Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dinosaur Robots Will Do My Bidding!

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cave-babes-for-me-please dept.

k-k-k-Ken writes: "Saw an interesting article in Forbes about Dinosaur Robots For Sale. While the bots are far from mass production, I can't help but wonder if this is another step in the direction of Jurassic Park meets the Terminator. Once the mobility has been worked out, the AI is the next logical step. Still, I can't help myself and would probably be one of the first to go get a 'Troody' ..." MIT also has a nifty article up about Dilworth and his robots, including links to the Leg Lab where the springy joints mentioned in the article are being developed.

3 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Raibert, legged locomotion, etc. by Animats · · Score: 4
    This is actually a continuation of Marc Raibert's leg lab work in the 1980s and early 1990s. Raibert had the big insight, which is that balance is more important than gait. Out of that came the various hopping machines of the Leg Lab's early days. Raibert left the MIT faculty and went off to do a startup, Boston Dynamics, which ended up doing kinematic models of humans for games and such, but not much dynamics.

    Gil Pratt took over the Leg Lab, and focused more on actuator design. Raibert's machines worked, but needed hydraulic, electrical, and pneumatic umbilicals. Better machine design has produced more compact robots.

    The idea of springy joints has been around for a while. It's common to model muscles as springs and dampers for which the spring constant, neutral point, and damping factor are adjustable. It's well-known that in mammal running, most of the energy of each stride is stored as spring energy in muscles. (As I recall, about 80% of the energy is recycled for the next stride, so this is a big win.) There's been work at Stanford on flexible manipulators, although that's more related to arms. McGill has a small, high-efficiency hopping machine.

    Unless you use pneumatic actuators, off the shelf components aren't well-matched for this approach motion control. That doesn't mean it can't be done, but you spend a lot of time on component development. That's what the Leg Lab has been focusing on under Pratt, and that's why the little dinosaur model was tough to build.

    Rod Brooks from MIT also tried a robotic startup, IS Robotics, which produced a $100K robotic insect. Didn't sell. It's really hard to sell mobile robots; I've known several people with failed startups.

    I work on this sort of thing for games and animation.

  2. Dinobots Transform! by xmalenko · · Score: 5

    Me Grimlock say robot dinosaurs first step to Dinobots! Dinobots no need AI, Dinobots smash!

  3. another step towards extermination by Goronguer · · Score: 5
    [I] wonder if this is another step in the direction of Jurassic Park meets the Terminator . . .

    Another step? You mean this is the latest in a long line of attempts to build robotic dinosaurs to extirminate humanity, and the trend has escaped my attention until now?