Early sewing machine designs failed because the inventors attempted to replicate human motions with mechanical parts. The way humans sew is by drawing a needle all the way through the fabric, thus the needle’s eye is at the tail end. There was no workable way, using 19th century technology, to mechanically grab the needle on the underside of the fabric. But by moving the eye to the pointy end of the needle and having it only partially pierce the fabric, while a hook beneath it grabbed only the thread, the designs eventually succeeded.
Similarly, right now humanoid robots are trending, with their motions modeled on hours. But just because they’re shaped like humans, doesn’t mean they have to move like humans, as Boston Dynamics’ engineers have realized. They’ve just unveiled their new design for their Atlas robot. Check out the way it gets up, and moves around:
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It’s creepy, like something out of a horror movie, but using fully-rotating joints is a much smarter method than the way we humans clumsily get off of the ground.
Of course, the old Atlas did make some incredible strides, as the company reminds us with this send-off video for the retired design. It includes a lot of never-before-seen bloopers that are horrendous and funny; I never realized that if it falls, it can sustain vicious wounds that cause it to spray hydraulic fluid rather than blood:
Source: core77