Animals are much better at running than robots. The difference in performance arises in the important dimensions of agility, range, and robustness. To understand the underlying causes for this performance gap, we compare natural and artificial technologies in the five subsystems critical for running: power, frame, actuation, sensing, and control. With few exceptions, engineering technologies meet or exceed the performance of their biological counterparts. We conclude that biology’s advantage over engineering arises from better integration of subsystems, and we identify four fundamental obstacles that roboticists must overcome. Toward this goal, we highlight promising research directions that have outsized potential to help future running robots achieve animal-level performance.

中文翻译：

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为什么动物跑得比机器人快

动物比机器人更擅长奔跑。性能差异体现在敏捷性、范围和稳健性等重要维度上。为了了解这种性能差距的根本原因，我们比较了对运行至关重要的五个子系统中的自然技术和人工技术：动力、框架、驱动、传感和控制。除少数例外，工程技术的性能达到或超过了生物技术的性能。我们得出的结论是，生物学相对于工程学的优势源于子系统的更好集成，并且我们确定了机器人专家必须克服的四个基本障碍。为了实现这一目标，我们重点介绍了一些有前景的研究方向，这些方向具有巨大的潜力，可以帮助未来的跑步机器人实现动物水平的表现。