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Comment Re:Of course you use force control to run fast. (Score 1) 90

Funnily enough, those issues are the ones that the article is actually about:

“Most robots are sluggish and heavy, and thus they cannot control force in high-speed situations,” Kim says. “That’s what makes the MIT cheetah so special: You can actually control the force profile for a very short period of time, followed by a hefty impact with the ground, which makes it more stable, agile, and dynamic.”

Kim says what makes the robot so dynamic is a custom-designed, high-torque-density electric motor, designed by Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. These motors are controlled by amplifiers designed by David Otten, a principal research engineer in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. The combination of such special electric motors and custom-designed, bio-inspired legs allow force control on the ground without relying on delicate force sensors on the feet.

Kim and his colleagues — research scientist Hae-Won Park and graduate student Meng Yee Chuah — will present details of the bounding algorithm this month at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Chicago.

Submission + - Minecraft developers Mojang sold to Microsoft for $2.5 Bn, founders to depart

Sockatume writes: Mojang, the developers of the extraordinarily popular Minecraft game, have confirmed rumours that they will be bought by Microsoft. Minecraft creator Marcus Persson will be leaving the company, along with co-founders Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. The sale was motivated in part by the pressure and responsibility placed upon Persson by the game's unexpected success. The details of the deal have yet to be settled, but Microsoft has agreed that the game will not become an exclusive to their platforms and will continue to be developed and supported on other formats.

Comment Re:didn't have to be worse.. (Score 1) 207

There's one Android phone shipping with sapphire glass - the Kyocera Brigadier - and it's one of those "ruggedised" models that's permanently moulded into a giant rubber shoe. When the glass was removed from the enormous impact-resistant body, it shattered on the first three-foot drop test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

You won't see a sapphire screen in a non-ruggedised phone any time soon.

Comment Poor Math Skills (Score 1) 171

It's not a maths issue, it's an issue of idiomatic versus literal English. "N times more" doesn't mean "Add N times the original value", it just means "N times the original value". Similarly "N times less" doesn't mean "Subtract N times the original value", it means "reciprocal N times the original value".

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One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

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