Latest news with #Corleo
Forbes
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Forbes
A Four-Legged Rideable Robot Is A Man-Made Horse Powered By Hydrogen
The Corleo is a futuristic four-legged personal mobility vehicle. It had to happen. One day, humans had to attempt to make their own horse. Or a machine as close as can be to a rideable Rottweiler. Boasting the combined attributes of a horse, a mountain lion and a motorcycle, here it is—the Kawasaki Corleo concept. That's right, it'll be a while before you can actually buy one. Check out the video below. According to the company, one day deep in the R&D department, someone dared to ask, 'What if we put legs on an all-terrain vehicle?' So, working outside of their comfort zone, engineers created the Corleo. The resulting vehicle incorporates the company's vision of mobility in 2050, where instinct, technology and the natural environment move in sync. Or at least, that's what Kawasaki Heavy Industries says. The Corleo is fueled by hydrogen. Corleo is a 4-legged rideable robot targeting a 2050 future Unveiled recently at the Expo 2025 Osaka in Japan, the Corleo is a revolutionary off-road personal mobility vehicle—a rideable robot propelled by four legs and powered by an engine fueled with hydrogen. While Kawasaki did actually unveil this real-life concept, it was the brand's computer-generated video that has generated intense interest online. Making the Corleo look like a hoot to ride, the imagery portrays a rideable four-legged robot that comes across as an advanced version of Boston Dynamics' Spot—the dog-like robot mixed with the fun of Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder cruiser. Having racked up over 1.1 million views so far, the CGI video shows the Corleo galloping through a thick forest, frolicking across a field, leaping across a small gorge and trotting across a snowy outcrop in a landscape mimicking scenes from Lord of the Rings. The Corleo's hydrogen tanks can be seen at the rear end. As far as actual riding goes, Kawasaki says that the Corleo mimics the responsive feel of an ATV or even a motorcycle, but instead of using wheels, it employs independently articulating legs with swing arms that absorb impact and shocks and adapt to uneven terrain. Each leg is fitted with a hoof made from slip-resistant rubber, split left-to-right to adapt to different surfaces like grass, gravel, and rock. This four-legged construction maintains balance and stability as it keeps the rider's body in an upright forward-looking posture, even when climbing steps. Corleo employs some clever design ideas, including independent legs, a hydrogen engine and steering through weight shifts using sensors in the stirrups and handlebars. The rear leg unit can swing up and down independently from the front leg unit, allowing it to absorb shocks during walking and running. A 150cc hydrogen engine produces electricity to propel the leg-mounted drive units, with rear-mounted hydrogen canisters supplying fuel to deliver low emissions and silent operation. An onboard GPS navigation screen guides riders by mapping a path up or down a hill, while also ensuring the rider's center of gravity, and hydrogen fuel levels. "While preserving the joy of riding, the vehicle continually monitors the rider's movements to achieve a reassuring sense of unity between human and machine," Kawasaki said.
Economist
07-05-2025
- Automotive
- Economist
Companies have plans to build robotic horses
In a break from tradition, Kawasaki, a Japanese motorcycle maker, has announced plans to build a new breed of off-road machine shaped like a robotic horse. Corleo, as the machine is called, has a body like a headless steed, complete with four multi-jointed legs powered by electric motors. A pair of handlebars serves as reins and adjustable leg supports, of the kind found on motorbikes, pass for stirrups. Corleo will also not require a farrier: instead of being shod with steel horseshoes, its hooves are clad in rubber. This will help it absorb shocks and improve its grip.
