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Segway's Robotic Mobility Platform
XopherMV writes "USA Today reports a military project aimed at building smarter robots has given researchers the wheels they need to make their automatons go. Originally developed by New Hampshire-based Segway for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, the firm's Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP) allows robot developers to focus more on the thinking power of their machines while providing a quick mode of transportation.
Segway's self-balancing robot platform takes up about 2 square feet and comes equipped with software and interface electronics necessary to receive, process and execute commands from an onboard robot payload.
"It was a minor modification to what we had," Morrell said. "The challenges for us were largely in declining to get too fancy, and keeping it really simple."
Capable of carrying 100 pounds (45 kilograms) and moving about 8 miles (12 kilometers) an hour, the platform has two different modes. Researchers can choose between its standalone function as a robot's wheels or a tractor-like mode for towing trailers or other loads.
"The goal is not to have researchers worry about transportation," Morrell said. "That way, if [a robot's computer algorithms] work on an RMP, then you could put it on a Hummer or anything else.""
I for one welcome our Segway powered over^H^H^H^H... oh, found the on/off switch!
that's the hallmark of a number of awesome inventions - the aim was simplicity at the outset. That's not say it won't get complicated later on, but when you start out complicated more often the complication (and the associated cost) takes over from the crux of the idea.
Iran has endorsed
Monster Segway Robot Challenge! (Only this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You saw it here first!
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Just point out that the Segway ain't nothing but a sidewheeled scooter with a Pentium in the base.
Maybe that is why Steve Jobs shits his pants whenever he sees one.
Rosy the Jetsons maid, Tik Tok of Oz and B9 are out of luck this time.
How easy is it to mount hydraulic hammers and saws and slamming pickaxes onto this thing? I need to know in time to finish my new "RoboGinsu" in time for the next battlebots tournament.
I like this idea - I dont really care if Segway is the best method but its great that researchers (and hobbiests if the price goes down) can use a simple building block.
Anything that gets robots out to the consumer is good - I am still suprised that robots have taken such a lot time to be sellable. I want my drink retrieving, vaccuum cleaning, walking, talking robot - Damnit!!
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I totally can't see the use for this.
Well actually I can, if I walk around the "battlefield training" areas where americans test their weapons. You know, like the bombing range where they tested the norton bomb sights. A location chosen for its all year around clear weather.
What can a segway possibly be used for. Well it is slow as well but about as fast as a marching soldier so it can save them energy. Well true. If the battle field is nice and smooth with a hard surface. No rain, mud, loose sand, rivers, streams, shell holes, trenches, fences, barbed wire, loose stones etc etc etc. None of the stuff in fact that makes up a battlefield
Even an urban battlefield doesn't stay clean enough for long for this thing to be practical.
Behind the battlefield? Ehm yeah the thing is still damn slow and your still standing. So no replament for a truck.
Carrying supplies or wounded? Same problem, at the battlefield where trucks and such are to big it can't move and behind the lines it is to slow.
Even a soldier on patrol is useless, he needs his hands on his weapon not on the controls of this thing, at least with a truck you got 1 driver and 2-3 passengers.
No I can see this as another way to make war look nicer and cleaner. This will not be the revolution that the jeep was.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That could potentially make a mean battlebot! Combined with some army effort to incorporate real firepower and combat effectiveness on the platform and woohoo, battlebot world championship, here I come!
Dude, did you read the article? It was talking about robots using them - Not people.
"...about as fast as a marching soldier..." Wow! that's one fast march. An average walking pace is 2 to 3 mph. At 8 mph you'd have to be running to keep up with it.
stupid americans and their imperial system, I blame bush.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As a person who is right in the 'likely to get drafted if there's a draft' demographic, I say bring on the military robots ASAP! I look forward to the day when pilotless aircraft and driverless vehicles battle it out instead of humans. Who knows, one day we might have a world war with no human casualties. The winner would be the side who manages to get their robots past the opposition's defensive lines to trash up the enemy's electricity, computer systems, telecommunications etc, thereby essentially crippling any semi-modernised economy.
Plus suddenly the draft won't seem quite so scary - "Son, how you like to sit on your butt playing with hi-tech gadgets that can really fly and blow each other up?" sounds a lot more fun than "Son, how would you like to stand around on a street corner in Baghdad waiting to get blown up?"
