Slashdot Mirror
The Largest Unpiloted Legged Robot Yet
An unnamed correspondent writes: "Ever wanted your own dinosaur? Well
slap some skin on this baby and you could." This beast looks like a steel elephant, features unusual motor-less joints, and takes a 700Mhz CPU to control each leg.
I would pay big bucks to see this thing attack the hosts of Comedy Central's Battlebots.
I think the british version is much better...
Will it be road tested?
What I love about that show is how robots built from elastic bands, cardboard and milk bottle tops manage to beat the big guys.
Now I can get my own personal giant ED-209 guard robot within the next few years! Now no one will fuck with me again!
I haven't been this excited since I saw Kenny on South Park wearing an ED-209 halloween costume...
4x4 SUV 's will be replaced by AT AT's
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Imagine working on this beast, even a single mistake would mean a catastrophic fall, probably setting you back months.
So in addition to the increased mass/power supply issues of making a large robot, you can't make mistakes, which compounds the design hassles even further.
how many walking creatures do you know w/ motors on their joints?
i certainly don't know of many
Need a Catering Connection
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Perhaps that is what is meant by the apocolypse.
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--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
Looks like they wasted all of their 700MHz processors in the legs and had to settle for a 25MHz Math Co-Processor lacking i80486.
I've never been very impressed with Battlebots. I'd rather see autonomous robots fight. You don't need image recognition to do it either. Stick a transponder on each robot for positioning. Robot creators are allowed to do anything they want to prevent the transponder from working, but they are not allowed to physically shut it off. (It could run on its own power source quite easily.) However, ecm bursts for up to 10 seconds could be allowed. Trouble is, each transponder runs on a different frequency, so the ecm would have to be programmable. hehe.
Then, you throw away the lame remote controls, and focus on some good AI routines instead.
The whole idea would increase the overall cost and time to build for each robot, but it would be so much more interesting!
Soon as I find a toy I like, I go get it and something better comes out. I remember growing up and getting dicked on toys, now they have all these fancy toys that change and mutate.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
When the thing walks, the entire body trembles because of the added stress on the other legs. This causes the entire frame to flex a few inches. I'd be guessing this is yet another reason why this is one of the only (correct me if I'm wrong) five and a half ton robots.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
Imagine the thrill of hacking this thing. Issue your own commands, like, STOMP, CHARGE, SPIN IN CIRCLES TILL YOU PUKE, etc....hope that wireless command is encrypted.
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
Like a turn-of-the-century hunter returning from safari, Frank Mezzatesta stands next to a huge wooden crate he gleefully says contains something wild, a beast never before known to man. And he can hardly wait to show it off. With the click of a mouse, the front of the crate crashes to the floor, revealing an enormous metal monster 13 feet tall, 18 feet long, and weighing 11,000 pounds-- the basic statistics of a loaded delivery truck. The creature seems to hesitate for a moment, then moves forward. With deliberate but surprisingly lithe steps, it strides across the floor, shifting its weight with the grace of a cat as it lifts each foot in turn. Nearing a small group of people, it leans toward them, then sways from side to side as if trying to decide whether to charge them, eat them, or ignore them. "At this point in a previous demonstration, one woman got up and ran," says Mezzatesta. The beast then takes a few steps backward, turns slightly, and begins to dance. Swiveling left and right as much as 7 degrees, it keeps its feet in place, making large undulations and 15-inch-deep knee bends. Before it is sent back to its box, some brave observers amble over for a better look.
To understand what Dino's inventors are attempting, imagine this behemoth covered with a shell that makes it look like a dinosaur. Then imagine it roaming freely on its own-- the world's first truly autonomous robot. Photo by Jan Staller
Mezzatesta is no big-game hunter; he's an engineer, and his beast is a robot dubbed Dino. It is the largest robot ever built that has legs and doesn't have a human inside. It contains its own power and moves autonomously after receiving basic instructions like "move forward." Ultimately, a version of Dino may be covered with a skin to make it look more like a triceratops. If challenging problems are solved, it could be let loose in theme parks to roam on its own. A machine that knows where it is, can make its own decisions, and can move around as easily as a living animal has long been the Holy Grail of roboticists. No one has yet been able to achieve this feat, even with small, wheeled robots.
