AT-ATs Coming to a Forest Near You

Audent writes "Not strictly speaking anything any of us should classify as work related, or even open source, but holy shitbags! I want one of these. Plustech, a subsidiary of tractor maker John Deere, has built a six-legged walking logging machine that just has to be the prototype for an AT-AT walker. Imagine parking this puppy at the mall!"

Comments

Different Walk styles..

[Kraphty]

I noticed that in one of the videos is walks with three legs at a time, keeping a tripod, and in the other it moves one leg at a time. Is there a specific reason for this? Perhaps something to do with the terrain?

Re:Different Walk styles..

[Sweetums]

If I remember right, the alternating 3 leg movement is the best case for a 6 leg walker. There were some interesting experiments done with simple walking robots, disabling legs and such and watching how it parallelled insects with a damaged leg.

I'd bet it depends on if there is an imbalance in weight distribution and one side can't pick up 2 legs at the same time, which would probably force it into one at a time movement. Just a guess though. Theres lots of research done on simple walking robots done with really minimal fedback control circuits. They do teh same stuff. Of course the extra degrees of freedom in the joints makes things a little harder.

Lethal looking motherfucker...

[sfled]

...a little bullet-proof glass, some armor & weapons...the little bitch is made for close-quarter urban demolition zone warfare.

Other fun legged machines

[big tex]

if you think the logging machine is cool, check out the Spiderplow http://www.spiderplow.com

I worked on a crew that used one of these, installing fiber optic cable down the median of an interstate. The frickin' thing can go through the legs of highway signs, climb off of an 18-wheeler trailer SIDEWAYS, and stand on 1 leg while it's ripping.

The controls seem to be a little more involved than the logger, though. It's got a panel of about 30 two-way levers to control all of the motions. each leg can extend/retract, swivel forward/back, raise/lower, rotate each wheel right /left independently, plus about a dozen controls for the fiber burying blade.

Spiderplow = more bandwidth.
John Deere Forester = toilet paper.

It's ovious which one is the high-tech toy for the nerds :)

AT-AT: Bah! What's REALLY cool is...

[jbarr]

...the cutter mechanism on the end of it's boom. That is REALLY cool. I saw a show on TLC (I think it was Modern Marvels or something) that showed how this cutting head works. It grabs onto a tree trunk, cuts it off, rolls the length of the trunk stripping off the branches, and then rolls back over the trunk cutting it into pre-determined lengths. It estimates these lengths by determinig the tree's length by using the tree's diameter and stored "tree data" based on tree type. Seeing this thing in action leaves your eyes glued to the TV and your jaw glued to the floor!!!