Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Oh man, this is just so super cool! It walk like an old man shuffling to the bathroom but it can turn and move backward. If the creator could move the legs faster, lift them up, and somehow balance the entire machine the thing would be even more cool. BTW, the gun fires big rubber balls. Ouch!
The translated page
This is not just your normal little walking robot. It uses genetic algorithms to discover new ways of moving on its own.
Now until September there in the world expo going on in Achi Japan. Here are a few glimpses of what has been going on. (If you click on an image on the translated page you may get an error page in Japanese. To avoid this, open the picture link in another tab and use that to view the images)
I’d go there in a second if I could get someone to pay my way, anyone looking for a photojournalist to cover the event? 🙂
Robots and Energy House:
Expo ’05 – Robots – English
Use to look at the pictures on the page:
Expo ’05 – Robots – PHOTOS
Global House, Mamoth and space stuff:
Xepo ’05 – Global House – English
Use to look at the pictures on the page:
Expo ’05 – Global House – PHOTOS
Oooo… Very cool.
Use of pneumatic bellows for joint actuation. Bellows are powerful, naturally compliant, and take up minimal space. Maximal coverage of all sides of all segments with extra wide moving tracks. Unique pneumatic control method allows simultaneous proportional control of stiffness and joint angles. The “drive shaft spine” is powered by a single electric motor in the center segment. The spine runs through the center of all segments and provides torque to the all tracks.
New robot kit (coming soon) on the market, still priced rather high ($300) but has a controller that should kick ass.
Each kit contains everything necessary to build an radio-controlled Erector-set-style robot including a pro-level, six-channel radio controller, a programmable micro controller, and hundreds of nuts, bolts, gears, wheels, and flexible metal bars that you can bend into almost any shape and even cut into pieces. Radio Shack says there are over 500 parts in each 2- by 2-foot box.
No mention of a speed controller but maybe that’s something you can buy later.
The large metal plates remind me of parts that I found in the Robocon store in Japan. They had those and other beams and plates that looked like some sort of industrial Meccano set.
I was reading ‘Blogs of War‘ tonight and happened across this note about ‘project Falcon’:
The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials say.
This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads,The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
(More here on Xinhua)
I found some more info on it over at military.com:
You’ve got less than 2 hours to strike an HVT 9,000 miles away. Who are you going to call? How about the FALCON program? Initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force, the program hopes to give the U.S. a global prompt strike capability by using hypersonic sub-orbital vehicles — autonomous, remotely operated and reusable — to deliver its payload to targets worldwide.
(full text here: CRUISING IN OVERDRIVE: The FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle)
I’m going to group this into the same category as the new land robots with firearms mounted on them. It is something that if used for good could keep balance in the world, but if used for evil or against the common good, it could really screw up the planet. War should never become an easy option for anyone, but what can you do? Technology marches on, I can only hope that we gain the wisdom of the past so we can safeguard the future.
By the way, the flight opperations sound a lot like the old Dynasoar program on the ’50s. Up to 60km, glide and drop to 35Km and then boost up to 40Km and repeat until the target is reached.
If you ask me, getting 12,000 pounds of cargo 9000 miles in two hours would be the ‘killer app’ of the package delivery business. FalconFedEx anyone? (But then it wouln’t kill anyone and could never get the deep pocket funding that the military has. Baka.)