Birthed by Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development, Dino was dreamed up by Danny Hillis, the man who invented massively parallel supercomputers in the 1980s. "I always wanted to build a robot dinosaur," says Hillis, who, as a Disney Fellow, ran the Dino project from 1998 until 2000, when he cofounded Applied Minds, Inc. His team of engineers and scientists was recruited from universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Los Angeles. They went to work in a walled-off area of a large warehouse near the airport in Burbank. To one side of the robot sits a bank of computers where they created much of Dino's software and one console that wirelessly sends the robot simple commands like "walk backward."
Beyond those commands, Dino carries everything aboard needed to control itself-- power from a bank of 55 sealed lead-acid batteries, three electric motors to move each leg, a Pentium 700 megahertz processor for each leg, and a central computer that receives commands, loads appropriate software from the onboard memory, and coordinates each leg's response. A gyroscope tells the robot how much it is leaning, and lasers at each ankle measure the distance to the ground to help calculate how a step should be taken. Sensors tell Dino how far each motor has rotated and the distance the robot has actually moved. The robot constantly compares feedback readings to make sure the multiple measurements make sense. It also monitors motors for current spikes or high temperatures to determine whether too much force is being applied, and it tracks velocity and acceleration limits.
Dino is impressive, but it is still a work in progress. Hillis originally wanted to power the robot with a Corvette V-8 engine that pressurized oil-filled hydraulic actuators. A test of that setup turned out to be far too noisy and cumbersome. Now smooth, quiet electric motors and batteries have replaced gasoline engines and hoses.
Damn lameness filter. look at my next post
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Or people overclocking their 700 Mhz legs, to make them run faster...
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Small robots with legs are also easier to build because they can fall over without causing much damage-- they don't have as far to fall or as much mass. "We'd be in a whole lot of trouble if this thing fell over," says Akhil Madhani, a mechanical engineer on the project. Madhani and other designers kept Dino's legs light by putting all the motors in the shoulders and then using a series of aluminum linkages and steel ball screws to transfer power through the knees to the ankles. Still, when Dino raises a foot, its body flexes about two inches, which sends vibrations through the whole chassis. "If you have ten thousand pounds vibrating a few inches, the forces are dramatic, maybe a thousand pounds back and forth," says Alexis Wieland, an applied mathematician who worked on the robot's software. "So all the walks are smoother than you'd really think is necessary, because any jarring of the body can produce enormous forces." Worse, when Dino lifts a foot, frame-flexing changes the distance between the three feet still on the ground, trying to pull them apart. By monitoring its motor currents, which shoot up due to the increased forces, Dino can compensate. "It's another level of intelligence that says: 'I'm exactly where I want to be, but, gosh, I'm fighting myself. Let me just move a few millimeters here and, oh, there it goes; the currents are lower,' " says Mezzatesta.
When Dino's sensors don't agree with its software or one another, it stops. "It is truly autonomous; there's no preplanned trajectory," says Wieland. Without any human input, Dino can shift its weight and move its feet until the motor sensors tell it that it has reached its original starting stance. Still, the team has had to learn to trust Dino. "When you're watching something generate trajectories on the fly and you don't know up front what it's going to do and the whole thing could fall over if it does the wrong thing, it's very nice to see it do the right thing," says Madhani. "But it gets your heart rate up."
OK taco you need to explain this lameness filter thing, it keeps cutting me off, ican't see why..... read the next post for more
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
<Insert evil villain laughter here>
Gekigangar Walk!
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crazy dynamite monkey
Dino has laser gyroscopes that give it a balancing mechanism "sort of like an inner ear," Hillis says. "But right now it's not smart enough to take advantage of that. Once it starts being able to do that, feels itself start to trip and catches itself, I think it will start looking more and more natural. But that's a big software job and nobody's ever done it before, so it's going to take a long time. I think eventually you'll have lots of things like this walking around. Some of them will look like robots, and some of them will look like dragons, and some of them will look like big animals like rhinoceroses or woolly mammoths or imaginary animals, all kinds of things." Buehler notes that legged robots like Dino also would be able to perform extraordinary services like fire fighting, containing nuclear and chemical hazards, defusing bombs, searching for land mines, even exploring outer space. The key to all these activities, Buehler points out, is the superior mobility of legs that work as well as Dino's.
Before the gigantic robot can go anywhere, though, it must be able to make its own decisions about where it should put its foot next without stepping on someone. Eric Haseltine, who heads research and development for Disney, says his team of Imagineers is already working on such artificial-intelligence technology for virtual-reality beings, and those programs might be reusable in actual machines like Dino. "This is a test bed that puts us on a road map toward intelligent, self-directed characters," he says. "We want them to be able to move around, react, learn, and behave on their own."
