Chinese walking wheeled robot Tron 1 showed how it keeps its balance on stairs and more

Chinese company LimX Dynamics, which last year released the versatile bipedal robot Tron 1 with a modular leg design, demonstrated what it can do. The robot jumps over low fences, climbs stairs and easily overcomes obstacles. And it was not easy to knock it off balance.

Image source: LimX Dynamics

The modular design of Tron 1’s limbs allows the robot to change its “feet”, including installing wheels on them. With them, the machine confidently moves across any terrain – the robot drives on a flat surface, it jumps over low obstacles and climbs stairs without any difficulty. In practice, Tron 1 can be useful, for example, when searching for victims in a disaster area. Although its capabilities are limited: the maximum angle of elevation of the surface on which the robot can drive is 15°; the maximum height of obstacles is 15 cm; the permissible temperature range for operation is from -5 to 40 °C.

Tron 1 is controlled by a remote control, supports programming functions for performing tasks in semi-automatic mode, and can also be sent on an autonomous mission. LimX Dynamics did not specify which mode was used in the presented demonstrations. The dimensions of the robot are 392 × 420 × 845 mm, weight – 20 kg. Drives with an operating voltage of 48 V develop a torque of 80 N m; 240 Wh batteries support hot swapping – each is enough for 2 hours of autonomous operation of the machine. The computing part is handled by an Intel Core-i3 12th generation processor, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of permanent memory. Tron 1 is available in standard ($ 15,000) and educational ($ 30,000) versions – the latter has an expanded configuration. LimX Dynamics also produces four-legged and humanoid models.