World's first! Hangzhou Asian Games "robot dog" throws discus, cute and high-tech!

"Look! There's a puppy on the field"

Recently, at the Hangzhou Asian Games tennis competition, several robot dogs lined up to enter the venue and performed a uniform "dance move" to cheer for the athletes. This scene made netizens exclaim "The sense of technology is too strong!"

The cute robot dog on the field can not only be a cheerleader, but also deliver the discus and make fancy gestures.

World's first robot dog used to transport discus in competition

On October 1, at the Hangzhou Asian Games track and field discus competition, several electronic robot dogs were busy transporting the four legs of the discus back and forth. After completing the task, they would "lie down" on the sidelines and wait for instructions.

It is understood that this is the first time in the world that a mechanical dog has been used to transport discus in a sports event.

The body structure of the robot dog is very similar to that of a pet dog, and is also called a quadruped robot in the industry. The smaller ones can sit down. The latest generation of robot dogs can also count, translate, and give directions.

Why choose to use robot dogs in the arena?

The staff said, "Its speed is about the same as a person jogging," and it can run after the discus instead of a person. The robot dog responsible for transporting the discus has a slot on its back that can hold a discus weighing 1 to 2 kilograms. The staff only needs to place the discus on the slot to control the robot dog immediately.

In the past, discus pickers had to run more than 7,000 meters in each discus competition. The use of robot dogs for round-trip transportation has greatly saved the physical strength of the staff.

You can also encounter robot dogs outside the stadium

In addition to the competition venue, you also have the chance to encounter the cute robot dog outside the venue, and its actions will make the audience exclaim in amazement!

Will say hello

Shake hands

Will give a heart

Intelligent quadruped robot is flexible in movement, force control joints are the key

As early as the 2021 Spring Festival Gala, there was a dance program performed by the "robot cow" - a dance performed by "Pioneer Ox", a limited edition intelligent quadruped robot developed by Shenzhen UBTECH Robotics Co., Ltd. for the Year of the Ox.

Force-controlled joints are key to making quadruped robots perform such flexible movements. The universal force-controlled joints of the "Pioneer" contain multiple degrees of freedom, which can accurately output position and torque, allowing multiple servo drives to work together to complete coherent and neat movements. UBTECH said that this newly developed joint will also be used in other robot products in the future.

The built-in high-performance real-time main control system, full dynamics optimization algorithm and laser radar positioning and navigation algorithm can help "Trailblazer" solve the positioning problem in the highly symmetrical environment and sparse features of the Spring Festival Gala stage. With the support of high-performance computing power, this series of complex algorithms can be completed in real time at 1kHZ, helping it to complete all-terrain fast walking and dancing movements.

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, not only professional robotics companies are entering this field, but some major Internet companies have also begun to try to develop high-performance quadruped robots.

For example, Jamoca, a mobile robot dog created by Tencent Robotics X Lab, is the first quadruped robot in China that can move smoothly on a pole by itself. Its main body is modified based on an external hardware platform. Tencent's self-developed robot dog control technology and intelligent brain enable Jamoca to complete walking, trotting and jumping movements, and acquire the ability to autonomously locate and avoid obstacles.

Jamoca uses RGB-D cameras to perceive the surrounding environment in real time. It can track its own motion trajectory online by matching feature points, and combines visual positioning, motion mileage and inertial measurement data to improve the accuracy and frequency of positioning and tracking. At the same time, it uses algorithms to identify and obtain the surface range and center point position of steps and plum blossom piles, and performs visual modeling based on this to reconstruct the entire three-dimensional motion scene.

Then, based on the center of mass dynamics, the center of mass trajectory generation and foothold planning are realized online. On the premise of ensuring that the four legs of the robot dog can safely step on the next plum blossom pile, the travel route with the shortest moving length and the least comprehensive energy consumption is planned, and the motion planning can be carried out continuously online.

Whether it is the singing and dancing New Year robot cow or the walking and running robot dog, the environmental perception system, high-performance real-time controller, high-precision bandwidth servo drive, motion control algorithm, and positioning and navigation solutions used in these four-legged intelligent robots are mostly developed by the technical team. Judging from the products created by UBTECH, Yushu Technology and Tencent Robotics X Lab, China's four-legged intelligent robot research and development and production technology has matured.

It is reported that the robot dogs at the Hangzhou Asian Games are still working hard to learn how to transport javelin, hammer and other sports equipment to showcase more Chinese intelligent manufacturing for large-scale international sporting events.

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Comprehensive sources: Guangming.com, Smart Relative Theory, etc.