LimX Dynamics’ W1 robot can stand, walk and roll on its hind ‘legs’

China’s LimX Dynamics has brought about a revolution in the field of robotics with the W1 quadruped robot being able to stand up and walk on its two feet. 

W1 was released just last year, and it was inspired by the ETH-Zurich-designed Swiss-Mile robot. Quite similar to the earlier bot, this one also has four legs and each of them is powered with a powered wheel on the end. 

Smooth sail along sidewalks

The W1 has this innate capability to travel on smooth roads, sidewalks, floors, and whatnot. It can simply roll along on its wheels for optimum speed and energy efficiency. In case it needs to step over obstacles, travel through rough terrain or ascend/descend the stairs it stops and locks up its wheels. 

Later it uses those wheels as feet while taking on a quadruped walking style. One of the main differences between the Swiss-Mile and W1 is the fact that the former can adopt a human-like form for certain tasks. These include giving or taking packages where it could stand up and either walk or roll on its hind legs. Now, the W1 can do that as well. 

The robot when standing can additionally rotate 360 degrees on the spot, make 90-degree turns and also make its way between obstacles like shelving units, and also recover fast without causing any collisions. It also switches from quadruped to biped mode in less than one second, standing 152 cm tall in one go.

Can the robot grasp items?

In a recently released video, LimX has revealed that the W1 can walk on two feet across a smooth floor. In the future it might also climb stairs bipedally as with other robots in the company. 

In the future, the W1 can be also seen performing tasks like grasping items using its front legs while standing. More when the future unfolds. 

Based on real-time enviornment perception, W1 demonstrates agile perceptive locomotion to overcome challenging discrete terrains. The well defined multiple high-performing actuators further allow W1 to fully unleash its comprehensive mobility potentials. According LimX Dynamics, as an innovative product, W1 is the best form of all-terrain mobility.

This robot’s design can flexibly adapt to various scenarios, with a wheeled movement speed of maximum 10m/s, stable endurance of 4 hours, 16 actuated degrees of freedom and autonomous switching of multiple motion modes.