Benchmarking Animal-level Agility With Quadruped Robots

Google researchers have developed a benchmark for measuring the agility and maneuverability of legged robots, inspired by dog agility competitions. The benchmark, called Barkour, consists of a variety of challenging obstacle courses that measure the robot’s speed, control, and versatility. The benchmark is designed to encourage researchers to develop locomotion controllers that move quickly and efficiently. The benchmark is also designed to provide an intuitive metric for understanding the robot’s performance relative to its animal counterparts.