Just Another Outdoor Adventure for Digit Thanks To Full-Stack Autonomy

Through a variety of cutting-edge technologies, our bi-pedal robot Digit is able to navigate outside and cross variable terrain successfully:

  • GPS navigation against waypoints

  • Distant obstacle detection with lidar

  • Local terrain mapping via stereo cameras

Digit’s full-stack autonomy reflects the optimization of a number of components necessary for achieving real-time balance and movement. Digit’s hardware works in concert with on-board and off-board software, even on unpredictable terrain. 

Digit perceives its surroundings using a variety of sensors that are continuously reading surface planes and translating data so that Digit can move smoothly and efficiently in a work space or outside in an office park (as seen in our video), on a trail, sidewalk, or even a sandy beach. 

The advanced perception we’ve developed for Digit allows it to quickly respond to unanticipated obstacles in a fraction of a second. It can also interpret the data it's receiving to determine the most efficient course of action to complete a task or move through its environment. 

An integrated visualizer shows what Digit is actually seeing and how what it’s perceiving is playing out in real time. The visualizer presents what Digit’s perceiving much like a heat map indicating the location of different objects on a screen.

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How Full-Stack Autonomy Helps Digit Navigate Indoor Spaces

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Our approach to merging machine learning with engineered locomotion