Of course, as an alternative I could just ask all of you to be smart enough not to re-elect Bush. But if I have to pick between the average voter being 'smart' and giant cyborgs fighting our wars on a high tech battlefield of the future, I guess I'll have to forget about crazy pipe dreams and bank on the robots...*
*NB - even if you do re-elect Bush I'm going to dodge the draft anyway, so it's really you who will be drafted, not me, but the point's the same I guess.
Read Pynchon.
Read the article. It is just a test bed for the software and other sensors. The scientists developing software and other sensors won't have to also develop the components to move the sensors around. The sensors and software can later be added to other, more capable, mobility platforms.
For example, there is no reason the software and sensors couldn't be added to a truck, to either deliver cargo between point A and B automatically, or to follow one lead vehicle in a convoy.
>Even a soldier on patrol is useless, he needs his hands on his weapon not on the controls of this thing, at least with a truck you got 1 driver and 2-3 passengers.
Yes, but if the robot could be programmed to follow the soldier automatically, carrying his ruck or additional cargo (weapons, ammo, sensors, commo gear), then the soldier is better able to shoot, move, and communicate.
The soldier could also have the option of making a relatively inexpensive robot travel in front, tripping mines or other booby traps, serving as point man. (Which the packbot already does.)
It isn't meant to carry people. Put a gun on it, and you can send a bunch to places where you expect 90% casually rates, without worry. The few that make it take out the target, then people come latter, gather all the ones that didn't make it and fix them. No loss of life.
Issues like knowing who to shoot, telling the good guys from the bad, and the laws of robots are left as an exercise for the reader. :)
The Masters of Useless Technology have finally discovered the biggest consumers of useless crap that has ever existed - the US military, and boy those pockets are deep.
This is sort of like when the RIAA discovered the disposable income of teenagers, but with added gore.
Bush has said often that there will not be a draft, there are enough troops. In fact more than enough, the military doesn't take everyone who walks through their doors trying to get in.
Kerry says we need 40,000 more troops. Where is he going to get them? True he can start with those who were refused, but is that enough?
Kerry has said that he would go to war in Iraq. He hasn't been real clear, and who knows what he would have really done, but there is a good chance that if he was president now there would still be troops in Iraq.
Some democrats (Not kerry, AFAIK) have tried to start a draft. Call a political play, but the fact is it is the democrats that are trying to start the draft.
In short, you are more in danger - on this issue - if Kerry is elected. There are, of course, thousands of issues. Study them and make a decision based on facts, not feelings.
Have you ever been on a military march? it is close to running slowly, with 40lbs on your back. It's hell the first few times you do it. Average pace is about 10 minute miles.
Perhaps Dean Kamen's super-mobility wheelchairs will help the people maimed by Dean Kamen's super-mobility killer robots!
We've had a couple of these for the past year or so. They're currently being developed into soccer-playing robots as part of Robocup.
The goal there is to have a team of humans on segways play segway robots in an actual soccer match.
The project's website, which has a movie page with a ton of movies of the thing in action is here.
im sorry, do you really think that BOTH SIDES are going to have robots? do you really think its going to end up robot vs robot?
what you are going to have, is a bunch of robot soldiers going in and killing humans, human soldiers and human civilians of the country that has the less money.
god, people like you make me want to vomit
you are like charlie in wonka's chocolate factory. maybe there is one honest kid on slashdot.
the rest? their eyes glaze over and they make up lies about how this will 'save life'. in order to justify their techno lust.
Judging from the replies here, I'm guessing none of you have seen the new segway centaur prototype. It has been shown working its way about grassy terrain, and moving over obstacles such as boxes. While it is a 4 wheeled vehicle, it also has the power to do the two wheeled balancing act of its older segway cousin. i suggest you all check it out, before dooming this military project.
http://www.segway.com/centaur/
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
What do they want these robots to do?
If they want to trasport supplies, the ground-based is a requirement.
However, if they want Robot Scouts or Soldiers, I think that there are better ideas.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
here.
But that's no longer the case. There are many good off the shelf bases. Cybermotion, iRobot, Arrick, ActiveMedia, Klephera, and Zagros all make wheeled robot bases. Even legged machines are available.
