Business insider had a short story about an amateur video showing the quadruple backflip by a robot. A short search on YouTube learned that there is a series of these videos by uploader 'hinamitetu'. This one is a series of gymnastic highlights on the horizontal bar. The titles you see are the official gymnastic names for the specific routines.
This video shows some moves which are amazing. The needed feedback for the robot through sensors like an accelerometer, gyroscope to know where it is, the needed control over servos to make perfectly timed precision adjustments seems next to impossible.
As the robot is not connected by a cable and wireless would be too slow it must have an on-board computer which does the math in real-time.
On top of it this is clearly a home setup. It's hard to imagine that an anonymous hobbyist has achieved this without getting the attention of some of the major robot developers.
Update: found some more information. Apparently this is was built out of boredom after being laid off in 2010 No background on the man's former job and current position. If you happen to have more info let me know in the comments. You can find more videos on http://www.youtube.com/user/hinamitetu
How difficult would it be to do this from scratch as a one man job? #Tech
Update2: there is a G+ account +hinamitetu which shows some sort of robot photo
Wow
This is seriously impressive. Having watched a documentary on machines and movement I was left depressed, thinking thinking that these kind of advances were still so far off. Seeing this is lifting.
It's time we cut Epke Zonderland open for a serious check. (Armstrong eat your heart out)
Wowee! We should all become this bored. Who needs a team for R & D? He's his own R&D department.
Now I need to study the video again +Nick Hunter
+Max Huijgen you cab see it in the thumbnail it is orange XD
It was staring me in the face +Zack Jenkins
Couldn't it be a fixed script without auto-correcting intelligence?
Thanks +Anton Theunissen for suggesting it as I was wondering about it myself after seeing his 'blooper' videos. Murphy's razor says you must be right 😉
It does seem to try to accomplish the same thing over and over again.
If you were into gymnastic (which I'm not, but I noticed the text popups) you would see all these different moves +Zack Jenkins
Just watched the bloopers, +Max Huijgen . The robots all lie still when they fall e.g. after missing the bar in a salto. That looks intelligent. But the next script block for a move is probably only added if the preceeding moves work. My guess is that the blooper scripts are not completed yet.
"Murphy's Razor"…? Doesn't ring a bell. I figure it's something like: "if it sounds like a zebra it's most probably a horse."
Murphy's razor is the blunt one which much to your surprise happens to be the only one available just when you want to cut out needlessly complex theories +Anton Theunissen
it could also refer to the fact that above 25 degrees the human mind doesn't function all too well 😉
"Murphy's Razor" being a marriage of Occam's and Murphy's? That's the first I've heard of it. Above 70 degrees my brain doesn't function too well, either. I hate summers; the rest of the year I'm fine with the temps. It's in the 90s to 100s every day in Florida this time of the year; I live in A/C.
Of course he meant Occam's. It makes a good couple with Murphy, though, effectively in the same league of intuitive truths. I believe that my brain is always at more or less the same temperature, btw, so I can't comment on that aspect of the thread.