Four legs good, four wheels better
Unitree’s new As2-W bolts wheels straight into the feet of a walking robot, which is roughly what I argued for nine days ago.
“Four legs good, two legs bad,” Orwell wrote in Animal Farm. Unitree just proved the real fight was never legs versus wheels.
The As2-W is a quadruped that walks like a robot dog and rolls like nothing needs to walk at all. Each of its four legs ends in a 18 cm- wheel rather than a paw. On a footpath, it drives. At a kerb, a step or a loose gravel slope, the legs take over and it climbs. Unitree rates it for 80cm steps and 45° slopes, which covers most of the built environment a domestic or industrial robot will ever meet.
