At first I thought this was an actual robot. But then looking at it some more it seems more like an exo-suit.
Robot or Exo-suit?
Obviously a suit. The walking is awkward but still way too human for anything but the most cutting edge, and all of the parts that don't match human proportions are obviously just rigged to it mechanically.
It's an exo-suit. What really gave it away was the fluidity of motion in the arms. There is currently no motor technology that can move that smoothly at speed. It should be moving very slowly. If you look at how the upper and lower arms are connected and move, you can then see that the lower arms are a person's arms that are then moving the upper arms.
The person inside it is standing on short stilts.
It is very well done and quite impressive, but it is a suit. Another dead giveaway is that Adam mentioned at the beginning of the video that the various groups involved in the construction "jumped into the costuming fray".
I watched the video again on a non-phone screen, and, while I stand by what I said before, it does look like the "head" and possibly even the forearms are being driven by servo motors which is pretty neat.
There is currently no motor technology that can move that smoothly at speed.
Actually I'm pretty sure that's not true unless I'm misunderstanding you. Robot arms can move extremely fluidly, especially if they're playing back some pre-recorded motion (or, in this case, copying some motion in real-time) as long as they don't have to worry about balance, etc.
If you look at how the upper and lower arms are connected and move, you can then see that the lower arms are a person's arms that are then moving the upper arms.
That's definitely true of the upper arms, but the forearms are seemingly not mechanically rigged to the real person's arms.
I watched the video again on a non-phone screen, and, while I stand by what I said before, it does look like the "head" and possibly even the forearms are being driven by servo motors which is pretty neat.
Yeah, the head and forearms are driven by servos.
Actually I'm pretty sure that's not true unless I'm misunderstanding you. Robot arms can move extremely fluidly, especially if they're playing back some pre-recorded motion (or, in this case, copying some motion in real-time) as long as they don't have to worry about balance, etc.
You are correct. However, motors of the size needed to move something that large are themselves very large. Of course, the suit is not metal and has very little mass, so they can do quite a bit with smaller motors.
That's definitely true of the upper arms, but the forearms are seemingly not mechanically rigged to the real person's arms.
It appears that the forearms of the upper arms are controlled by some sort of motion feedback mechanism. The servos in the elbows of the upper arms move in coordination with the person's forearm movements.
In any case, very cool. The suit wouldn't look out of place on a movie set, and the design itself could easily fit into a video game. I might even go as far as saying that, combined with (real) powered exosuit technology, it'd probably be in the running for the first practical, real-world giant(ish) robot suit.
Also, shameless self-plug time: I too have made a fake giant robot, although (sadly) it's not even a real fake robot. The design of the robot itself was by Barry J. Kelly; the modeling, animation, compositing etc. were done by me.
EDIT: And now that I think about it, the animation on that was at least in part made from motion capture data of a human, with that rig (invisible) being connected by bones and constraints to the robot's rig, not unlike what this is doing (although I had the distinct advantage of being able to make the real person invisible without doing any work)
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