Engineers at MIT and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are developing a teleoperated robot that uses a special operator vest to give it human-like balance and reflexes. Called Little Highly Efficient Robotic Mechanisms and Electromechanical System (HERMES), the small-scale bipedal robot is a third of the size of an adult person and can run, jump, and mostly move in sync with the operator.
When it comes to dealing with disasters, robots have a lot of obvious attractions as responders and rescuers, but there's still a long way to go before we see humanoid robotic firefighters dashing into collapsed burning buildings.
One of the biggest problems is that though robots today can run, jump, and do backflips like a parkour artist, they are still terrible at balancing. So if a bipedal robot tries something like forcing open a door, it's very likely to simply slip and end up on the floor.
This is because, although we do them every day without thinking, tasks like standing,...
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