Slashdot Mirror
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!
I want my octopod! And I want it to climb walls.
But does it run Linux?
Oh wait, yes it does. Never mind then.
Yes, but your mid 80's army hummer doesn't run Linux, and has unformfortable teeth...
Bow to the hexapods!
Running Linux as the OS is no big deal. It is just an OS they could use Windows or DOS if they wanted to. It is the custom software written is more important then the OS. Granted Unix based OSs makes it easier to communicate with hardware, but so what. It isn't like the mid 90s where Linux was new. Linux is widely used. I just never made it in the desktop.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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
Really! Why call it "all terrain" when its really "paved flat surface" . When I read all terrain I was expecting it at least being designed to be able to lift its feet more than 2 feet and for it to be able to place them at an arbitrary height. I think it was twenty years since I saw a thing just like this one... and it required no "software stack" to walk.
#notarobot
#notquick
#bumpyride
#ihatespiders
#diedubstepdie
Oh no... it's the future.
It means it cannot be formforted.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these robot overlords running linux, in Russia, throwing chairs !
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
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"?
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....
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
// Design + Build = Inspire;
I can see why they commented it out.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
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.
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.