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XRL Hexapod Robot Gets a Tail, Learns To Use It
New submitter toygeek writes "In an effort to give various robots more control during free-fall and navigation of severe obstacles, researchers have studied how agama lizards use their tails to retain or correct orientation during leaps and jumps. They've applied the research to both hexapod and wheeled robots, and the results are both astounding, and outstanding!"
You can mark this as a troll, but I assure you I am totally serious and I want to ask for advice. I can not think of anywhere else to post anonymously that smart people read. I am finalizing a plan to kill me. Please do not bother to try to stop me. I have my reasons, and I thought, as well as the heavy with pros and cons to all options. I will take my life alone, without voilence towards any other people. My question to all this mean. I married the love of my life a few months ago. For the record, has nothing to do with this, and I could not imagine finding another girl as wonderful as she is. I have a $ 10K life insurance through my employer, but will not pay for suicide. I am looking for insurance that will. I can not think of any way to do that reasonably can not be removed as a suicide attempt. My plan is to park my car in a nature reserve just to shoot me in the head. No witnesses, no explosions, no shit. Someone must have looked before. I just want to make sure she's in charge. The pain of having to look after my final arrangements is bad enough without having to break later due to my lack of income. The dead do not bring home paychecks. I have about $ 1500 on my credit cards and about $ 8k in savings, so I will not be out of debt at all. I just want to make sure she's in charge. The serious answers would be greatly appreciated. Pardon my English is not my native language.
It could lead to an anti-gravity robot.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
UC Berkeley researchers, please: Stop now. No good can come from this, and we all know it.
We already have enough trouble getting laid, and yet you would put us on the path to anthropomorphic clydesdales?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You could ask yourself, could life be made worth living for you? Also, you could look into vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency, phyto-nutrient deficiency, omega-3 deficiency, sleep deficiency, and so on (and avoiding refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour). More info on heath issues here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
A life is like a growing tree. What keeps a tree from toppling over in the storms of life is deep roots. To reduce the risk of toppling over in a strom, grow your roots -- friends, family, community, neighbors, hobbies, recreations, communing with the infinite, nature, music, and so on.
See also:
"Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals"
http://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Nights_of_the_Soul.html?id=EG1E8boPodQC
"Every human journey is filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments, or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these "dark nights" in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Thomas Moore's extensive career as a psychologist and theologian has taught him that honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and opportunities to delve into the soul's deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life's meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transforming rites of passage. Moore shows specific ways to engage life more deeply through particular challenges and shares a powerful new outlook. With the soothing, accessible tone and practical philosophy that have made Moore an internationally beloved author, Dark Nights of the Soul will help you tend to the deepest needs of the heart and spirit in a modern world full of life's challenges, and is sure to be a comforting companion during your most difficult times. Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul comes the long-anticipated sequel, an uplifting and groundbreaking approach to life's darkest hours. Moore shows specific ways to engage life more deeply through particular challenges and shares a powerful new outlook on such topics as: The healing power of melancholy; The sexual dark night and the mysteries of matrimony; Finding solace during illness and in aging; Anxiety, anger, and temporary Insanities; Linking creativity, spirituality, and emotional struggles; Finding meaning and beauty in the darkness."
Or, as Howard Zinn said:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
...by the words, 'That tail is so adorable!'
They should have just tied a slice of buttered bread to it's back.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Imagine what this could do for toast.
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
More "keep the rich colleges rich" schemes.
Can we please have some robotics research on something that is not obvious to a 3 year old with a cat? Making this practical and useful would be a decent start. What I see here is of 0 value. You move something you get a reaction, react fast enough it does things - big fucking yawn. Ever hear of a gyro?
Again I ask, how much of my tax money got spent on that? It's fraud.
For the moment I would support a law that says all (US) public money should be in support of current darpa challenges only. Anything else, take it private.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Wouldn't a flywheel be much more practical?
Tail:
-gets caught on stuff
-can only go half a turn
Flywheel:
-can accelerate until the material limits of the fly wheel
-can use the stored energy for recovery.