Asia Times
01-05-2025
- Automotive
- Asia Times
Kawasaki is developing a robot to be ridden like a horse
Kawasaki has recently revealed its computer-generated concept for the Corleo, a 'robotic horse.' The video shows the automated equine galloping through valleys, crossing rivers, climbing mountains and jumping over crevasses. The Corleo promises a high-end robotic solution to provide a revolutionary mobility experience. Kawasaki's current motorbikes are constrained to roads, paths and trails, but a machine with legs has no boundaries – it can reach places no other vehicles can go. But in the case of the Corleo, how feasible is it to achieve such a level of agility and balance, while safely carrying a human through natural environments? Let's discuss what would be needed to achieve this. A robot is a complex machine with two main components: a body and an information processing unit. The body has a particular morphology that determines the robot's function, and carries actuators (devices that convert energy into physical motion) and sensors to act in the world and understand it, respectively. The information processing unit is usually a computer, which implements algorithms to process data from the sensors, build representations of the world and determine the actions to be executed, subject to a specific task of interest. Simple robots, such as robotic vacuum cleaners, satisfy these requirements. They have a suitable body for going under furniture and not getting stuck (their flat top is also useful to give your cats a ride). The actuators are the motors that spin the wheels and the vacuum system. It has impact sensors to detect collisions, and some even have cameras for understanding the environment. Owners can set a cleaning routine, and the vacuum's computer will determine the best way to execute it. The Corleo is a quadruped robot, one of the most stable legged robot configurations. The four legs seem strong and capable of flexing forward and backward to run and jump. But they seem limited in movements known as abduction and adduction. If I push you on your right side, you will open your left leg – this is the abduction motion helping you keep balance. Adduction is the opposite motion – a movement towards the midline of the body. Perhaps this is just a limitation of the concept design but, either way, the Corleo needs this articulation to ensure a safe and smooth ride. Threre's some skepticiism that the concept is close to actualization. Image: The Autopian Next are the actuators. Legged robots need to continuously balance and support their own weight. They also provide a level of suspension that provides cushioning for the rider. They need to be strong enough to push the robot's body forward. On top of that, the Corleo will also carry a person. While this is currently possible, such as with the the Barry robot or Unitree wheeled robots, the Corleo also aims to gallop and jump over gaps. This requires even more dynamic and stronger actuators than the previous examples. A manually driven car or motorcycle doesn't need sensors or a processing unit, because the driver steers the car depending on what they see. But a robotic horse does need more sophisticated control systems to determine how to move the legs, otherwise we would need both hands and even our feet to drive it. Locomotion control has been an active area of legged robotics research since the 1940s. Researchers have shown that a legged machine can walk down a slope without motors or sensors (which is called 'passive' locomotion). If only 'proprioceptive' sensors – the types of sensors that tell your phone when to rotate the screen – are used to control balance, it's called 'blind' locomotion because it doesn't rely on information from the external environment. When a robot also uses 'exteroceptive' sensors to determine how to walk, which refers to sensors that pick up information about the environment, it's called 'perceptive' locomotion. This is what Corleo shows. From the pictures released, I could not spot any visible cameras or Lidars – laser range finders. They could be hidden, but it would be reassuring to know that the Corleo has a way to 'see' what's in front of it while walking. While it will be manually steered (so that it doesn't need to navigate autonomously), its locomotion system needs sensor data to determine how to step on rocks, or detect if the terrain is slippery. Its sensors should also be reliable under different environmental conditions. This is already a huge challenge for autonomous cars. The Corleo is a concept, it does not exist – yet. As a product, it promises to be a more capable version of a quad bike. This can open new opportunities for transportation in remote areas, tourism businesses, new hobbies (for those who can afford it), and even sports. But I'm more excited about the technological advances that the achievement of such a platform implies. Legged robots do not necessarily need to look like quadrupeds or humanoids. Self balancing exoskeletons, such as Wandercraft's Personal exoskeleton or Human in Motion Robotics' XoMotion, are legged robots that are revolutionising the lives of people with mobility impairments. The technological advances implied by the Corleo could have be of major benefit to the development of assistive devices for disabled users, enabling them to achieve independence. Current progress in legged robotics suggests that many features proposed by Kawasaki are feasible. But others pose challenges: Corleo will need the endurance to walk in the wild, run effective locomotion algorithms and also implement the safety standards required for a vehicle. These are all major hurdles for a reasonably sized robot. If you ask me today, I'd be unsure if this can be achieved as a whole. I hope they prove me wrong. Matías Mattamala is a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
From brain Bluetooth to ‘full RoboCop': where chip implants will be heading soon
