Students from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) only needed $20,000 to build the first ever human-sized autonomous robot in the United States, but they did it. CHARLI (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) may look like a robot you’ve seen a hundred times before, but its ability to use all four of its limbs in unison is what makes it such a historic landmark.

Minus the face, it looks quite like the robot from the 2004 movie I, Robot (and story by Isaac Asimov), and that’s because it is partly based on it. The inspiration behind CHARLI is quite simple—we live in a world tailored for humans, and so it makes sense that our robot helpers will look and be able to do most of the things we can. At five-feet tall, it is a little bit shorter than the average human, but CHARLI will be able to walk, run, jump, open doors or squeeze through tight places. Basically, it will be able to mimic us in almost all ways.

Two prototypes of the robot have been designed to help with research. CHARLI L (Lightweight) is the one featured in the video, and as the name suggests, he can only perform the most basic of functions, like walking and moving his arms around. That explains why he looks a bit clumsy and frail, but the next in line is going to be CHARLI H (Heavy). He’s going to be no push-over, as he will not only be able to do the things advertised in the last paragraph, but he will have a bulkier frame too.

The goal, much like many robots of this kind, is for CHARLI to one day be able to help people around their homes or around the city. Dennis Hong, the associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of RoMeLa, refers to this plan as “The Jetsons Goal”, a reference to the 60s TV-show that took place in a robotic future. And it looks like we’re almost there.


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Some interesting studies into the robotics field as of late have focused particularly on the movement and motion of our mechanical friends, perhaps none more so than Dr. Dennis Hong of Virginia Tech's RoMeLa Lab; this is the same group that has developed DARwIn,  the first full humanoid robot in North America. His team have developed something quite unique, a whole-skin locomotion (WSL) robot that looks like a blob and is called ChIMERA. What’s so special about this experiment? The robot is made out of fluid, elastic skin which can move by both mechanical and chemical means.

In terms of physical movement, the bot is able to charge-up stored potential energy, which Dr. Hong’s team use with active tension cords to allow it to move in different directions. Its chemical movements, however, are what really make it stand out. As the video at the end shows, the robot has been inspired by amoeba organisms in nature. When it reacts to a substance, the liquid-filled tube starts progressing forward in a type of expanding-contracting motion by pulling its body in and through the middle of its tube.

ChIMERA can move about at 0.5 m/s speeds, which is rather impressive for this initial prototype stage, and mimics a giant single-celled organism. The variable shape of its body allows it to shrink in diameter and squeeze through smaller holes and reach harder to get-to places. What’s more, is that it relies on no external parts to help it function, making it completely compact.

This impressive bit of technology can have numerous uses in the future development of robots, and provide an entirely different way of generating motion. It’s hard to see how exactly it will be applied, and perhaps combined with an AI machine to make full use of its capabilities, but for now one can use his or her imagination.

Watch the new locomotion method in action in the video below.