Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an earlier, smoother precedent whenever new learned-locomotion or simulated-walking work appears.
What it is
A 2013 research demo of simulated bipedal creatures whose natural gaits are found by optimizing muscle-based controllers, with no motion capture or keyframe animation. It shows physics-based walking and running emerging from musculoskeletal models.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2017 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends npilk · 2021-04 · on “Discovering Diverse Athletic Jumping Strategies”
Very interesting. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that the Fosbury Flop seems to be the optimal high jump method, even if it wasn't developed until the 1960s. I didn't see the link to the video with animations at first! It's here in case anyone else missed it: [LINK] Which made me revisit this classic: [this video]
Cites anotheryou · 2017-07 · on “Google's DeepMind AI just taught itself to walk”
Clearly needs some energy constraint factored in to look less like monty python :) I also wonder if the gravity is realistic. A similar video from 2013: [this video] Looks much smoother, because of muscle and nerve simulations. At 0:55 you can see the generations learning how to walk.
Cites amelius · 2018-05 · on “Getting some air, Atlas? [video]”
This was from 2013: [this video] I'm wondering what challenges we have solved since then, beside the mechanical implementation.
Cites amelius · 2019-04 · on “Scalable Muscle-Actuated Human Simulation and Control”
This seems very useful work. But I wonder why it took so long to get here since [1] was published. [1] [this video]
Cites amelius · 2020-07 · on “Researchers simulate a quadruped robot crossing a balance beam”
Since we have machine-learning based walking models for several years now, see e.g. [1] or [2], I'm wondering why walking isn't yet a solved problem by now (?) [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites elihu · 2021-08 · on “Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot””
I would hope that they can use a framework that's general enough to adapt to other form factors. So, making a humanoid is a way of giving themselves a difficult enough initial problem that they're less likely to be fooled by early success: the humanoid robot will have to self-balance, walk, open doors, and do a lot of the complex things that humans do without thinking in order to be considered a minimum-viable product. In the long run if this pans out, I'd expect to see farming and weeding hexapods, equipment-hauling centaurs, wheeled platforms with arms for getting around office spaces, construction bots with long-fingered hands and asymmetrical multi-jointed appendages, and so on. If the A
Cites rzzzt · 2022-03 · on “Evolved Virtual Creatures (1994)”
swangin.mp4 AKA "Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures" also has a similar vibe: [this video]
Cites rzzzt · 2022-08 · on “Java in the Browser”
There is a paper on two-legged animals learning different methods of walking: [this video] (or [LINK] for the slightly better known "music video" version). Soda Constructor's wikipedia page also links to a 3D applet named "Springs World 3D", I was playing with that one back in the day.