Machines Like Us

Cornell's 4-legged bipedal robot Ranger walked a distance of 9.07 km (5.6 mi) without being touched by a person. That's almost 45 laps (a bit over 200 m each; the robot was usually on the 3rd lane). That's 27,724 steps each covering about 33 cm (13 inches) and each taking about .66 seconds. The walk took 5 hours and 12 minutes. The average speed was 1.75 km/hr (about 1.1 mph). The robot mass was 8.5 kg of which 1.2 kg was 11.1 volt lithium-ion rechargable batteries. The walk used 126 watt hours (453 K Joules) of energy at an average rate of just under 25 watts of which about 5 watts is used for the 4 on-board computers and the IMU (inertial measurement unit). The specific cost of transport (energy per weight per distance) was, including the energy cost of the compuers etc, about 0.60.

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