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DARPA Wants Atlas Robot To Go Wireless
mikejuk writes: Atlas is a humanoid robot, one of the most advanced in the world. But it's always had cables that provided it with power and made it look a little like a dog on a leash. It was designed to provide a hardware platform for teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge — a competition designed to encourage the construction of an effective disaster response robot. DARPA now says the finals of the challenge later in the year will require that the robots be completely wireless.
Power will be supplied by an onboard 3.7 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. That battery will drive a variable-pressure pump which operates all of the hydraulic systems. The pump makes ATLAS much quieter, but introduces a complication for the teams: it can be run at low pressure to save power and then switched to high pressure to get harder work done. Managing power consumption will be a very difficult task, but DARPA has also upped the prize money to $3.5 million in total.
Power will be supplied by an onboard 3.7 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. That battery will drive a variable-pressure pump which operates all of the hydraulic systems. The pump makes ATLAS much quieter, but introduces a complication for the teams: it can be run at low pressure to save power and then switched to high pressure to get harder work done. Managing power consumption will be a very difficult task, but DARPA has also upped the prize money to $3.5 million in total.
So operating the robot wirelessly - will that mean it is completely self-contained? By which I mean, does the robot's shell contain all of the computer control / decision-making equipment it needs to operate and move around, or will this equipment remain on separate hardware, transmitting commands wirelessly to a much smaller "movement control" system on-board?
Just wondering if cutting the cords means that the robot could simply be told "go and explore your environment", with the decision-making on where to go, how to get there, how to move to overcome obstacles X, Y and Z (i.e. step over, walk around, duck under, etc), without damaging itself or causing injury to humans, all being performed on-board with no external input (power or control).
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
You need a power source
A typical laptop battery maxes out at 100 Whr capacity. (Above 100 Whr gets problematic with shipping and air travel regulations.) So picture a stack of about 40 laptop battery packs - that's what Atlas' will be lugging around. In the videos, you can see a large briefcase-like box on the back.
I bet it asks everyone it encounters if they have seen John Conner
...in that, with this effort / funds, someone may be able to solve the energy density problem. Even our best batteries are something like 1/30th the density of unleaded fuel. As soon as the electrical energy storage problem is solved the world really will change drastically...flying cars anyone?
neorush
I'm not an engineer and probably not qualified for saying this. But it seems like it has plain(straight) feet. Doesn't that make it harder to walk? I mean human feet seems to support itself mainly with the heel and the ball of the feet, leaving a concave opening with soft tissue. Our feet seem to adapt when we step on something we don't try to balance a straight surface on it.
I for welcome
I for one welcome
I couldn't help but think about the environment that the robot would be operating in. The objective from the post stated it was to create a robot that would help clear disaster recovery areas. Suppose one of those areas became radioactive. It wasn't too long ago that the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred. I'm not 100% on how high the radiation levels were at the time of the disaster, but wouldn't it stand to reason that a robot operating solely off of WiFi commands would have difficulty operating there? Pushing the entire competition into a wireless only mandate seems to do it a disservice.
Radioactivity does not interfere with wireless lan. It does interfere with non rad-hard electronics in general though.
Sure. Just like a wireless phone is completely autonomous.
Wireless means 'not connected to outside devices via a physical connection, such as a cable'. In this particular instance, 'outside devices' includes a power source, so you're going to have to run off whatever is on board.
Nooooo!
Not until we confirm that John Connor is in a safe house.
Hey, it has WiFi and more storage space than a nomad. It's a sure thing!