This robot is made by Japanese amateur roboticist Hinamitetu.

There are lots more acrobatic feats on his YouTube page:

https://www.youtube.com/user/hinamitetu?feature=watch

Google translate of his about page on youtube:

I used a 2-axis acceleration sensor. Is located in the head it. It then measures the gravity mainly. The measured value, by the angle of rotation will change me. --- I will zero gravity measurement value measurements of the axis when the axis of the sensor was leveled to the ground ---. Position in the rotation I was divided into four regions. To detect the falling signal rising and in (up, down, left, right) the boundary position. (With a threshold detection value zero gravity fall detection circuit and rising that). I was triggered by a combination of (H, L signal using the threshold as zero gravity detection value) of H and the raw signal, L signal. Based on these signals, and to determine when to stretch or bend the leg.

Am I the only one who read that like a poem?

No. It's beautiful.

Sounds like the Hybrids in BSG! :D

When I saw the guy setting the robot up in the original video, I realized that it's quite a bit larger than I initially thought.

Still, pretty damn impressive!

Looks like this is the link to the original video at the creators account. http://youtu.be/4M0jhAuAuJI

Here's one by the same guy that is even more impressive. Several robots do double flips and then grab the bar again!

http://youtu.be/ckbC0PTfCRE

It'd be really nice if a mod could edit the URL to the actual content creator, so that s/he gets some YouTube likes and subscribes.

Agreed, can a mod pretty please edit the URL so the actual creator gets credit?

Success!

Well that was cool. But the page doesn't exactly have much in the way of words. Despite the spammy nature of the newslamp.com domain --and despite the spammy nature of the youtube video being in response to Katy Perry's Part of Me music video-- any idea what microcontroller is being used?

EDIT: And now this video is rocketing to the top of reddit, number two at the moment. Video is on liveleak.com. Way to give the actual producer credit, internet.

To be fair, there have been far more interesting posts on HN that were ignored because it was only a YouTube video. Would you be commenting if it wasn't linked to a different site (however spammy looking the domain)?

Of course! I wanted to know the micro-controller used :)

Looks like gilgoomesh has a direct link to the creator's actual youtube account as well, not the embedded rip-off from youtube user chrill22, which looks like a typical view farmer. It looks like chrill22 took hinamitetu's "Quadruple Backflip(NO.16)" video, trimmed out the part where hinamitetu was setting the robot up, and then re-upped it. Absolutely infuriating.

And judging by bradleyjoyce, it looks like there's more technical info to be found, albeit in a language I don't understand.

That, I'm not too sure of, but it's more than likely a PIC-16 or 18 series.

There's a nice write-up from last year on using a PIC16F628A and four servos to build a walking robot. http://www.academia.edu/1767517/Walking_Robot_with_Four_Serv...

If you're the tinkering type, it's quite an interesting read. Of course, that's a long way away from a robot that does backflips ;)

One video shows it having PIC16F873:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UijyM-2S2f4

Another video has some sort of details in the description, although they are bit mysterious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyEua6kL00M

"AD conversion is not performed." meaning that the main feedback is analogue? That'd be interesting indeed.

Nice submission history, evab. Newslamp, newslamp, newslamp, newslamp. Post the original content.

Just for fun, here's some graphs. (http://imgur.com/a/dlhna)

PS: Thanks mods, for editing the URL!

And it even stuck the landing. Very cool.

Literally, a different robot but it looks like he puts adhesive gel on the feet to help the landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mF9_2...

Love the trashy surroundings with all that junk on the left hand side, little curtains and whatnot. Reminds me of Sci-Fi movies from the 80s :)

A little more background on this would be interesting.

this has a little more info: http://www.gizmag.com/home-made-gymnast-robot/24961/

that is sweet. when do the robot Olympics start?

Cool, but not as cool as this, which was done in the early 90's: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/robots/3D_biped/3D_bip...

OP's robot was made by a guy at his house. That's the difference. Imagine where we'll be in 20 years.

I would have marked him down for his build up but the execution and landing get top marks. Amazing.

I like this video called "Bloopers" featuring some of the successful bot's older family members. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7eUvuruw7E

The sound when it goes slow-mo is my new favorite ambient/drone track.

Really impressive. How many backflips a human can do?