Troody is a 16 DOF autonomously powered and controlled biped robot built to resemble a Troodon, a small carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous. Troody remains one of my favorite robots of all time; when I was younger, its bio-inspired design (based off of actual fossil aspect ratios) and its lifelike movements were inspirational. Unfortunately, Troody may have been a bit ahead of its time -- there was little hope of commercializing such a complex robot for aspiring youngsters like myself to play with. Meanwhile, Troody's homepage has gone extinct, Troody is now in a traveling StarWars exhibit hangin' out with Darth and Yoda, and Peter Dilworth has moved on to WowWee (the creators of another pre-historic dinosaur robot, the Roboraptor). We will miss you Troody...
As I mentioned, Troody's homepage (actually, Peter Dilworth's homepage) is now extinct -- it has been pulled by the powers that be at MIT. I'd be curious if old copies of his webpage (and videos in particular) still exist; we would be willing to re-post them here at Hizook. However, what follows is (part) of what remains on the web...
From the MIT archives page.
Troody, the creation of Peter Dilworth, is a 16 DOF autonomously powered and controlled biped robot built to resemble a Troodon, a small carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous. In this video (below), Troody is shown standing up and walking across a desk (the cables provide power, start/stop control, and safety in case of a fall). Next Troody is shown taking a sharp left turn. Finally, Troody is shown taking a long battery-powered walk from our basement laboratory to visit Cog on the 9th floor (via the elevator). It only fell 4 times along the way.
Comments (1)