Autonomous Skiing Robot

In honor of popular winter activities, here’s a neat project that made the rounds in 2009, but is well worth looking at again.  Researchers in the Department for Automation, Biocybernetics and Robotics at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia developed a robot that can autonomously carve its way down a ski slope.

The robot has only three degrees of freedom, but a plethora of sensors, ranging from vision and inertial sensors to force sensors in the feet.  The robot can see blue and red guide posts defining a slalom course, and navigate its way successfully through them.  Or, when no guide posts are in sight, the robot can simply carve its way safely down the slope.  You can find several good videos on YouTube, but the one below is the best for technically-minded robot enthusiasts such as yourself.

For more details, check out the skiing robot project page, and the technical report.