Dexter
Dexter (5'10" tall, 135 pounds) balances dynamically on two legs, walks, and jumps. Its joints, driven by air cylinders, are springy and flexible like human muscle. There are no stable postures that it can be put in where it can balance without active feedback, so it has to constantly adjust based on its sense of balance -- the robot equivalent of your inner ear.
Mar 1 2007: Dexter Jumps
After seeing the video we put out a few days ago, several people asked if the robot would be able to jump, so I tried it. Watch the video.
You can see in the screen shot of our analysis tool below that the hang time was about 390 milliseconds. (The colorful part shows the forces on the feet, which are near zero when it's in the air.) The body got 150 mm (6") above its standing height, and the feet 280 mm (11") off the ground. The longest claim I've heard for humanoid "in the air" time is 80 milliseconds for ASIMO, so we're almost 5X longer, corresponding to 25X higher (height varies with the square of time.)
