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Legged Locomotion Meets Skateboarding
- amelius 2y agoAnother case of AI claiming the fun tasks.
- jloganolson 2y agoLove the video's ASMR vibes
- themark 2y agoDo a kickflip!
- munificent 2y agoI really want to have something insightful to say, or perhaps something predictably pessimistic about robotics and AI. But I just can't get over how cute the little fucker is. Little robodog skateboarding around living his best life.
- salynchnew 2y agoThis is the kind of twee, midwestern robotics research that we all need today.
- metalman 2y agosure,fine,true, but it makes me twitchy, and I start trying to think up socialy acceptable ways to pass off walking around with a pump gun as just a thing
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- quuxplusone 2y agoCirca 2004, we undergrad tagalongs on CMU's robot soccer team were in charge of two things: the Sony Aibo dog's post-goal victory dance, and getting it to ride on a little Sony-provided skateboard. Clearly "dogs on skateboards" never gets old. :) But from the title I was hoping to see a "skateboard with legs" instead. Imagine a little eight-legged horse for your feet, you know?
- dredmorbius 2y agoChisled spam. <https://chiseledspam.com/ https://chiseledspam.com/>
- jonlucc 2y agoBased on the title alone, I thought this might be a skateboard that moved on millipede style legs, rather than wheels.
- speerer 2y agoMe too. Visions of Terry Pratchett's luggage from Discworld.
- hinkley 2y agoSee also Snow Crash.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoYes. Smart wheels. I came here for the smart wheels.
- playa1 2y agoI also was bit disappointed when it wasn't smart wheels. Then I got impressed to see it handle the drops and stairs.
- brulard 2y agoExactly what I expected
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 2y agoMy disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
- brador 2y ago2025 and we still can’t flawlessly instantly play a web video when play is pressed. What are we doing here?
- gmueckl 2y agoI'm not an expert, but if I understand the abstract correctly, the big deal isn't the skateboarding at all. This is a modal behavior where both the individual behaviors and the mode transition decisions were trained at the same time. Is this correct?
- spunker540 2y agoPretty cool! At first I wasn’t that impressed because it’s mostly just pushing to get some speed then “passively” riding down some ramps and steps. Then I realized that riding down steps is not a passive activity — most humans will fail their first time and need to learn to maintain balance while the board bounces over rough terrain. I think most inanimate objects would fall off a skateboard when pushed down steps, so it’s an impressive display of balance and tool-use in my opinion!
- MoonGhost 2y ago> most humans will fail their first time it's easier on 4 legs
- kh_hk 2y agoAnd lower center of gravity
- ASalazarMX 2y agoAnd multiple takes
- cship2 2y agoMaybe it's this part of the abstract? >Our approach incorporates a beta policy distribution and a multi-critic architecture to model contact-guided motions, exemplified by a challenging quadrupedal robot skateboard task I'm not an expert on this but maybe someone here can explain it a bit about a beta policy distribution and a multi-critic architecture and how come that is good to model contact-guided motions?
- engineer_22 2y ago[flagged]
- Cpoll 2y agoI can't speak to UMich specifically, but graduate research is long hours and crap pay, and the university gets to sell the results.
- engineer_22 2y agoThe pay is crappy because they're hiring foreign workers
- kevinventullo 2y agoAlmost all of the foreign-born students I went to grad school with 15 years ago still work and live in the US.
- saagarjha 2y agoWhy do you assume they will leave?
- engineer_22 2y agoCheck the bios of this project's advisors.
- saagarjha 2y agoWhat am I looking for?
- engineer_22 2y agoUS trained advisors working over seas
- dr_dshiv 2y agoAw, I was hoping for a skateboard that replaced the wheels with legged locomotion— like a cilia skateboard
- nraleigh 2y agoCue the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater music.
- MoonGhost 2y agoCool! Next step roller skating. It could be even useful in real tasks like delivery as it's more energy efficient and fast in urban environment.
- m463 2y agoI'm reminded of all those "dog rides skateboard" animated gifs and videos. but the two-legged scooby-doo windup is amazing!
- olddog2 2y agoThis is the unitree go1 robot dog which sells for $2700. Wasnt sure whether these were shipping/in the wild but obviously they have been for at least a few months!
- ASalazarMX 2y agoImagine your pet robot suddenly appropriating your kid's skateboard after its last update
- LeonB 2y agoI watched the teaser video and was disappointed to see that — despite half a century of precedent — these so called experts failed to include, and focus on, some really gnarly stacks, nosedives and face plants.
- sramam 2y agoI know very little in this field, but does this mean they the LED color is serving as debug/log messages for the training process? It sure seems so to my naive reading, and seems so clever. We use different LED lights to indicate transitions between dynamic modes in the automata. Similar to segmentation techniques in computer vision, the learned hybrid modes can help us analyze motion patterns more systematically, improve interpretability in decision-making, and refine control strategies for enhanced adaptability.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]