From dogs to hawks to octopuses, robotics engineers have been looking to all manner of creatures for design inspirations.

Those ideas are both fascinating and novel, but a team of Italian robotics engineers from the Italian Institute of Technology and University of Pisa said it's focusing mainly on developing humanoid robots because our modern world has been built up with the human form in mind.

The team’s centerpiece robot is Walk-Man, a six-foot-tall humanoid with an arm span of six-and-a-half feet.

"There's one factor that everyone agrees, that actually our world, our environment it was designed for our body basically,” team leader Nikos Tsagarakis recently told Reuters. “So, we have tools that are designed to be grasped by humanoid, human hands. You have also areas or access paths that are actually appropriate for our body forms. So it means that if you build a robot that has a very similar form, you need to adapt less the environment in order to have this robot operational within such a space.”

Walk-Man is designed to go where we can't

The engineers said Walk-Man is designed to go where humans cannot go, meaning it is perfect for exploration and hazardous rescue operations. The robot uses its entire body—torso, arms, and all—for stability while walking.
Tsagarakis said his team wants Walk-Man to accurately replicate human-style locomotion, balance, and control. "We believe that - as humans also do - that legs are not only enough,” he said. “You have to use also the arms, you have to be able to grasp the environment and actually assist your locomotion by creating additional contacts with the environmental balance.”

"This will make a big difference in humanoids where currently the technology is limited to the solutions that provide the balance basically only using the lower body,” he added. “Upper body is also important; especially if you want to pass through cluttered spaces and structural grounds and so on."

Walk-Man also has a stereo vision system and robotic hands capable of precision gripping. The goal, the Italian team said, is to have Walk-Man move fluidly and autonomously. Currently, the robot must be “piloted” by a human, and Tsagarakis said the robot will be designed to always have a human monitoring and acting as a co-pilot from time to time.

“The robot will transfer data, like perception data, back to the operator, and the operator will take the actions and decide what is the next movement for the robot," he said.

The Italian team’s next move is to get Walk-Man to move faster. The robot currently operates at a deliberate, tortoise-like pace.
"When the robot is going slow it is actually easier than when trying to be more aggressive and go fast. In structural environments like those after physical disasters, you have also the possibility that these robots would collide accidentally with the environment. And the faster you move, the harder will be the impact forces," Tsagarakis said.

Watch a video of Walk-Man in action here.