A three legged walking robot that was made in Cornell University walked for 30 hours and 49 minutes non-stop, without any human intervention or recharging, for a total of 40.5 msnbc.com reported. The robot called Ranger, also held the previous record, which it covered 14.3 miles in July 2010. Next to ranger, the second place on this category belongs to the famous bigdog robot of Boston Dynamics with 12.8 miles without refueling.

This record is different than the robot marathon held in Japan earlier this year, as the robots were repeatedly being recharged. The improvement in performance is because of the more developed controls algorithm and energy efficiency the builders said.

The robot differs from the conventional bipedal design in that it relies on falling and catching itself with each step, so it can not stand upright as the regular bipedal robots, though it managed to stand without falling when its charge run out. Ranger weighs 22 pounds and has 6 on borad computers, and many electrical and mechanical sensors.

Read original story at:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/12/6632345-robot-walks-405-miles-non-stop

  cornell, walk