In the 1987 classic film RoboCop, the deceased Detroit cop Alex Murphy is reborn as a cyborg. He has a robotic body and a full brain-computer interface that allows him to control his movements with his mind. He can access online information such as suspects' faces, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help detect threats, and his human memories have been integrated with those from a machine. It is remarkable to think that the movie's key mechanical robotic technologies have almost now been accomplished by the likes of Boston Dynamics' running, jumping Atlas and Kawasaki's new four-legged Corleo. Similarly we are seeing robotic exoskeletons that enable paralysed patients to do things like walking and climbing stairs by responding to their gestures. Developers have lagged behind when it comes to building an interface in which the brain's electrical pulses can communicate with an external device. This too is changing, however. In the latest breakthrough, a research team based at the University of California has unveiled a brain implant that enabled a woman with paralysis to livestream her thoughts via AI into a synthetic voice with just a three-second delay. The concept of an interface between neurons and machines goes back much further than RoboCop. In the 18th century, an Italian physician named Luigi Galvani discovered that when electricity is passed through certain nerves in a frog's leg, it would twitch. This paved the way for the whole study of electrophysiology, which looks at how electrical signals affect organisms. The initial modern research on brain-computer interfaces started in the late 1960s, with the American neuroscientist Eberhard Fetz hooking up monkeys' brains to electrodes and showing that they could move a meter needle. Yet if this demonstrated some exciting potential, the human brain proved too complex for this field to advance quickly. The brain is continually thinking, learning, memorising, recognising patterns and decoding sensory signals – not to mention coordinating and moving our bodies. It runs on about 86 billion neurons with trillions of connections which process, adapt and evolve continuously in what is called neuroplasticity. In other words, there's a great deal to figure out. Much of the recent progress has been based on advances in our ability to map the brain, identifying the various regions and their activities. A range of technologies can produce insightful images of the brain (including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET)), while others monitor certain kinds of activity (including electroencephalography (EEG) and the more invasive electrocortigraphy (ECoG)). These techniques have helped researchers to build some incredible devices, including wheelchairs and prosthetics that can be controlled by the mind. But whereas these are typically controlled with an external interface like an EEG headset, chip implants are very much the new frontier. They have been enabled by advances in AI chips and micro electrodes, as well as the deep learning neural networks that power today's AI technology. This allows for faster data analysis and pattern recognition, which together with the more precise brain signals that can be acquired using implants, have made it possible to create applications that run virtually in real time. For instance, the new University of California implant relies on ECoG, a technique developed in the early 2000s that captures patterns directly from a thin sheet of electrodes placed directly on the cortical surface of someone's brain. In their case, the complex patterns picked up by the implant of 253 high-density electrodes are processed using deep learning to produce a matrix of data from which it's possible to decode whatever words the user is thinking. This improves on previous models that could only create synthetic speech after the user had finished a sentence. Elon Musk's Neuralink has been able to get patients to control a computer cursor using similar techniques. However, it's also worth emphasising that deep learning neural networks are enabling more sophisticated devices that rely on other forms of brain monitoring. Our research team at Nottingham Trent University has developed an affordable brainwave reader using off-the-shelf parts that enables patients who are suffering from conditions like completely locked-in syndrome (CLIS) or motor neurone disease (MND) to be able to answer 'yes' or 'no' to questions. There's also the potential to control a computer mouse using the same technology. The progress in AI, chip fabrication and biomedical tech that enabled these developments is expected to continue in the coming years, which should mean that brain-computer interfaces keep improving. In the next ten years, we can expect more technologies that provide disabled people with independence by helping them to move and communicate more easily. This entails improved versions of the technologies that are already emerging, including exoskeletons, mind-controlled prosthetics and implants that move from controlling cursors to fully controlling computers or other machines. In all cases, it will be a question of balancing our increasing ability to interpret high-quality brain data with invasiveness, safety and costs. It is still more in the medium to long term that I would expect to see many of the capabilities of a RoboCop, including planted memories and built-in trained skills supported with internet connectivity. We can also expect to see high-speed communication between people via 'brain Bluetooth'. It should be similarly possible to create a Six Million Dollar Man, with enhanced vision, hearing and strength, by implanting the right sensors and linking the right components to convert neuron signals into action (actuators). No doubt applications will also emerge as our understanding of brain functionality increases that haven't been thought of yet. Clearly, it will soon become impossible to keep deferring ethical considerations. Could our brains be hacked, and memories be planted or deleted? Could our emotions be controlled? Will the day come where we need to update our brain software and press restart? With every step forward, questions like these become ever more pressing. The major technological obstacles have essentially been cleared out of the way. It's time to start thinking about to what extent we want to integrate these technologies into society, the sooner the better. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Amin Al-Habaibeh receives funding Innovate UK, The British Council, The Royal academy of Engineering, EPSRC, AHRC, and the European Commission.
