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Farmer Builds Robot Army
46-year-old Wu Yulu has only a basic school education but has managed to build himself 26 robots from scrap materials over the past 30 years. At first his creations were simple and could barely shuffle along by themselves. The robots got more complex as time passed, and eventually he built ones capable of climbing walls, serving water, lighting cigarettes, playing musical instruments and writing calligraphy. "When I was 11, one day I was sitting on the doorstep, and while watching villagers passing by I suddenly came up with the idea of building a machine that walks like a man," he told the Beijing Times.
I take my hat of for somebody with no study in the field whatsoever who builds a robot that can walk and pull a rickshaw. I'm not a robotics expert, but for me this means at least that he knows to: - Create the right circuitry - Program some microcontroller - Control motors - Calculate mechanical forces and equations to keep the robot in balance - Use the right sensors to ensure that closed-loop feedback & steering is possible to keep the robot in balance Is anybody else here wondering whether this is even possible for him to learn all that stuff without guidance (given that he's a farmer who must provide for his family and presumably doesn't have the time to fiddle with robots _and_ study) ?