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 The current HCI is way too outdated, and I think it may be obsolete in a few years.....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