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Homebrewed Robot Exoskeleton In Alaska
museumpeace writes "CNET has an article about a robotic exoskeleton ginned up by tinkerer from Alaska There are a few cool pictures. The audacity of Mr. Owens project, if you believe the article, compares to the efforts of the old
Home Brew Computer Club when compared to the work of GE or
Toyota. Inspiration here comes more from sci-fi and video games than from industrial competition. The article is a good roundup of MECHA related developments, some of which sprang from DARPA money, so I am glad at least a few of my tax dollars are having some real geek fun."
I thought they found an ancient robot skeleton buried under the ice or something, it's been a long week.
Well I for one, welcome our new Alaskan Mecha overlords.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Y'know, it occurs to me that this is someone you don't want to piss off with a slashdotting. He's developing the perfect retaliation suit!
John
But, I have a feeling the first step is going to put this flat on it's face.
Anime-ish designs for Mecha (mobile suits) don't translate well into the real world.
If it were me, I would be looking to emulate some of the designs from the original MechWarrior series. They seem a bit more realistic.
Still, love to see this walk/work!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/suit.html
Now THAT would be cool.
it gets lonely in Alaska. :-)
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I hereby demand a battle royale to the death between the homebrewed robot exoskelton and this guy.
Cute addition there with the head crests a la "Patlabor." And yet I'm still rather disappointed. Where is the 14' energy sword? Jet boosters? Particle beam rifle? Facetious, yes, but it is strange that amid these dizzying technological advancements, humanity's achievements in the field of robotics, circa 2004, are analagous to the state of automotive technology circa 1904. Nevertheless, that is some pretty damn fine backyard engineering.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
The control problems are not trivial, and I doubt that this guy will be able to solve them. But a lot of these problems have already been solved by Sarcos. In particular, look at this page, especially at the "Sensuit" and the "Large Arm."
The Large Arm is especially impressive, holding a freakin anvil like it was a stein of beer!
If you could build the whole body of the Sensuit to a large enough scale that the whole pilot can be encased in a haptic feedback harness, you'd have a viable mecha.
The reason no one has ever actively pursued mecha is because they would be so inefficient. Tanks and such are built with a low profile, and if you ask frontline soldiers, they are only useful in limited roles. My army friend much prefers the new strykers because of their flexibility and reliability.
A mecha would be standing 20 feet in the battlefied, an open and tempting target to everything from bombers to tanks to helicopters and to RPGs. It would have limited mobility, be extremely difficult to keep in working condition, and will have less load capacity than its tracked or wheeled counterparts. In short, it would look cool, but would be a useless coffin.
In BattleTech, they make up for the obvious disadvantages of a mecha by giving them advantages over vehicles. Mecha are more reliable, more maneuvarable, able to take more damage and continue to function, and can carry more weapons. Even then, if you pit a balanced vehicle force against a balanced mecha force, ton for ton, credit for credit, the vehicles can easily overpower the mecha in most circumstances.
I don't want to discourage this backyard project. After all, how many inventions were made when there was no necessity, but a necessity was found at a later time? But I do want folks to exercise a bit of common sense. If mecha were such a great idea, we'd have used them in WWII. We certainly had the technology to build them back then.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
To build an operational mecha as a hobby is one thing.
To build it outside in the friggin Alaskan winter... well, there's only one word for that:
OTAKU!!!
(which, by the way, is what is on my housemate's vanity plate, so I speak with first-hand knowlege)
Someone had to do it.
The things men do when there are not enough women around. I guess it keeps his hands from going crazy on those long alaskan nights.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Forget this guy in the post. He clearly doesn't have a clue. But the problems have been largely solved in the past several decades with DARPA money.
If you put a full body haptic interface around someone strapped into a huge robotic body, you'd have it. (See the Immersion Corp link.) But the thing would have to be freaking huge. A full-body haptic cockpit would be something like a sphere 8' in diameter, implying a mecha 30 foot tall!
Perhaps have the cockpit controlling separate and much smaller mecha body remotely, and just have the haptic controls on one of those motion simulation platforms.
Sure, it wouldn't be as "sexy" as the X-Prize, but wouldn't some privately sponsored prize money do wonders for this longtime human dream? Call it, say, the Mecha Prize, and offer a few million bucks to whoever builds the first mecha that can go a half mile, pick up a Dodge Neon and move it in the air for 50 feet, then return to the starting line. Or something similar.
I have no doubt that someone as creative as Rutan is out there, and with a little incentive and the promise of some real financial gain could use modern actuators and pressure pads and gyro sensors and so forth to finally create a useful mecha.
I also have no doubt that (unlike Spaceship One) a mecha that could complete the above test would immediately be of great value in quite a few industrial and/or emergency applications.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
This is way cool and it'd be awesome to see it work, but I'm officially a doubter.