Autonomous dinosaurs roaming at will are likely to amaze and amuse us, but they will still be machines run by computers, and thus unlikely to operate perfectly. So as independent as they may become, Haseltine thinks, there will always have to be someone nearby watching-- with a finger on a kill switch.
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Hey, Buddy, will you drive better with your cell phone at 5,000F?
On second thought, maybe something with jump-jets. Just no Morton Thiocol parts ...
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Since it seems like Disney has a commercial interest in this project, for them it is far from a criminal waste of resources. This is going to be the next "Pirates of the Caribbean", literally.
I am sure Disney would love to have a section of Disneyland with characters from its movie "dinosaur" walking around and acting like 'real' dinosaurs. Since they have a history of pulling off (almost)cool rides, I am sure this one will be a winner too. Or, at least a money-maker.
Sooo, maybe you should buy some disney stock and donate your profit to charity.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
for some reason i think that it would exceed the weight limits.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Given such a robot the potential for abuse of the technology seems rather high. What if your next door neighbour purchases it to use it as an e-Bouncer that can just walk into your apartment and knock you out? What if it was used to damage properties destroy lives and wreck general havoc? I am not saying it is all wrong but surely some control over the modern technology is a must at this point. Now that AI is advancing in leaps and bounds soon these things will become self aware and the doomsday scenarios that were the domain of SF books can well become a reality. Research on such robots should be controlled by independent international organizations to prevent any potential abuse of the technology.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/robots/ro
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
This one seemed to get /.ed pretty damn fast, so here's a mirror.
This is a self-referential sig
1 - jurassic park
2 - westworld
3 - itchy and scratchy land (where nothing can posibli go wrong)
-- Hail Eris
If you like cool bots, check out the book Robo Sapiens. It has about fifty 2-3 page interviews with roboticists and tons of nice photos. It's mostly aimed at laymen, so don't get mad if it's not techie enough for you.
Check out the Amazon Link at Robo sapiens: Evolution of a new species.
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
I agree with your point of view, for the most part, however *this* particular site is hosted by discovery.com
okay, so it IS a cable channel, but they should *still* be able to handle a bit of a heavy load eh?
If you look at the link this is to www.discover.com. If a site that big and advertised is running on a partial T1 they needed a whake up call in any case. Also yes it is pretty much true that the site linked to in this case *is* making money off of ads. And oh yes they would be more than happy to sue /. over mirroring their stuff. You should pick your stories better for posting this stuff.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
...I just rented Patlabor 1 yesterday...
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You may like my a cappella music
If it has a pilot it is not a robot.
Whether the pilot is on board or 1e6km away. As the long as the maching is directed by a human it is not a robot.
I hate to see these "news" items about robots that really mean remote controlled devices. Lets keep the terms straight and not get led on by the popular notion that anything remotely high tech is a robot.
Battlebots are not robots. They are funky remote controlled cars playing a mean version of the smash up derby.
With power steering, abs brakes, and ignition control you could probably call most modern car fly by wire systems and describe them as robots using the "great" distinctions of the unwashed public.
that something that could grow to take over small cities and such was created by Disney? I am not really jumping on the conspicary boat, as much as pointing out, there is already a Disney Police force and now they have this....
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I thought NASA built a six-legged version of this bot first, it just wasn't very self directed. (Required a human to operate it). And it sounds like the really big challenges are still how to get the thing to move mechanically, not intelligently. After all, the article does mention that small wheeled robots have already made big strides in 'intelligent' movement processes. Please enlighten me on where I can find info again on the NASA project, as I thought their walker was much more functional on a mechanical level than this one.
Unfortunately, it'd be rather boring: the state of the art in robot AI still takes a few minutes to recoginize where it is in a room, much less identify/track another hostile robot (particularly if it's moving at high speed). Of course, you still have the problem of disabling the other robot, which even human drivers seem to suck at.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Maybe for just the movement computations. But I would imagine the added computing power is useful in analyzing the input coming from the multiple sensors used to determine height off the ground and all that other non-sense that was mentioned in the article (You did read the article didn't you? Oh wait, maybe it was slashdotted, so I'll give you a break). There's a lot more going on here than just a simple wind-up walk-along toy does. A lot more.
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Ok, you need a 700mhz processor to control the sensors for balance and where the ground is etc etc...
:)
So if you wish to run, you'd need to process quicker. Would that mean that the faster you want to go the faster the chips?
Interesting how our mind can't compute numbers so quick but we can already run
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
This probably seems too obvious. but could you imagine Disney filming a movie with these things??
