PETMAN is an adult-sized
humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics.
It's stunning. The humanoid, which will
certainly be compared to the Terminator Series 800 model, can perform various
movements and maintain its balance much like a real person.
Boston
Dynamics is building PETMAN, short for Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin, for
the U.S. Army, which plans to use the robot to test chemical suits and other
protective gear used by troops. It has to be capable of moving just like a
soldier -- walking, running, bending, reaching, army crawling -- to test the
suit's durability in a full range of motion.
Marc
Raibert, the founder and president of Boston Dynamics, tells me that the biggest
challenge was to engineer the robot, which uses a hydraulic actuation system, to
have the approximate size of a person. "There was a great deal of mechanical
design we had to do to get everything to fit," he says.
PETMAN
was one of the robots that most impressed attendees of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and
Systems in San Francisco last month. At the event, Raibert showed a video that made the audience gasp.
Unfortunately the clip wasn't ready for public release and we couldn't post it
here. Now it's out:
Led
by Dr. Robert Playter, Boston Dynamics' VP of engineering, development of PETMAN
got its start with a $26.3 million Army program. Two years ago, the company, based in
Waltham, Mass., first demonstrated PETMAN's legs by putting them to walk on a treadmill. This year, the company showed
that the robot legs can run at up to 7 kilometers per hour (about 4.4
miles per hour) and announced it had completed a prototype of the body.
Raibert
says the humanoid and its behavior are still under development. "We plan to
deliver the robot to the Army next year."
According
to the Army requirements, the robot has to have about the same weight and
dimensions of a 50th percentile male (the size of a standard crash-test dummy), or a mass of 80 kilograms
(about 180 pounds) and height of about 1.75 meters (nearly 6 feet). PETMAN also
has to simulate respiration, sweating, and changes in skin temperature based on
the amount of physical exertion. Boston Dynamics used motion-capture systems to
study the movements of humans as they performed a variety of
exercises.
The
robot relies on a tether that provides hydraulic power, but its body had to
share space with many sensors and other components. Cramming everything together
became a big engineering puzzle. And not only the legs had to be strong, Raibert
explains, but the upper body too, to allow the robot to crawl and stand
up.
There
are all sorts of things robots like PETMAN could be used for. Any place that has
been designed for human access, mobility, or manipulation skills. Places like
the Fukushima reactors could be accessed by
PETMAN-like robots (or AlphaDogs), without
requiring any human exposure to hazardous materials. Perhaps firefighting inside
of buildings or facilities designed for human access, like on board ships
designed for human crews.
