Make: Volume 93

OKAY ROBOT Humanoids Are Hard

LEGS LET YOU HANDLE STAIRS

This is the biggest win for legs over wheels. There

are wheeled and track-based things that can use

stairs, but they tend to be as exciting (meaning

“complicated, failure prone, expensive, and

dangerous”) as legs.

Most of the current batch of humanoids have

two legs, though Digit’s backward legs are

decidedly non-human in their configuration.

X1’s Eve robot has a mermaid-tail torso that

ends in wheels, but their next-gen Neo robot has

two legs.

BUT WHY NOT A WHEELED

CENTAUR?

I’m super confused by the

lack of two-armed torsos

on largish, heavy, wheeled

bases. Legs are just really

complicated ...