ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,235,652, issued on Feb. 25, was assigned to Boston Dynamics Inc. (Waltham, Mass.).
"Terrain aware step planning system" was invented by Eric Whitman (Waltham, Mass.) and Gina Christine Fay (Lexington, Mass.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for terrain and constraint planning a step plan includes receiving, at data processing hardware of a robot, image data of an environment about the robot from at least one image sensor. The robot includes a body and legs. The method also includes generating, by the data processing hardware, a body-obstacle map, a ground height map, and a step-obstacle map based on the image data and generating, b...