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Rare Desert Walking Robot: Mojave or Bust
An anonymous reader writes "Robust walking robots are still surprisingly rare.
The Astrobiology Magazine is reporting today on the German-American Scorpion Project to conquer 25 miles of targeted navigation into the Mojave Desert and back autonomously. The eight-legged robot is triple-jointed and must travel by day (solar-batteries) for two-weeks alone without human intervention. Because it's a scorpion, the camera is in the tail."
I should be born in the scorpion sign, and it's soon to late
Size: 450x200x300 (LxWxH cm)
Weight: 3.5-5 kg (incl. battery)
A 10lb robot that's 4.5m long, 2m wide, and 3m high?
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
What if a camal turns it upside down for a laugh? does it have srimech .. what if it runs into matilda or any other robot from robot wars .. the desert is a dangerous place
But can it attack humans and hide in holes?
I'm a geek deal wit it
hmm...just a curiosity, but I know that DARPA is sponsoring lots of biometric/robotic related research. Are the results of the research freely available? I mean, can we see what has been the results of such research? The current HCI is way too outdated, and I think it may be obsolete in a few years.....
This is mm, ie half a meter long
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Great until some Jawas jump out and capture it and it gets sold to a moisture farmer...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hello All,
Check out this URL to see how the scorpion behaves in real-world situations:
Pretty neat.
greetings,
Tom
It seems to me that even over very uneven terrain, that 6 legs should do the job nicely. I mean, 3 legs should be plenty enough for walking over level surfaces. Sure, it can be done with 2, but the benefits of the third are obvious. With the fourth, all of a sudden 3 can stabilise the creature/contraption while the 4th is in motion. With the 5th, you can have 2 moving at the same time, and with 6th, well, you can go hog wild with the movement over even difficult terrain.
I just fail to see the benefit of 8 legs, especially considering all the work that they apear to have claimed to do minimizing enegery consumption, spoken about here
http://ais.gmd.de/BAR/SCORPION/simulation.htm
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Nave H. Weiss
On Mars mission, it's hell trying to get a repairman in, especially on weekends! (And the rates they charge!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
In true slashdot style i've not read the article, but if it has 8 legs then it can probably afford to loose half of them and still be able to move.
:)
I year or so back I read about mechanisms for intelligently correcting for a broken leg, animals in nature do it pretty well... stand up anyone who's ever pulled the legs off a spider
(Sorry, it's just that I've seen this one too often recently.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, if I were them, I'd concentrate on making 6 strudy legs instead of 2 backups. But then again, maybe they do have a good reason. I guess since I don't have the inclination to make a desert walking robot, I should't critisise too loudly thou.
From the picture in the article, it doesn't exactly look very sturdy -- certainly not for a dusty, gritty environment. Maybe they want it fail in order to learn? :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, I've looked at the robot, but I still see two problems, the first one being sandstorms (which I don't know if they actually exist in the Mojave desert), turning the robot upside down or simply blowing it to smithereens, and the second being it sinking in sand. Imagine a slow wind-storm that carries a lot of sand. The robot starts to get muddled up in it and tries to climb off from it but it's no avail since there's always more sand coming. How can it cope with that? Does it have the Zerg's Burrow ability? :)
The Scorpion project is also being worked on by McGill University's Ambulatory Robotics lab (simulation videos of the six- and eight-legged versions are available there). I should know, since I've been working on improved leg designs to double Scorpion's forward velocity: see my webpage.
So, the project is also Canadian.
This thing looks like a Pentium II processor on legs! ;-)
Stop my CPU, it is running away because I did too much PovRay!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I just know I've seen this particular robot before.
that the project is supposed to pull the basic design from nature. In this case it's a scorpion and they cite a few examples of scorpion-specific ingenuity that could be useful to learn more about and give a try. You'll also note that, live, the scorpion sometimes uses legs as terrain sensors to speed up the navigation of rough areas while using the next logical set to do the locomotion.
:)
I just think it's cool.
- I am made of meat.
I'm moving to the desert to be with the one I love.
He has a good government job and we'll be traveling a lot.
Please understand.
Love,
Aibo
- I am made of meat.
I was wondering what that danged critter was which tried to crawl into my tent. It came in my property, can I sell the pieces on eBay?
German...
"Scorpion Project"
Well, Rock Me Like a Hurricane! I didn't even know they were still around. What's this about them walking around in the desert, though?
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
Read the article - they have a page talking about how 8-legged robots provide a much more stable platform while walking than 6-legged ones.
This makes sense to me - I can't really see any leg movement pattern for a 6-legged robot that wouldn't introduce a fair amount of wiggling.