Right now, the big bottleneck is sensing. Visual processing still doesn't work (the hardware is fine, but the theory doesn't work), true 3D laser rangefingers aren't here yet (although I've seen one working on an optical bench) and submillimeter radar hasn't reached production yet (millimeter radar has limited resolution.) Most of the hobbyist world is still using 1980s ultrasonic devices, IR reflectance sensors, and feelers, which don't work any better than they did in the 1980s.
Anyway, Here are some movies of the RMP running the Player Robot Server (GPL, naturally). If you want to try programming a Segway RMP, but haven't got one sitting around, you can use the Gazebo robot simulator with Player - your code won't know the difference.
(Please, please somebody mirror these movies before we brown-out Southern California. Sorry Andrew...)
So when do I get one of these??
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/du-afghanista n2.html
After we move on to robots, we don't have to put any more of our own at risk of DU. Just send the robot platoon to mow them dogs down with DU. WAHOO!
Looks like the military segbots are already getting in trouble with the police: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~carmen/segbot/images/cops /index.html
I can see it now: "World's Wildest Robot Chases"
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Sounds like mind-bogglingly good exercise.
I worked on developing software for a Segway RMP at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. While it's kinda cool to have a self balancing robot, it has no real advantages over more conventional models.
Bush has said repeatedly that there will not be a draft.
It is true he said this, and it is also true that this is a lie on his part.
It will not be the first lie that he has told, and it wouldn't even be the biggest lie that he has told.
A vote for Bush will be a vote for 1) A military draft, 2) Massive social disruption and unrest as a result of the draft, and 3) Draconian supression of free-speech and free assembly in an attempt to enforce the draft.
If Bush is elected, expect a draft to begin no later than December 2005, and probably earlier.
So as I understand this, this is a free-standing propulsion system for robots. Would-be robot-makers need no longer worry about keeping the thing on its feet--just buy one of these modified Robo-Segway packages, configure your software, and plug it in. It's sort of like open-source, except with hardware and for money. (Emphasis on "sort of".)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
Except... I'm quite serious.
The US Army currently is almost completelly out of unutilized soldiers.
There are currently 500,000 Regular Army troops, and there are currently 500,000 total Army troops stationed overseas.
If it wasn't for the 200,000 Army reserve troops who are currently assigned "indefinately" to active service, we'd be OUT of foot soldiers.
As an example of how low manpower reserves are, they've reassigned the 11th ACR from the NTC at Ft. Irwin to duty in Iraq.
The unit that is tasked with TRAINING other units in desert warfare, has now been sent to the front.
When you start sending your training cadres to the front, it means you have NOTHING left to assign.
Either we start to bring troops back from Iraq within the next 12 months, or we HAVE to have a draft.
Or... hahahaahaha.. raise the pay of infantry troops to market rates to increase the number of volunteers.
Let's see.. will the staunch supporters of free-markets and capitalism follow the rules of the free market and raise pay for soldiers because of rising demand, OR will they simply institute involuntary servitude to force people to die for a cause they're not willing to volunteer for?
Right. A Draft. In 2005. If Bush wins.
I can't bring up the merits of "my guy", because there is quite frankly no one running who represents me or my interests in this election.
I'll be voting for John Kerry, largely because Kerry had the good fortune to be born "Not Bush".
That's not a pro-Kerry stance, that's an Anti-Bush stance.
In fact, NOBODY should ever have to bring up even one word in defense of John Kerry or his record, because John Kerry and his record have ZERO relevance to the George Bush presidency.
Whether Kerry is too tall, too thin, too rich, not wounded enough, too flip-floppy, too windsurfy, or too much or too little of anything, has NO relevance to George Bush's record.
George Bush's record should speak for itself.
Segway: Cool, but over-hyped solution to a solved problem. The bicycle and motorcycle are much better solutions. Give it up, already. Anyone remember the days when people like Steve Jobs were saying this gadget would "change the way cities are made"? Please, let the segway fade into obscurity and die.
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Why does tech always get hijacked by the military ?
This mobility platform would be totally useful for firefighting, aid distribution, disaster relief, surveying...i'm sure there are other non violent use.
How about connecting a number of them in series to form a n-wheel drive cross country train, which can split into smaller parts and recombine as nessesary ?
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199