China’s White Rhino, a quadruped robot from Zhejiang University, has become the world’s fastest robops, covering 100 meters in 16.33 seconds, making it into the Guinness Book of World Records. The new achievement beat the previous record by almost 3.5 seconds.
China’s White Rhino, a quadruped robot from Zhejiang University, has become the world’s fastest robops, covering 100 meters in 16.33 seconds, making it into the Guinness Book of World Records. The new achievement beat the previous record by almost 3.5 seconds.
As reported by Interesting Engineering, the test run took place in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. White Rhino beat the previous record of 19.87 seconds, set by the South Korean robot Hound. For comparison, the world record among humans over this distance belongs to Usain Bolt (9.58 seconds).
The White Rhino was created by the X-Mechanics Center, the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Hangzhou Center for Global Science and Technology Innovation. The team used the «forward design» method — development from scratch based on comprehensive modeling of the operation of each node. This allowed optimizing the geometry, power of the motors, and gearboxes simultaneously.
High-power joint actuators provide significant torque and fast response, which the developers compare to «the musculature of a racing athlete.» Reinforcement learning algorithms are used to control the movement, which allows you to coordinate powerful pushes, rapid paw swings and balancing in real time.
In addition to speed, the White Rhino is capable of carrying loads of up to 100 kg. This opens up possibilities for use in search and rescue operations, delivering equipment or supplies to areas inaccessible to wheeled vehicles.
The next step is to improve energy efficiency, add perception and autonomous navigation systems so that the robot can operate in difficult real-world conditions. The record-breaking run is an important milestone that confirms the potential of comprehensive hardware and software optimization in the field of robotics.
We would like to remind you that we also published an article about how future robotics engineers from the RITM Department of Lviv Polytechnic created a robot dog at the EPAM Garage Lab.
