How hard is it to make a humanoid robot do a somersault? This highly difficult sport includes jumping, flipping, landing and other movements, both skill and strength, involving a number of challenging technical areas of the robot, including dynamic modeling, motion planning, real-time control system design and hardware design.

So far, only two companies have given the right demonstration, one is the old timer of the robot world Boston, in 2017 with the robot Atlas backflip, and the other is the little-known startup MagicLab.

On January 20, MagicLab uploaded a video of a two-legged robot, with no upper body attached, standing firmly on the ground after a flip.

According to reports, the robot has two drives to provide power, a model L28, can pull two 25kg (a total of 100 catties) of iron blocks with a tension of 750N, a speed of 120mm/s and a positioning accuracy of 0.02mm; One is the D190, which has a rated output torque of 150Nm, a maximum output torque of more than 525Nm, and a maximum speed of more than 110RPM (48VDC), and can pull 3 adult males.

Power is the basis for robot somersaults to be completed. It is worth mentioning that unlike the Boston Atlas, which uses hydraulic drive, MagicLab’s robot is purely electric.

The pure electric drive route has the advantages of low cost, simple structure and high driving efficiency, and the biggest advantage is that it is more economical.

The disadvantage is that such power-driven robots are generally weak in motion, and Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus Prime and Xiaomi CyberOne have adopted this scheme, both of which have not yet shown the strong motion ability of the robot.

But MagicLab’s robot successfully achieved a difficult somersault, which is undoubtedly a good endorsement of this route. This also means that humans are expected to move closer to the goal of mass production of humanoid robots.

MagicLab also posted a video of the robot making coffee, showing the upper body motion – the robot barista successfully pulled a coffee latte.

What is more certain is that MagicLab is a company from China, which has a number of domestic social platform accounts such as Weibo and B-station, and the IP location of the official Weibo account is Jiangsu.