Jurassic Park: XXVII
Well,the movies could be filmed in real time without having to wait for a render farm to create your effect!
Come to think of it, the technology could have a couple practical uses -- mobile autonomous camera control, rough-terrain heavy equipment transport, automatic bug squisher... OK, I'm stretching, but you get the idea.
In addition, if Disney ever decides to license or share this technology, imagine what such a robot could be used for... Earthquake rescue, anybody? Terrorist negotiations? Unmanned ice-cream vendor? (it'll be a real hit with the kiddies at the park!)
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
I wasn't able to get back on to the page to check, but I don't remember a great level of detail on the computations that are being done. Non-linear control problems associated with robotics aren't generally thought of as the easiest thing in the world. There's a lot of math behind the stabilization of non-linear systems. It's possible that they are using a fairly computationally intensive method. This would not be like slapping together a PID controller and tuning the parameters until it can walk without falling over.
Whether they really need 700MHz processors in each leg, I can't say. But it's not a possibility you could dismiss without knowing a fair bit about non-linear control methods and what method was used in particular in this case. In any event these processors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than "telling" the legs to move up and down regularly.
Finally, i can replace the "Imperial Walker" toy that mom threw out when i was ten....
if you mod me down, Darth, i shall become more powerfull than you can possibly imagine.. f33r |\/|1 |\|3g4+v C4r|\/|4
But robocop good too. .
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
If you put 3 transmitters in the arena and 1 on each robot, they could very easily determine their location and find the other bot.
A really good AI should be better at disabling opponents, because it can much better coordinate the use of several degrees of freedom. The reason human drivers suck is that they are trying to remotely manipulate their bots with an incredibly low bandwidth connection (human fingers). Robots designed to have microsecond reflexes would rock.
I do agree, at least at first, an autonomous divison would be much more fun for the participants, but much less fun for the spectators. But I think it is possible.
Look at your leg. See that bulgey thing below your knee, in the back? That's the linear motor that powers your ankle. The dinosaur robot has *no* motors in its legs. None.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'm sure that they designed it to be a little "overkill" too. Shit, this thing weighs 11,000 pounds, is mostly all custom made parts, etc... Another $500 is bullshit for this project.
Oh. I'm assuming height off ground is provided by a laser system that does its own calculations.
So I'm somewhat redeemed, if not entirely clear.
Like I said, its monday. I need coffee.
and wow, it is dead.
fuck.
we just killed discover.com, even the front page is dead.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I'm sure that they designed it to be a little "overkill" too. Shit, this thing weighs 11,000 pounds, is mostly all custom made parts, probably cost a shitload for the metal alone. etc...
Another $500 is bullshit for this project.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
700Mhz per leg? That tells me a) they forgot to optimize their code or b) it's just really bloated. I just can't imagine it needs that much processing power to make those calculations. I hope this is a case of, "throw a lot of hardware at the problem just in case."
Funny, but also sad. I'm sure this is a fine piece of engineering, but 5.1GB of RAM? Is it running Whistler^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows XP in every shoulder?
With the 4x700MHz PIIIs, that's significantly more processing power than your average dinosaur brain, and they walked a lot better than this beast.
Time to give up on this problem, chaps. AI researchers used to work on chess, because they thought they could never brute force the problem. Now they've done the same to walking. Time to move on to face recognition, or something else.
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E_NOSIG
The "Mindrover" game provides a 3D simulation of the game you'd like. You build your robots and program them, then test them against others. Robots can be distributed to other competitors either closed(binary only) or open sourced(including the logic). Game is available at: http://www.cognitoy.com/mindrover/mindrover.htm
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Remove any spaces that /. inserts
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h tm l
freenet:CHK@L~ijwvGY4muOIqcqPb2HSBlhxEYOAwE,Ol4HR
freenet:KSK@www.discover.com/mar_01/featrobots.
I want to see two of these beasts mating. Now that would be a robotic scene you wouldn't forget in a hurry...
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Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
While this thing is nifty, it's still no match for the real mech that Mechanized Propulsion Systems is putting together
Mechanized Propulsion Systems say they're building a real mech, full size and human piloted!!!! Check them out :-)
Plus, if the leg movement is based on corrective movement, a faster processor will minimize the vibration caused by minute changes in position.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Seriously, all humor aside, I think you'd have a hard time getting enough contestants to justify it. The only thing I can think of would be getting a number of colleges to put together teams or something. However, a number of them already compete in similar but more serious events, such as the "International Aerial Robotics Competition"
Well I think you said it... you'd probably get plenty of entries, but maybe more from colleges and companies than individuals.. or perhaps not..I'd certainly never build an r/c bot (dull), but an autonomous one would be more fun!
