The geniuses at Anybots have created a robot that can learn how to walk without specifically being programmed to do so. His name is Dexter. Dexter is a robot giant, standing at 5′10″ and weighing in at 135lbs. Anybots also created Dexter’s less-interesting brother Monty, who’s primary objective seems to be poking Dexter in the chest. You can see him making a nuisance of himself in this YouTube video. He is shorter and fatter than Dexter standing 5′7″ and weighing 160lbs.

Dexter dynamically balances himself so he can stand upright and even walk around a little bit. Of course, Dexter isn’t the first robot to have been created who could walk around. Honda’s ASIMO robot and others like it can walk too, but they use a different system called Zero Moment Point (ZMP) which Dexter cannot use. This means that those robots need to have stiff joints for their walking to work. Dexter on the other hand is supernaturally supple; his joints are springy and are moved using air cylinders.

Dexter can be in almost any position and still won’t fall over as each movement is constantly calculated and each joint constantly adjusted. As you can see from the picture above, he also enjoys wearing attractive black slip-ons. Anybots hope that in the future Dexter will learn to run, just as he has learned to walk. Dexter was never programmed with a walking motion by Anybots, they made him learn how to do it. The masochists.

To read a fictional conversation between Monty and Dexter, and to see a a picture of the robotic brothers together, hit the jump.

[Via Geekologie]

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