I do hope they programmed it to take arhythmic, shuffling steps on its journey. Sandworms can hear footfall a long way off...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Be sure to look at the video clips of Arthur (the earlier prototype). The German musical accompaniment is worth the wait.
i don't care if this scorpion is robotic, it isn't cool unless it flouresces like a real scorpion. honestly, they make the coolest dorm pets :-)
(in case you're interested in this, check out this link: HERE)
I believe the reason for 8 legs has come from the large surface area the whole scorpion body needs to generate power through its solar panel. Hence, they had to maximize the surface area to generate solar energy; which makes sense in a desert. This in turn led to the stability issue which ofcourse, intuitively, comes from having 8 legs. I am not sure of any scientific reason yet. -nitin
and can I expect it to know, but yet do nothing about bad things that will happen to me in the future? Or perhaps it will know how it will be defeated in a Battle Bot ring but yet do nothing to circumvent it. Piece of crap!
these ones are however.....
...and have six legs and acid capability
a little faster....
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
...really, it's a cool project. I know these young tykes with their robot are thinking "mars mission, neat-o", but they are funded by darpa. darpa is thinking "new tank thing-a-ma-jig dealie for wars to seize and control and patrol oil fields". That's reality.
Next point, really, I'll say it again I LIKE it, I like roboticsa nd research, but here's a glitch. In the real meatworld "outdoor place" where this will be deployed for the test, the first 'biological machine entity, ie the BE to keep it in acronymise, will be unable to resist this apparently slow and perhaps tasty morsel and carry it off or chew it up or otherwise discombobulate it. coupla experimental chews and a fewshakes and mr scorpion will be upisde down with a lot less attached wires and unable to right itself. I know nerds is the appropriate term, a long time ago we said "eggheads", who were reknowned for amazing feats of intellectual prowess that unfortunately had zero basis in practical common sense. Yes I know, eventually they will get the bugs worked out, but first run on this puppy my dineros are on wile-e injecting ye olde chaos theory.
They need to take a tip from mecahnised and successful motorized desert travelling machines now. skip the legs, go wheels, large diameter light footprint, extremely long travelling suspension. Point a to b in desert in a week with their cpu and sensors and solar array attached. probably can be built at 1/100th the cost, made large enough to be practical, and then sell copies of them. someone will buy them then. they can then tinker in backroom and work on the robots and not use tax money for it. someone mail them any latest copy of "offroad" magazine and let them look at the ads. Major clueskis on what works in the desert if you are doing it with mechanics.
Just a thought
This is a DARPA Phase I project, people. It ain't news until it's been done.
/., but the shit that's being posted recently is really grasping and very poorly edited in terms of reliability of content. I'm sad I came back - either that or sad to see this place in such disarray.
It's been a while since I've read
I also question when they will be doing this run of 25 miles. If they don't pick the right time of season, they will run into either dust storms (strong enough to rip the paint off your car and needing a new windshield), thunderstorms (dropping a lot of water in mere hours), or a combo of both if they are really unlucky.
This robot is going to take a few days to go the distance. It will have to deal with desert conditions (both day and night conditions, and weather) and desert obstacles (brush, trees, loose soil, rocks, animals, washes, etc).
I really question the whole project - was the goal to make a legged vehicle or to go a distance autonomously?
I think about the DARPA Grand Challenge, and I think what would be the best vehicle for such a thing. Then I thought it would be a challenge to go any distance autonomously. For the terrain, legs are OK, but use a lot of power. Considering the obstacles likely to be encountered, a much better and more efficient system would seem to use wheels.
I would go for a system similar to what the Mars Rover used, the suspension system with six wheels, but scale it up a bit to use larger ATV wheels. Keep the engine, but throttle it back greatly (under computer control) to maximize fuel consumption (properly tuned, etc with proper throttling, you can get hundreds of miles per gallon of fuel). Keep solar panels and batteries on-board, which at minimum could run the system in the event of an emergency to "call home". Such a system would be able to make a 25 mile run in probably a day or two maximum, and could possibly compete in the DARPA challenge.
At the end of the day, though - regardless of whether this legged wonder does it, or somebody builds another device, wheeled or legged, that does it, even over a much shorter distance, they will have come up with a solution, and proved that solutions exist, to several "grand problems" in autonomous robotics that would prove useful in a number of other situations (ground rescue, factory work, planetary rovers, underwater exploration, etc).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
100 years from now westarn bars will hang the "skulls" of those that don't make it up on their walls.
Table-ized A.I.
8 legs really needed?
It's biomimical, i.e. scorpions have evolved for millions of years in that environment, and one of the things this evolutionary process found was the usefulness of 8 legs. Why do you think scorpions didn't evolve with wheels? When you want to build something for a particular project, look at what worked before, and in this case, the scorpions work when wandering around in the desert.
The major design feature of this thing over an organic scorpion is that energy comes from photovoltaic cells, rather than from eating (and catching) food. Presumably there's a reason why nothing evolved PV cells in nature (too big a jump from a stable design involving digesting food?) but that should make it easier for the robot to get energy without wasting time catching bugs.
8 legs good, 6 legs baaad! 8 legs good, 6 legs baaad! (From George Orwell's Android Farm.)
We'll have to call Tom Selleck to disable this little bugger. (Note: above reference is from a 1980-something B-movie "Runaway")