As well as the aerial robotics thing (a bit too hard, really!), there's also the autonomous robotics soccer competition - teams of opposing robots. Not only do these things track each other and the ball in real time, but they can plan intercept paths to hit the moving ball, and even manage to plot intercept paths to pass the ball to each other! Rather than having a dumb selfish "each man for himself algorithm", the better ones at least use team play. I remember reading about one team who's genetic algorithm optimized team algorithm resulted in player roles and positioning very similar to those in real life soccer!!
There's a web site for the competitions - should be easy to find. AAAI magazine also covers the competitions.
Actually walking and balancing is harder than face recognition (which is old technology now anyway).
If you want to see better walkers then hed over to the MIT web site and visit their "leg lab". This is where walking/hooping/etc robots originated. They even have one with one leg that hops up and down like on a pogo stick!
Is this reviewed in Tom's Hardware Guide? :)
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Ach, you maroon! Don't theorize about stuff you know nothing about. To say that dinos had significantly less processing power than 4x700MHz PIIIs is silly. It's comparing apples and oranges, and the apples evolved over millions of years and employed genetic algorithms to perfect the most simple seeming actions to an art. The oranges are layers of copper and semiconductor! Research into robotic motion is difficult. Simulators are helpful, but it's tough to model what we can realize - it's much easier to model stuff that just "works". The real-world engineering and design that's required to approximate something as simple as a cockroach is still WAY beyond our abilities as engineers and mechatronics people. Building stuff is a good way to go. You bring the REAL engineering challenges to the top of the pile. Linear actuators. Power dissipation. Balancing problems. Data fusion. Reactive neural networks. Shit man, you're dismissing a whole lot more than a model there. Dork.
Try http://www.robocup.org
...for the Robocup Champions of the Solar System from Cornell University. Go Big Red!
Or...
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/robocup/RoboCup.html
These robots are super-cool!
The Cornell link has a bunch of other autonomous vehicle info too.
If it is supposed to give people the right of way (probably a good idea), how will one of these things get anywhere in a Disney theme park? Those places are generally packed shoulder to shoulder.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Anyone, given budget and time, can throw enough hardware at a problem (making a dinosaur walk, beating the world chess champion) to hide the fact that they haven't solved the problem. That was my point.
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Actually, that is significantly less than a dino brain. If you were to assume that a dino brain was capable of processing 1/100 of 1% of what we humans are, and this is reasonable... Humans have on the order of 10^15 dendritic connections in their brains, a p3 has somewhere in the 10^7 range, connections. 10^15 * .0001 = 10^11 or 4 orders of magnitude higher than a P3. I have met plenty of people who I suspect were not 10,000 times smarter than a dino.
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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
The first big insight on the problem was when Raibert figured out that balance is more important than gait. Locomotion researchers had been obsessing on gait all the way back to Muybridge, and never understood gaits beyond the walk. That's why Raibert did the one-legged hopper, which forced him to focus on balance. This provided the insight that cracked running. The basic concept is that in stance, the goal is to level the body, and in flight, the goal is to land with the foot at the "zero point" landing point which will maintain the current speed and direction. Displacing the landing point slightly from the zero point results in a turn or speed change, and that's how you steer. Very neat.
My big insight on this is that traction control is more important than balance. I figured out (and, of course, patented) how to do anti-slip control for legs. This is necessary to run on hills. One interesting result was that it finally became clear why legs have three joints, considering that two are sufficient to place the foot anywhere. The third (ankle on human, hock on the quadrupeds) joint gives the ability to control the direction of the contact force, which is a big win on non-flat surfaces. This is most true for animals like horses, which have hind legs with three sections of about equal length, but it's true for humans, too. Try climbing in rigid ski boots that lock the ankle joint.
Lots of people have built walkers. It's building a runner that makes it serious.
kewl now I can have my own Veritech fighter, Valkyrie class complete with Gerwalk and Battloid formations.. go tech people ! :)
.sig under construction
*cough* TROLL *cough*
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
Hardly! I'm not even a biologist. But I know that probably isn't true, considering how much we don't know about our own brains for starters.
Just becasue a dinosaur can't do maths aswell as, or as fast as, a computer, it dosn't mean it isn't as powerfull. Don't foget that a dino, or human brain has to control far more muscles than that robot. than there's the fact that it dosn't have to worry about a complex digestive system. Blood and oxgen curcualtion, high res vision, millions of touch, temperature sensors all over the body. And of course the biggy... that they can't learn in the same way as we, or dino's do/did.