-can be embedded inside the robot.
-can act as a gyroscope to provide stability in other axes.
46137
If you aren't in fact a troll, then please stop. Get help. Go to your nearest hospital, tell them your plan, and be honest.
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I have been *this* close to stepping in front of a fast moving train. I went to my psychologist, and I spent a week in a mental hospital. It saved my life. I was on very strong anti-depressants for over 10 years, and am now (prescription and otherwise) drug free. If anyone's ever been completely whacked in the head, and ready to kill myself, I have.
Two things changed me. 1) Two of my relatives killed themselves. My stepdad, via alcoholism ("if you drink more, it'll kill you" glug glug glug) and one via a pill cocktail. What I went through, and what my family went through, were not something I ever want to put another person through.
The second thing: Learning to actually cope with my problems instead of being buried by them, and in turn burying my feelings. That killed me emotionally and almost killed my physically.
I know it seems like there is no way out. But to actually kill yourself will NOT give you relief. It will end your suffering, but that same suffering, and worse will be transferred to others. Additionally, you won't be around to ENJOY the relief!
One more thing: If you STOP, GET HELP, and ACT on the help you're given, in 10, 5, even 2 years from now, this will all be a DISTANT MEMORY and you'll be SO GLAD you did not act foolishly and selfishly.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Worked that out back in 1995. See this the "running on rough terrain video. Watch at 1:40.
The next step, which the U. Penn people don't seem to have taken yet, is to solve this as a two-point boundary value problem. Then, instead of trying to maintain attitude during flight, you try to land at a specific time in a specific place with a specific attitude.
Doing that is rocket science. Rocket science is about control of underactuated systems, where the control system has fewer actuators than there are degrees of freedom to be controlled. You want to reach a specified point at a specified time at a specified velocity in a specified attitude. All you have available is the ability to thrust in one direction and to change attitude slowly. But this problem is solveable and there are known solutions. Applying that to robots leads to gymnastics.
The quadrotor people are already doing this kind of thing, but it hasn't been done much for legged machines yet.
I want a tail. A prehensile monkey tail. I'd prefer to grow my own but if robotics get the solution before genetics I'll take a prosthetic one.
I have thought about it. Often. But probably not come as close as you sound like you are.
But bear this in mind: your brain cannot tell when it is coming up with the wrong answers to questions. There is no error-detection / correction. So you need to rely on other people to help solve problems sometimes.
Having a "plan" may trick your brain into thinking that it feels better. But you have not solved any problem with this plan; its illusion.
Try to have one good day. Just forget about your problems and your plan and have a good day. Dont spend money; just try to enjoy breathing. Then come up with a new plan to get out from the spot you are in. It will feel good to have a plan that doesnt involve violence.
I'm not a mechanical engineer, but I am a mathematician with a modicum of experience solving two-point boundary value problems, which are what you are up against when you have an energy budget and have fewer thrusters than degrees of freedom. Angular momentum (and the conservation thereof) is a much better approach, I would think...watch some Olympic gymnasts if you want to see some fine examples of human wetware doing this in real-time.
Your brain may be tricking you. Suicide is absurd. Life is better than death. It is great to exist. If your brain tells you otherwise, most likely it is buggy. Get professional help. Please!
And a suicide is _awful_ for your friends and loved ones. Besides the expected sadness of losing a friend, they will be tormented by thoughts of "would he have decided otherwise if I had been a better friend?"
Besides, suicide can fail, and then you will add physical disability to your existing problems! I could share some pictures of failed suicides with you, but they are too shocking.
If you think people with hardships cannot be happy, check http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/
Courage!
Since you are dealing with 3D space, you will need *4* points of awareness to keep the center of gravity in balance. You might think that 3 legs and one tail would be best, but then you have to deal with a disbalanced processing problem: triangulation in space, followed by an add-on to balance that. Better to deal with three 2-point axle balancing problems instead. (A:B, C:D, AB:CD).
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.