Its lightweight (10.5 kg) arms demonstrate a payload to weight ratio greater than 1:1 thus, the payload capacity of the single arm is approximately 11 kg. The Centauro robot is capable of using human tools to execute manipulation tasks and can demonstrate manipulation strength capacity that is higher than that of the typical human adult. The wheel is made of an aluminium alloy and its outer layer is over-moulded with an elastomer material, thereby ensuring visco-damped contacts while generating suitable friction when rolling on the ground surfaces. Wheels allow the robot to demonstrate also wheel-based mobility in addition to the articulated locomotion. Half of what makes Centauro a centaur are its legs:Ĭentauro’s legs incorporate six degrees of freedom, that is, they can realize articulated movements in the environment, by rotating and extending hips, knees and ankles, and control the wheel modules, which are placed at the ankles like rolling "hoofs." The robot can adopt different configurations, such as the typical leg configurations of quadruped robots including both inward and outward knee arrangements, and a spider leg configuration, which can be more beneficial in terms of stability required for manipulating powerful tools. Inside are a trio of computers to handle perception, control, and motion planning, along with enough batteries to keep Centauro moving around for a solid 2.5 hours. It’s made of lightweight metals like aluminum, magnesium, and titanium, with skins of 3D printed plastic. The goal of CENTAURO is building a “human-robot symbiotic system where a human operator is telepresent with its whole body in a Centaur-like robot, which is capable of robust locomotion and dexterous manipulation in the rough terrain and austere conditions characteristic of disasters.” From the look of things, Centauro shares the same kind of rugged capability we’ve seen in other IIT robots, like WALK-MAN, meaning that this could be a robot that manages to be both a research tool and real-world useful.Īt 1.5 meter tall and weighing 93 kilograms, Centauro is both larger and somehow more agile than the video might make it seem. The project is part of the CENTAURO Consortium, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by researchers from the University of Bonn-the same group that developed Momaro. Today, a consortium of European research groups announced a new centaur robot platform called (appropriately enough) Centauro. The robot was built at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) by a team led by Nikos Tsagarakis, who heads IIT’s Humanoids and Human Centered Mechatronics Lab, in Genoa. We’ve since been wondering whether the centaur design would inspire other disaster robots, and now we know the answer is yes. It was the top-ranked European robot in the DRC, completing an almost perfect run in just 34 minutes. Momaro used a “centaur” design, with four legs that had wheels on the bottom (like a wheeled quadruped) coupled to a humanoid upper torso with a head and arms. At the DRC, we saw all kinds of different designs, but one of the more unique approaches came from the University of Bonn, in Germany, with their robot Momaro. One of the things that we learned from the DARPA Robotics Challenge is that it’s useful for robots to have legs to walk, but it’s even more useful for robots to be versatile and adaptable, with multimodal locomotion capabilities that they can deploy depending on the situation.
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