Homemade Mecha Walks in Japan

EtherAlchemist writes "Sakakibara Kikai has pictures and even a movie of their Land Walker robot (Babelfish translation here) which appears to work. Powered by a 250cc gas engine and armed with several guns (including 2 that fire Nerf-like balls) it stands at a little over 3 meters. What makes this one interesting is that it is actually armed and it is piloted instead of being an exo-skeleton. Makes me wonder if the creators of shows like Robotech or comics/RPGs like Battletech have any kind of licensening rights on appearance. I'd like to see a Warhammer..."

Comments

Pretty cool ..

[All Names Have Been]

... Except that it's more of a shuffler than a walker. Still, some cool hacking went into this thing.

In case of a late-night Slashdotting, I've got a copy of the movie stashed temporarily: robo movie

Yes, think R2D2 crossed with Tanya Harding

[Ender's in use2]

It very much rolls, not walks. It's clear that the legs do not even have to move. In fact, it's clear that if they didn't bother rolling the legs forward one after the other then the unit would move about five times faster than it does.

Very disappointing.

Mirror of the Video

[ClamChwdrMan]

Mirror of the vid for everyone: http://www.csupomona.edu/~iwsnyder/robo_s.wmv The video is awesome. I love the nice touches, like the controls for the guns, and the self-lowering windshield.

Watch out for that breeze!

[MrScience]

In the video, it is a bit unsturdy, I hope the guy piloting it doesn't get sea/car/motion/robot sickness easily.
Looks like it uses wheels in the feet to move around (interesting that it can pivot without having to reposition the feet). That design decision reduces the types of terrain available to traversing, though.

Reminds me a lot of the Mini Cooper "robot". I'd be suprised if the Land Walker were fake, though... it's just too imperfect. :)

I love the progress of science. I want a real Steel Battalion vertical tank! (awesome game, btw)

Reason why it shuffles and doesn't walk

[taneem]

It takes too much power to drive actuators to raise the feet off the ground. A lot more energy efficient to use the wheels. Of course, it's a lot more complicated to build a walking mech too, and what they've built thus far is remarkable already. Still, they take a hit in terms of agility - this mecha ain't going nowhere fast. Now it needs a jetpack...

video mirror...

[ethan_clark]

http://monkeyvoodoo.net/sakakibara-kikai/robo_s.wm v

Do the Shuffle

[MDMurphy]

While it has legs, it's really a stretch to call this walking.
Now this is a walker: http://www.plustech.fi/Walking1.html
Video: http://www.plustech.fi/WalkingVideo.html

Yes, it has more than 2 legs, but at least they come off the ground and wouldn't be stopped dead in it's tracks by a speed bump.

The walker reference probably came from it's gait, it looks like an old man in slippers while pushing a walker in front of him.

Re:Do the Shuffle

[Lumpy]

That has the advantage of 6 legs.

The problem is that we do not have any mechanical systems that can move rapid enough and accurate enough to mimic biped standing walking and running, espically in a 12 ton mecha form. as soon as someone invents that then your desire would come true in the form of forestry and construction equipment. They would KILL for a machine with the agility of a biped and the speed of a wheeled vehicle.

the human legs are insanely accurate and fast devices, performing tons of micro adjustments every second. Look at a master of karate, he/she can kick so fast it looks like a blur yet stop their foot 1 inch from your face. computer technology is fast enough to handle that processing but there is no high strength mechanical actuation systems that can.

and honestly mechanical systems are still very much primitive with only small advances because there has been no need for high speed, high strength, high acuracy yet.

"Warhammer"?

[Futaba-chan]

I'd like to see a Warhammer..."

You mean a Destroid Tomahawk, yes? The original mecha that FASA ripped off to make the Warhammer? There's a reason why no one has seen a Warhammer in a while....

Um, besides the fact that mecha don't actually exist.

Um, except that they do now, apparently.

Um.

Re:"Warhammer"?

[EvilFrog]

FASA didn't rip off those designs. They licensed them.

Unfortunately the company they licensed them was a licensee themselves, and it turned out they didn't have the right to offer a sublicense to begin with. Oops.

Anyway, FASA might have actually had a chance in court, but they didn't have the finances to fight Harmony Gold (a much larger company).

Re:Oh Babelfish...

[eganloo]

Close ... the Japanese word for "cancer" is "gan"--which is pronounced the same way as the Japanese word for "gun" ("gan").

Re:Another Mirror

[nmb3000]

Hey super, it's up.

Here's a direct link to the movie.

Not Likely

[wirefarm]

People sue a *lot* less here in Japan than they do in the US.
Corporations may a bit more, but it's just not a litigious society.

Sadly, unlikely to ever happen

[DG]

Disclaimer: I'm a retired real-life Armoured officer - and incidently, a former hard-core Battletech (board game!) player.

Sadly, there's a few reasons why we're unlikely to ever see 'mechs striding the landscape:

1) Vulnerability. Modern anti-armour weapons, especially guns, are insanely powerful. The 120mm gun in the M1A2, when equipped with the latest APFSDS ammo, has a muzzle velocity of over 1800 m/s, and a penatrative capacity of 960mm of Rolled Homogeneous armour - yes, nearly a full metre of solid steel. 1 cubic metre of steel weighs roughly 17,000 lbs

Tanks get away from this by using armour that has greater protection capacity at thinner thicknesses, and heavily armouring only the portions of the tank likely to see fire - the turret, and the front of the tank. Tank commanders are heavily trained to use terrain and situational awareness to keep the armour pointed at the enemy. The punishments for getting caught "tracks up to the world" or "broadsides" were severe (although not as severe as what the enemy could dish out)

Ideally, the only part of the tank visible to the enemy at any given point in time is the gun muzzle and the front of the turret.

Effectively, the armour on the turret is worth about 800-900mm of RHA, and the glacis is between 500-600mm. The sides, top, and rear are much, much less - and the way that you generate those high effective thicknesses is through the use of super-dense materials like depleted uranium - lighter than the equivelent resistive thickness of steel, but still not exactly light.

Your Atlas, even if the front arcs are more heavily armoured than the rear, stands so much taller than a tank that concealment and the use of terrain will be much tougher, if not impossible. That means that the forward arcs will have to be *at least* as well armoured as the turret of an M1, and it has a MUCH larger surface area to cover. That's going to weigh a LOT more than 100 tons.

2) Mobility: Given the massive weight of the chassis (dictated by the armour it needs to carry) and the high ground pressure (dictated by the bipedal form factor) this thing is going to tear up terrain like nobodies' business. Tanks, with low ground pressure and (typically) rubber-padded tracks, still rip the shit out of roadways and open country. Your Atlas is going to be far, far worse. It will be difficult to move any number of them from place to place without transforming the roadway into an untraversable morass, and bridges will be right out of the question.

Even assuming ideal conditions, mobility is still going to suffer. In a world dominated by line-of-sight projectile weapons, the proper place for a biped is on his stomach - or squatting. Soldiers walk and run, yes - but only for short distances. A quick burst of speed to the next position of cover, and then dive on your face.

I doubt your Atlas will dive more than once.

There are other reasons... but the basic problem is one of scale. Bipeds do not scale well past a certain size.

DG