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Robocoaster
AnswerIs42 writes "Got the announcement thru work email.. but a German company name Kuka has a very unique ride they are demonstrating. It has all the thrills, chills, loops, twists, puke factor of a rollercoaster.. but it only needs 11x12 meters of space! What they did is take a material handling robot (like you would find in any automotive plant) and put 2 seats on it. They also gave it a clever name: Robocoaster. I have a start of a review here, and will post more once I actually go and ride the sucker next month in Detroit. With everything it can do and more... it could start replacing rollercoasters.. perhaps?"
They are building a 440 foot coaster at Cedar Point.
Here's some pictures
... I know... Disney is evil.
But Downtown Disney (Orlando, FL) has a huge arcade with a RollerCoaster simulator in it that I rode.
It was lots of fun, especially since you got to build your own roller coaster and then ride it...
But it wasn't perfect to be sure. Real rollercoasters have wind and that is the one main thing that this was missing.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
This is no roller coaster. How do you simulate the a freefall of 150 ft in 3 seconds in a space that's only a dozen meters tall?
I am working at a machine automation company, and we work with similar robots. Now, it's time to convince the boss to let me 'borrow' some of these expensive pieces of machinery and 'play'. Knowing how easy (relatively) it is to program these robots I think I could have some fun quite easily.. hmmm.. hmmm..
The reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live.
...part of the experience is the heights, the scenery you fly by, and so on. I suppose the riders of this could wear VR helmets, but that would be kinda cheap in comparison. Like playing a motorcycle arcade game versus doing the real thing.
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It'll generate plenty of G-forces. Just not in the same direction for very long. These robots are freaking strong. Their acceleration is *amazing*. And their strength. In underbody respot, they carry huge weld guns that are nothing more than hundreds of pounds of copper with tens of thousands of amps of current going through them. Sometimes the weld transformer (up to another quarter-ton) is attached to the rotating base (hip-mount). These robots move across the car stopping and starting 5 to 20 times within 1mm of the set position. Cycle time from car to car (you must include getting the car out, next car in, positioning, clamping up, welding, unclamping, lifting, and ready to get the next car in) is under 60s. Actual robot time is more like 10-20s. PLENTY of acceleration. And if you program the interference zones wrong, they'll pick up the whole car and the thousand pound "pallet" (sled) that carries it. No Farkin' way I'd get on the same side of a light screen as one of these unless *I* was holding the deadman switch. Oops, sorry "enabling pendant". It's not PC to say "dead" about a machine that could gut you like a trout and not even slow down.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Instead of a "40 foot" arm, build one with a VERY LARGE arm, with the same degrees-of-freedom (or more). I am thinking something like a 150-200 foot long arm (like a huge, multi-jointed, articulated crane arm).
Such a monster of a machine could be easily built with today's technology (look at coal strip mining machines, for example), would take up less space than a conventional coaster, but most important of all, it could easily simulate forward motion (especially if it was a hybrid cartesian/polar/revolute axis type arm, where the base could move laterally in two perpendicular directions, but the arm could still move in a polar or revolute fashion - anybody who works with robot arms knows what I mean here). The size of the machine would make the riders feel they were riding on a virtual track.
While what I was thinking would use way more space than this machine, it would be a great machine for a themepark...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The current form of this ride may not be much, but combine it with audio/video (VR-style), and it can be VERY convincing.
:).
My wife and I went to Universal Studios Florida, and rode a couple of rides that have little motion (relative to a rollercoaster)
The first was the "Back to the Future" ride. The ride consists of a fake DeLorean on an articulated mount. The car never moved more than 3 feet, but the IMAX-like screen in front of us and the slight motion cues from the small movements of the car were very convincing.
The other ride was "Spider-Man". The basic construction was just a (mostly) flat track with cars on it. The cars would shake and rattle a bit, they could swing around very quickly, and there were other effects (like a flamethrower and water spray) to go along with the action. The main attraction was a series of 3D projected movies. This ride was AWESOME. My wife never managed to keep her eyes open during one particular sequence - she got too queasy (even though we rode the thing 3 times and she knew what was coming
Properly done (with surround video and audio), this can be an amazing ride.
- The Sigless Wonder
Raises 'blue screen of death' to a whole new level of meaning.
As an aside, though, I'm not sure how effective it will be at replacing rollercoasters for a number of reasons.
First, it takes up an 11x12m space for every two people on the ride at one time; a typical rollercoaster will have twenty to forty people on one train, often with more than one train running at one time. The experience of running the coaster with twenty other people is different from being on a ride with at most one other person, and I believe that the group experience is part of the attraction. Certainly the Robocoaster will be hard-put to simulate being thrown upward into a loop as another coaster train roars through the middle of the loop, or diving into a tunnel and popping back up. The experience of weaving around and through scenery and other parts of the coaster track is going to be almost impossible to duplicate.
Second, it does not look as if the Robocoaster will be able to simulate the sustained G forces that you can experience on a rollercoaster. I would expect that the design limits of an industrial robot would not permit swinging riders at speeds sufficient to produce the same G forces that can be attained with a rollercoaster, and the short moment arm of the robot would contribute significantly to disorientation and nausea compared to a standard coaster.
Third, from the design, it's clear that the Robocoaster will require continuous power delivery throughout the duration of the ride; a rollercoaster uses power in the lift, brakes, and thrust sections, with the train running on momentum after it departs the lift. I suspect that the power usage of the Robocoaster will exceed the power usage for running the same number of people through a conventional coaster, which would raise the operating costs. On the other hand, the Robocoaster would not have to worry that brake failure might allow two trains to collide.
Fourth, operating a group of Robocoasters to achieve a similar rider throughput as a conventional coaster will require many times the personnel. With a conventional coaster, a single dispatcher and one attendant per ten passengers is all that is required to man a coaster station, but with several Robocoasters, the ride's footprint is such that a single attendant would only be able to handle passengers at, at most, two units, and safety regulations would limit the number of units that a single dispatcher could supervise.
I don't think that the Robocoaster is necessarily going to be a failure, but there are enough aspects of a conventional coaster that it can't duplicate would appear to put the Robocoaster into a specialty niche in thrill rides, competing with but not directly against conventional coasters.