and has more robotic limbs than the Hyperion, and it looks like an awesome, menacing prop from 'Beyond Thunderdome.' Even worse, an eclectic group of Burning Man misfits, not a team of University scientists, created the Mondo thing. So, let those freak flags fly, because underdog stoners and hippies just upset a group of nerds at their own engineering game. [From: Makezine via Ubergizmo]

Tags: boston dynamics, BostonDynamics, chiba, chiba institute of technology, ChibaInstituteOfTechnology, darpa, hyperion4, japan, robot, Robots

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