Build a Robot out of a Car? 264
SomeRobotGuy writes "A researcher in the U.K. is in the process of building an autonomous biped robot out of a Mini Cooper r50. Its functions are controlled by six computers running RTLinux and it's powered by an internal combustion engine. And the thing's not tiny, at over 10 feet tall! The site includes videos showing some impressive results."
It's a nice bit of CG, it might be from MINI (Score:5, Interesting)
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.
It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA.
Strange things indeed.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
It's Not Real (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I guess I don't like the feeling of being duped by a marketing department.
Something like this? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/VWHiRes.
Re:And the final proof (Score:5, Interesting)
Free advertising here on Slashdot.
Cheers
VikingBrad
Re:Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew) (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, the old ones were even more godlike. (Score:2, Interesting)
It had maxed out jump-jets, twelve medium lasers, and maxed heat sinks. Its only other weapon was a machinegun in the head with one ton of ammo, for taking out Elementals and such.
All the lasers were in either the left or right torso, where those arms would shield all of the hits. All the beams would fire at the same time, and hit the same place.
There is nothing like oneshotting an Atlas. Period. Especially when you horizontal-jet in a la Gundam to do so with a glorified beam-saber.
And being in an UrbanMech, I was always ignored until big things started dying.
Don't tell me that it was cheap, I know it was.
(12*6=72 damage, way more than any PPC)
Re:It's a nice bit of CG, it might be from MINI (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Standard Bending Unit? (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, in a perfect world all movie links would be torrent files seeded by the server at a max speed of 10k/sec.
Stealth Marketing directed at Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.
You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.
You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.
This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.
The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.
You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.
Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.
Isn't it amazing? (Score:3, Interesting)
A 1500 lb anything is not going to be particularly quiet when it's moving... heck, I have a cat that makes more noise than that thing does.
This is about as real as a 9 dollar bill.
Re:FAKE! (Score:2, Interesting)
Nail in the coffin of it... (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference in shadow casting between the two objects, when they are both at roughly the same location, is so dramatic that it could not possibly be anything but a hoax.
I had a really long post that I was going to type about disproving the "robot stopping the jeep" through some ideal physics calculations, but my computer locked up on me (and I was lacking an initial velocity value for the Jeep). However, if anyone's a Physics guru and wants to give it a go, I compiled some initial data for it:
Weight of Jeep: ~1800kg.
Weight of Robot (assuming it's still about the same weight as the car it was made from): ~1483kg.
Coefficient of Friction for Car on pavement:
Coefficient of Friction for robot on pavement: ???
(Anyone know the M
Time before stop: ~1.5sec
So what we'd really need is the coeff. of Kinetic Friction for metal on pavement, the initial velocity of the Jeep, and... can't think of anything else. We could then figure out the force, under ideal conditions, that the robot must have been under. My wager is that the force would be significant. But the light difference, as shown in the video linked to above, is proof enough I think. I'll believe the Robot story when I physically touch the thing.
Scaling laws (Score:3, Interesting)
With increasing size the time constant of motion changes (froude number) making larger robots inherently slower. Also other laws indicate that the influence of gravition grows larger, make the robot difficult to control and prone to damage.
There are reasons why nature has not created bipeds of that size.
Re:FAKE! (Score:3, Interesting)
"The gyros are polled at 100Hz, which is overkill considering the height of the robot's CG. With six gyros churning at 100hz, a lot of mission-critical bandwidth is required, so I placed the gyros on their own token-ring controller that is accessible only to the balance and watchdog CPUs. "
100hz is SLOW for low-level feedback control. we run 4-wheel omni-dir robots and they go at 300 hz... i would think that you need an even higher control frequency (and lots of sensors/fast actuators!) when you're balancing a humanoid.
the robots center of gravity has nothing to do with this. also you would probably have more than 6 gyros for this many limbs... and you'd also have accelerometers, etc. a token ring has NOTHING to do we gyro/accel-type sensors. in fact all a gyro/acc requires for output is usually a single wire connection (analog or duty cycle output)
also, humanoids are REALLY difficult to keep balanced, not even speaking of through doing some actions (stopping cars?????). oh yeah, and motors with torque high enough to actually support that thing either a) don't exist or b) are too slow or c) REALLY expensive. take a look at the sony SDR-4X robot ( i think it got renamed recently) and its joints. compare to Honda's ASIMO thats a few years older. etc etc...
Fake Server overload (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nail in the coffin of it... (Score:2, Interesting)
(Walks downstairs to get his Physics textbook)
Okay... What we have here is an interaction between two rigid bodies. (Hmm, I went back to watch the video one more time before doing the calculations... seems the page doesn't exist any more... fascinating...) Anyways, from the point of impact the car seemed to move about a car length (about 4.7 meters) in about 1.5 seconds.
4.7m = 9.7m/s*1.5s + 1/2(a)(1.5s^2)
That gives us, after some brief calculation, a net acceleration of -8.75m/s^2 for the length of the impact.
Let's examine the forces at work on the Jeep at the time of impact: -mg (gravity) and mg (the normal force) in the vertical direction; F(robot) and F(kinetic) in the horizontal direction.
Each of these can be used to determine the F(robot). First, we must find the force of gravity so that we can find the Normal Force. F(g) = mg = 1818kg * (-9.8m/s^2) = -17816N. Utilizing that, we can determine the normal force: F(N) = 17816N.
Excellent, now we can get the F(kin). F(kin) = -Mu * F(N) = .015 * 17816N = -268N... Note that I'm using .015 as the coefficient now, because I just realized that I should be using the "rolling friction" and not simple dragging "kinetic friction".
Now, let's find out what the Fnet should be for the X direction. Fnet = ma = 1818kg * -8.75m/s^2 = -15908N. Now, Fnet in the X direction also equals F(robot) + F(kin).
-15908N = F(robot) - 268N. Therefore F(robot) = 15640N.
Okay, so the force of the Robot on the Car is -15640N, and Netwon's laws dictate that an equal but opposite force must be on the robot by the car. Therefore the force on the Robot's hand as he attempts to stop the car is 15640N.
Now let us examine, as a comparative force, if the car was instead dropped on the robot from directly above. Fnet then = ma = 1818 * -9.8m/s^2 = -17816.4N, relatively close in force to the force being applied on the robot's hand.
I'm fairly new to utilizing physics (I'm taking a class right now =) ), and as such I don't know how to calculate things like the bending or breaking of metal and such, so I'm using a thought experiment now. It's reasonable to believe that if the car was dropped on the robot, the robot would likely be (at least partially) crushed. Since almost the same amount of force occurs against the robot trying to stop the car, some sort of deformation should be taking place.
Anyone who does know the calculations that I don't can feel free to step in here and give us a more accurate value for this stuff... I also feel that the friction of the robot on the pavement plays some part in it, but I'm having a hard time seeing it any further, so I'm going to leave it at this thought experiment until someone with a greater knowledge of Physics can run with the problem from here.