IHMC Robotics has joined forces with Boardwalk Robotics to develop a robot named Nadia. A recently published video shows a curious process during which the robot practises boxing skills with a human. Nadia is clearly not going to make a good fighter, but it is being developed for a completely different purpose.
Nadia is an avatar mechanism that reproduces the operator’s movements. Boxing was chosen because of its difficulty to demonstrate the current achievements of the developers in the accuracy of movement transfer. The robot cannot box on its own, so there is no need to fear a “robot uprising” with hand-to-hand combat skills.
According to the developers, Nadia is one of the most complex humanoid robots, as it has 29 joints and can perform an unprecedentedly large range of different movements. This is done so that the operator does not have to think about how to operate the complex manipulators, but acts instinctively. Nadia is expected to become a prototype for next-generation robots that will operate in dangerous areas.
