Robot bounder

Browsing YouTube for videos tagged 'mechatronic' – as you do – I came across this gem. PAW was developed at McGill University, Canada, and has spring-loaded legs.



It actually has wheels on the end of those springy legs. Skip to 2:45 into this clip and you can see it bound in slow motion, and keep watching after that to see it showing off outdoors with some graceful skating actions. Read more on the page of James Smith who helped build it.

I think it even trumps this graceful 'land swimming' robot I have blogged about before.

I think the bounding gait makes PAW looks happy, or exuberant. Do you agree? That fits in with the idea of making robots behave like dogs so they are easier to relate to, as we covered earlier in the week.

Tom Simonite, online technology reporter