Japanese engineers have constructed two robots that can pull of a gym training montage… with sweat!
The robots, named Kengoro and Kenshiro, can perform multiple push-ups, crunches, stretches and other whole-body exercises – feats not possible for earlier versions of human-mimicking bots to perform.
Their developers at the University of Tokyo’s Johou Systems Kougaku laboratory say the robots are designed to not only look like humans, but also to move like them. So they have anatomically correct musculoskeletal structures and body mass… and freakishly, Kengoro even sweats like us (Kengoro’s ‘bones’ have a porous frame that is cooled by water which flow outside its body and evaporates, taking heat away with it).
Kengoro can perform push-ups for 11 minutes straight without interruption. But, he’ll need to rehydrate just like us – he ‘drinks’ at least a cup of deionized water every 12 hours. In addition, he can do pull-ups, swing a tennis racket, and stand on his toes – more than some humans do.
These humanoids may help researchers better understand how humans move during athletic sports, aid in the development of artificial limbs and whole bodies, and advance the design of crash-test dummies.
You can check out the report in a paper published in Science Robotics earlier this month, complete with videos that show off the robots’ workout routine.
