Cornell's Ranger Robot Holds Record for Non-Stop Walking by an Untethered Legged Robot

Posted on July 30, 2010

Cornell's 4-legged bipedal robot named Ranger holds the world record for non-stop distance walked by an untethered legged robot. Ranger walked for 14.3 miles without taking a break. Boston Dynamic's BigDog held the previous record of 12.8 miles.

It took 65,185 steps for Cornell's 4-legged bipedal robot to walk 108.5 laps on Barton Hall's 1/8-mile indoor track, setting a new world record for non-stop distance walked by an untethered legged robot - more than a half a marathon. The previous legged robot distance record was 12.8 miles, held by BigDog, Boston Dynamics' robust and capable quadraped robot. Ranger, a robot more specialized for distance than BigDog, beat that record by 1.5 miles, walking 14.3 miles on a single charge of its batteries without being touched by a human. Ranger took about 20,000 steps, over three miles, for each penny worth of electricity it used. Ranger was steered with a model-plane remote control. Commands from the remote control twist the inner pair of legs. The walking was entirely controlled by the 6 onboard microprocessors.

Here is a video of Cornell's Ranger robot in action. Fatemeh Hasaneini, the 6 year old daughter of one of the students who worked on the Robot, is the Ranger's walking companion. Another video of the Ranger in action can be seen here. Take a look:

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