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Rare Desert Walking Robot: Mojave or Bust

Posted by Hemos on from the move-'em-on-out dept.

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."

10 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. What the heck did they build that out of? by KillerBob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  2. But what if? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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

  3. DARPA by Ashish+Kulkarni · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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 The current HCI is way too outdated, and I think it may be obsolete in a few years.....

  4. 8 leggs really needed? by automag_6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:8 leggs really needed? by BenCaxton · · Score: 3, Interesting

      After watching the videos of this thing moving, it appears to form a stable posture with some of it's legs (at least 3), and then move the other ones to find it's next stable posture. On uneven ground the extra legs will help it find a stable stance at any given time. I'm not really too familiar with a lot of legged robots, but it's pretty common to have 6 or 8 legs. You can probably find a lot of different papers online about the different gaits that these things use.

      On another note, evolution minimizes energy use, and it gave the scorpion 8 legs.

      Ben

      --
      Ben
    2. Re:8 leggs really needed? by Dale+Dunn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From watching the videos, it appears that this thing does not have the sophistication to be stable on 6 legs in a rough environment. It's just moving it's legs in a crawl forward motion, and it doesn;t know if its putting a foot in a hole or banging it on a rock, or actually making progress. I build machines that could do that out of Legos when I was a kid. Less sophisticated, but much the same result.

  5. Perhaps it has redundant legs by grahamsz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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 :)

  6. Re:8 legs really needed? by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  7. What about sandstorms and sinking? by JohnnyBigodes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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? :)

  8. offtopic, but damnit... by radiashun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)