Slashdot Mirror
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..."
Japan would be the first country to build a walking robot that shoots stuff.
It has one autocannon and a single gatling cannon. Where are the Extended range lasers? Or the Crossbow missiles?
I'm actually quite impressed though, but I'd like to see a shot of it actually walking around and such.
Still waiting paitently for the day they're armed with real weapons and used in arena style fights to the death.
Clearly they'd never be used against real people.
Seriously, it's awesome to see two amazing robotic inventions like these - maybe Asimov's vision of a robot-filled future isn't so far off...
Huxley
PS I just can't wait till RoboSharks and Rooba's start mating... Land Shark!
... 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
Now we can pit the robot sharks against the robot suited humans in circle of sweet death.
Laser eyes, baby, laser eyes.
I love technology.
Any word on which 15 year old socially inept angst-ridden teenage son of one of the creators will be chosen to pilot it?
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
"Help!! the terminators are here"
Okay, that's it. If anybody asks me if I've seen John Connor, I'm pointing in your direction.
"Derp de derp."
I wouldn't exactly say this thing walked. It rolled really.
Although this machine is really cool, It is kind of pointless to put guns on it (implying a military purpose) when enemy fighters could escape the contraption by simply fleeing over say, a parking block or curb.
"Completely useless with the pseudo-walking, but still, if I had money, I'd buy 12." ... it'll be the best prom EVER!!
"Derp de derp."
Here's the costume I made to carry my son for Halloween:
http://hallert.net/mech/mechcostume.htm
Here's a video of it in motion:
http://hallert.net/mech/WalkingTheMech.wmv
> Makes me wonder if the creators of shows like Robotech or comics/RPGs like Battletech have any kind of licensening rights on appearance.
This may sound like a troll, but I don't mean it that way:
Just because in this day and age people can sue other people for just about any reason, doesn't mean that everything needs to be turned into a legal issue.
If I was a member of this mecha's development team and I read this, I'd seriously be wondering whether inclusion on slashdot was really such a good thing after all.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Awesome. The Honda robot, those exoskeletons from a couple months ago(for instance the "old people" walker, as if that's the real purpose), this, and the robot that does Tai Chi suggest to me these things: 1) The Japanese are rapidly advancing in bizarre robot technology, in both manned and unmanned forms 2) They may already be armed with strange weapons 3) They're definately already being trained in the martial arts We had better be prepared.
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.
Now might be a good time to get out the old Playstation and start practising against the apparently immeninent take over bid...
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
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)
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
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...
With its top speed, you would be better of walking using your own two legs...
(all you amputees can bite me)
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Oddly enough, this translates to "Sarah Conner Finder"
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I for one welcome our new ... oh, nevermind, it can't even walk right.
Clones are people two.
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.
Hey super, it's up.
Here's a direct link to the movie.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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More info can be found here.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
In what sense? I just watched the movie and, although it's clear that the feet are sliding and probably have wheels under them, do you really think there are any motors attached to them? Unless he's really trying to trick everyone, it's more likely there are only brakes - lock one foot, the other has to slide.
Of course it is possible that the legs are not actually driven and are only made to look like they're the source of motive power, but that would be quite sad...
Jw
Mecha started with "Giant Robots" which were really Japan's way of doing Sci-fi while tying back to its Samurai roots.
When you actually look objectively at what a "Mech" would require, engineeringwise, and how it would pose risks to the human pilot, you realize how it will never become a reality, no matter how much R&D is spent.
When you watch an anime battle with Mecha you see a lot of instances of these things doing hairpin turns and falling to the ground and bouncing around in a jarring fashion. Even today jet pilots can not pull certain maneuvers without blacking out from the G-forces. The kinds of things you see in anime would kill a human pilot instantly without some kind of magical inertial dampener technology. You'd be lucky if you walked away with just a case of whiplash.
Secondly, we just don't have materials strong enough to build one of these. The joints especially are problematic. There is a real limit to how big these can be without being ultra fragile. If one of these were to fall over, not only would you need help to pick it up, but you'd probably also have to repair it.
Third, power supply. All those motors need energy. How long do you think it will run off an internal battery or some noisy gas engine?
I think it's great to try, but just because it LOOKS like something out of anime doesn't mean it's going to be anything close to as functional, and like I said, even if you could magically produce something that could perform like anime, without those intertial dampenders you REALLY wouldn't want to play around with it.
Good analysis, but let me add just one point...
Military vehicle designers have a name for big round blobs sitting on top of stilts. They call it 'a target'. There is a reason that both the Abram's tank and the Hummer are wide flat vehicles. You get the carrying capacity, and if a shell explodes nearby there is less chance of flipping the vehicle. The typical 'mech' design would be easily toppled and rendered useless with a simple hand tossed grenade, and that big round blob provide lots of area to absorb the blast.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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
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