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Robotics + Car = Hallucigenia

Posted by timothy on from the street-drug dept.

News for nerds writes "I4U has news about a new transportation concept, called The Hallucigenia 01, which is a working 1/5 scale vehicle prototype, designed by Japanese design firm Leading Edge Design. PC Watch (Japanese) has photos and movies. Its 8 wheels are independent robotic arms controlled by their own satellite CPUs, interconnected to the main CPU by an internal LAN."

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. I don't get it by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why does it need to have multiple computers networked? Doesn't this add latency that could be very dangerous at high speed? Wouldn't one computer, rather than several, with the proper sensory and control hardware be a better choice? Will I only use question marks to end sentences in this post?

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  2. Yes. Great. More to go wrong. by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the central tenents of all good engineering is "As complex as is needed, and NO MORE." Any more you add after that point is just "more to go wrong".

    Eight wheels, eight suspension systems, eight control systems. True, perhaps the system is designed with failure in mind, but think about owning this as a vehicle for normal use - how often will you be taking in to be fixed, because one or more wheels have broken?

    It's just like the fools who buy 4 wheel drive SUVs when what they need is a minivan - now they have what amounts to a whole extra powertrain to go wrong.

    Now, if the intent was for this to be used in unusual circumstances (forestry work, extreme rough road work or the like) I could believe this was "as complex as needed but no more".

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    1. Re:Yes. Great. More to go wrong. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The question is, how many wheels does this thing need to drive? If it can drive on four wheels then this is safer than a car. If it needs all eight (or close to it) then it's less so.

      BTW, they make AWD minivans, too. And everyone needs AWD because it's more stable all the time, at least if you have limited slip diffs. (And viscous limited slips just about never wear out, before you object to THAT.)

      Oh sure, people can live without AWD... but plenty of people dead today would be alive if they had it. Those people who died because they were hotdogging would have done something even more ridiculous with AWD and thus could not be saved, but I'm not talking about them :P

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Yes. Great. More to go wrong. by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I guess you missed the picture of it climbing stairs, staying level on hills, and changing direction 90 degrees without changing yaw. That's why it has eight wheels.

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      If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
    3. Re:Yes. Great. More to go wrong. by Uma+Thurman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is the modern car with the modern computer controlled internal combustion engine you're talking about. If you've looked under the hood recently, you'd see that 4 extra wheels could only add a tiny smidge to the complexity that's already there.

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