Pinocchio Robot Shows These LEGOs Were Made for Walking

Bad Nancy Sinatra song puns aside, a couple of students from Friedrich Schiller University, located in Jena, Germany, have created a robot using LEGOs that mimics bipedal movement in humans. This stepping robot, named “Pinocchio” by his inventors, was created by Marc Heydenreich and Eric Jacob using parts from a LEGO Mindstorms set and does an excellent job in simulating walking.

Assembled for a student project to study the human gait cycle, Pinocchio was created to see if a robot could be built that could copy human walking motion. Now granted, we know there are more sophisticated robots out there already that simulate walking, but this robot is certainly the first I have heard of using inexpensive parts from a LEGO Mindstorms NXT Kit. So this means anyone with a few hundred dollars could duplicate this walking robot for themselves which makes this project and LEGO Mindstorms an excellent educational tool in anyone wanting to get into robotics.