Dr. Dennis W. Hong
The NewScientist article Tripedal robot swings itself into action said
A three-legged robot with an unconventional and graceful walk has been developed by US researchers. Like humans, it exploits gravity to save energy with each step, but it also flips its entire body upside-down with each stride.
The fearsome alien tripods in HG Well’s book The War of The Worlds are described as moving like “a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground”.
STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot) has a far more graceful, and acrobatic, gait that sees its body flip 180 degrees with each step.
“STriDER’s gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today,” explains Dennis Hong at Virginia Tech, US, who leads the project. “This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing.”
Dennis W. Hong, Ph.D. is
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, Virginia Tech,
Founder and Director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), and
Core faculty member of the Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems (VaCAS).
His research interests lie in the area of robotics with a focus
on:
- biologically inspired robot locomotion
- design and analysis of mechanical systems
- inematics and dynamics of robotic systems
Dennis earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University in 1999 and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002.
He is also a serious gourmet chef and a magician performing annual charity magic shows and giving lectures on the science of magic.