Don't forget, brains work in an entirely differnt way to a computer chip. A computer chip can only do simple things fast (0's and 1's). And that's about it.
A beowulf cluster of these?
But seriously, that's essentially what the bot's control system sounds like...
So when will we see something like this on Battlebots?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
At last, someone who agrees with me! Geez I hate that when people refer to things like Battlebots as "robots". I'd actually like to build a Battlebot one day. But it will be fully autonomous (probably with a remote control to help "coach" it). That's the only way I could go on that show and retain any of my dignity.. What do you think? I say we start entering autonomous Battlebots into the competition. Give these pansies a run for their money. Sure, the RCs will win at first. Heck they'll probably kick our butts at first. But once we get the hang of it... a human simply can't compete. (Plus we wouldn't have to deal with the shame of going on national TV and calling our remote controlled car a "robot".)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Couple problems with that conspiracy theory...
1) The cost to build one of these things would be far greater than the cost of the largest rendering farms.
2) 3D render speeds seem to be doubling at nearly _twice_ the rate of Moore's Law. A frame that takes an hour to render today, will take only 15 minutes to render in 18-24 months.
Have you seen some of the GeForce3 footage??
It won't be long before movies like Jurassic Park will be rendered in real time at studios... and not long after that, in our own homes. But by then studios will probably have replaced most actors (and sets) with inexpensive, high quality CGI dopplegangers, thus increasing total production time again to several years.
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
Look at a good pianist. I don't think the bandwidth limitation is with human hands and fingers. Radio remote controls as used in battlebots are legacy systems, designed to control model cars and kludged to control model airplanes. These applications don't involve combat and really just don't require that much bandwidth.
I also think that microsecond reflexes are probably overkill; useful reflex time is limited by the inherent acceleration and deceleration times of the robot's parts. Even cats and mongeese get by with millisecond reflexes.
I'd like to see somebody design a battlebot where they focus on a high-bandwidth control system rather than a bad-ass weapon. (Most of the weapons end up looking pretty lame anyway.) Video cameras are cheap these days, so no reason the operator can't where a headset that gives him a robot's-eye vantagepoint. There are analog joysticks and 6DOF controllers. Bitstreams from multiple controllers could easily be shipped over a radio channel (though it probably makes sense to keep the video stream separate.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
I am not a robotics researcher, so this is based on intuition and what I've read and seen.
I think that one of the reasons that animals 'have it so easy' is that we've got so many more sensors, as well as the 'circuitry' to put all of that sensory data together. And I don't mean the strict inner-ear stuff, either. I mean the somatosensory (joint position and such) senses. How many robots 'know' where all of their limbs are as easily as I can know exactly where my hand is with my eyes closed? Furthermore, humans (and presumably other animals) have the benefit of learning exactly what works for their body, motion-wise. If my brain was suddenly put into the body of someone differently sized than mine, I'd probably be unable to walk for a while. I'm guessing that most robots don't have the benefit of years of experience learning how to move optimally. This kind of thing is why it needs a 700Mhz processor in each leg.
And another thing is that, however it gets that way, the brain tissue that controls movement and the coordination is optimized, both to begin with and then fine-tuned over time. If robotics researchers could make the equivalent of a DSP for balance and coordination, I'm sure the specs would appear much more 'reasonable.' After all, a quad Pentium III system running, say, a chess program will tend to lose to a world-class human chess player, and chess is an inherently mathematical problem! Walking is so much more...well, certainly not mathematical, really.
Anyway, those are just some of my idle ramblings on the subject. Maybe that helps, I dunno.
(One thing I question is your notion of more than half of the human brain being devoted to coordination and balance...doing some searching reveals that, from the brain diagrams I looked at, roughly a tenth of the frontal lobe is given over to 'movement.' Also, some parts of the basal ganglia are involved with inhibitory balance, reflexes, and the initiation of voluntary movement. Coordination, by which I mean the coordination of multiple sensory inputs and movements, is the domain of the right hemisphere, but I imagine that's not all of what it does. Also, that definition of coordination seems substantially separate from simple balance. That is, it's gymnastics and playing the piano, not walking while whistling. It may take a large chunk of the human brain, but it's so much more than what robots can do now that I imagine that it would only take a small portion of it to replicate simple movement and things like rubbing your stomach while patting your head (which is a silly example, I know).