Last week on a California highway “Thunderhillс” compete with unusual rivals. Valentino Rossi the best motorcycle racer of modern times, accepted the challenge from the new, improved version of the robot “Motobot”. And triumphantly won, but the developers of the machine still happy they stepped far forward.
The project “Motobot” started two years ago, his goal is to create a humanoid robot that can drive a normal bike is better than professional racers. It is integrated into the vehicle and sits on the seat and uses the same controls as the person relies on the principles of machine learning to adapt to situations on the track. At the moment the Motorboat rides confidently at speeds of up to 228 km/h.
The competition in California Rossi showed the result of 1:25.740, and the robot only 1:57.504 that in the world of racing is considered unconditional defeat. But sin is to blame – the motor-bot doesn’t like Rossi, instinctively a little lean to keep the front wheel from lifting or to change their profile of resistance to the air flow. Robot is definitely changing gears and calculates the angle of entry into the turn, but the intricacies of driving inherent in the racer-Pro, he don’t know.
Another disadvantage of a Motorboat: he can’t get off the bike to refuel the car, change the wheel. The robot has a specific, narrow function and is not suitable for use outside of the race track. What does he need? Development and running of new technologies in extremely harsh conditions, the project itself is one of the most interesting experiments in modern robotics.
Source — Yamaha