From Yahoo News:
…Sony said on Thursday that it had developed the world’s first running — okay, jogging — robot. “All around the world, universities and think tanks have been researching how to make robots run but we are pleased to announce that we have done it first,” Toshi Doi, an executive vice president at Sony told a news conference.
…The big technological breakthrough, says Sony, was in getting both the robot’s feet to lose contact with the ground at once. Up until now humanoid or two-legged robots have needed to have one foot on the floor to move stably. “The hardest part was theoretical. Humanoid robots like Sony’s older Qrios and Honda’s Asimo have been based on a theory which dictates that there must be contact with the floor. We had to develop a new theory,” said Doi.
…The next challenge, said Doi, is to make Qrio’s running motion less jogging-like and more like an athlete’s. At the moment, Qrio’s time with both feet off the ground is only 40 milliseconds, compared with around one second managed by athletes, he said…Sony, which also makes the Aibo robot dog, a sell-out success when it debuted in 1999, said it still doesn’t have a timetable for commercializing Qrio, whose name is short for “quest for curiosity.” [ “Sony Unveils World’s First ‘Running’ Humanoid Robot”]