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Inside Mantis: a 2-Ton Hexapod Robot With a Linux Brain
DeviceGuru writes "After four years of development, Micromagic Systems has finally completed the Mantis Hexapod Walking Machine (YouTube video), claimed to be the world's largest all-terrain operational hexapod robot. The device stands nearly three meters tall, weighs just under two tons, and is controlled by a PC/104 module stack running embedded Linux."
Warning, obnoxious dubstep sountrack for video. You have been warned.
The video couldn't have been worse, considering how interesting the subject is.
The videographer should be shot on general principle.
So er it has a driver... That makes it not a robot!
Big body, small brain. I'm not sure that's how we should build machines.
I want my octopod! And I want it to climb walls.
I was really excited to open the video, and... I'm not sure they could have made a 2 ton hexapod vehicle any more boring to watch. Good job?
it went almost 10 feet in 2 min and 100 jump cuts
it put its foot on a pile of stuff then jump cut to it walking on smooth tarmac
it kicked a barrel while standing completely still
meanwhile a stupid mid 80's army hummer can travel at highway speeds. can scale a 3 foot wall, and who gives a shit about a barrel, an empty cylinder is not a problem when you have wheels that dont span 15 feet wide
But does it run Linux?
Oh wait, yes it does. Never mind then.
Bow to the hexapods!
Going from the promo video, the thing is heavy, slow, huge, seats only one and isn't even terrain capable. Maybe Micromagic Systems is a subsidiary of EA?
#notarobot
#notquick
#bumpyride
#ihatespiders
#diedubstepdie
Oh no... it's the future.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these robot overlords running linux, in Russia, throwing chairs !
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
It has a stigma!
Once Skynet takes control of that, we're so fucked.
This sort of technology has been available for some time, I remember seeing this six-legged forest machine complete with crane and cutting machinery back in the early 2000s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYh54Qdh_5g Apprently it was developed in Finland by John Deree, and was only displayed rwecently (2012 press release): http://www.deere.com/wps/dcom/en_US/corporate/our_company/news_and_media/press_releases/2012/forestry/2012apr10_walking_harvester.page
Am I the only one who read the headline three times, before realizing it said "LINUX brain" instead of "HUMAN brain"?
All the people can see is : this "linux brain" is a bit slow...
What is the point of this?
It's slow and probably consumes a lot of fuel.
I'd rather take a car or a motorcycle.
From personal experience.
Never put a PC/104 setup in a system that's going to be subjected to vibration, you'll cause the connector to wear out and eventually one of the important pins on the PC/104 connector will fail. And when it does, the ISA bus presented on the PC104 connector doesn't have any error detection/correction either, meaning your system may not fail gracefully.
Not something you want in a large robot.
So nearly complete. So nearly perfect! If you only have a Linux brain....
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
// Design + Build = Inspire;
I can see why they commented it out.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
,Mantis Toboggan."
Slow as heck and can't actually climb anything (as far as I can tell from the video) which is the only real reason to have legs instead of wheels.
wild wild west cosplay
Wonder if BEAM is being used behind the scenes?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
didnt jamie manzel do this a few years ago? http://jamius.com/Robot/Robot.html
Painfully true. All the jerkyness in the video seems to be to conceal what a klutz the thing is. It's comparable to the OSU Hexapod from 1984. The OSU thing was supposed to have "off-road" capability, but it never did more than climb a slightly sloped dirt road. DoD cut off their funding after that.
As with the machine from 30 years ago, there seems to be an option to plant five legs and take manual control of the sixth. That's how they kicked the barrel. With this capability, the operator can (eventually) step over obstacles and ditches.
Mantis seems to have nice mechanical design. It's certainly better looking than the OSU machine. Without details of the hydraulic system, though, you can't tell how controllable it is. If it's all on-off valves with no accumulators for springiness and no force feedback, it's doomed to be clunky. If it has proportional valves, strain gauges, and accumulators in the right places, it has the potential for software upgrades to better movement.
The Mantis looks like it has pure kinematic control, like the 1980s OSU machine. There's been some progress in computing and control since the 1980s. You can do dynamic control, where balance and inertia are considered. Maybe not as good as BigDog, but better than pure kinematic. That thing should be able to go a lot faster on the flat. Hobbyist hexapod robots are moving faster and much more fluidly today.
This is the year of Linux on..... ummm....the ...... Whatever the hell that thing is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, we don't have autonomous robots yet. But I fear that when we do, we will more likely have self-replicating human killing machines than robots obeying Asmiov's robotic laws. Why? 1. If you propose them seriously, you looking like a fool, because, 2, people won't do that, so therefore #1 is the action of a fool, except 3., people will build robots for the express purposed to kill the enemy or evil doers, because they consider it moral and reasonable. Heck, the US is using drones around the world controlled from bases in the American Southwest. As time goes on more and more of the functions humans control will be taken over by automation.
At least my estimate lifespan is only another 20 years or so...