Trevor Blackwell's robot finally walked. Dexter is, as far as we know, the first dynamically balancing biped robot—that is, the first robot that walks like we do.
There are of course biped robots that walk. The Honda Asimo is the best known. But the Asimo doesn't balance dynamically. Its walk is preprogrammed; if you had it walk twice across the same space, it would put its feet down in exactly the same place the second time. And of course the floor has to be hard and flat.
A dynamically balancing robot is really something to see. You can't turn away from it. It's so shockingly anthropomorphic. Because it walks like you do, you sense what it's feeling. But of course it wasn't (just) for entertainment that Trevor built this thing. Any robot for use in real world situations has to balance dynamically, because you can't predict what surface it would have to walk on.
What makes Dexter all the more impressive is that Anybots consists of just three guys and a machine shop. Basically it's PARC without Xerox. Eventually they'll have to take outside money. I tell Trevor that he should just find a big company to pay Anybots' operating costs in exchange for a license to use what they develop. Or they could go after government grants, or raise venture capital. One way or another, ten or twenty years from now you'll see robots like this walking around.
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