Homebrewed Robot Exoskeleton In Alaska

museumpeace writes "CNET has an article about a robotic exoskeleton ginned up by tinkerer from Alaska There are a few cool pictures. The audacity of Mr. Owens project, if you believe the article, compares to the efforts of the old Home Brew Computer Club when compared to the work of GE or Toyota. Inspiration here comes more from sci-fi and video games than from industrial competition. The article is a good roundup of MECHA related developments, some of which sprang from DARPA money, so I am glad at least a few of my tax dollars are having some real geek fun."

Sorry...

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

This is very cool, and geek-factor 11...

But, I have a feeling the first step is going to put this flat on it's face.

Anime-ish designs for Mecha (mobile suits) don't translate well into the real world.

If it were me, I would be looking to emulate some of the designs from the original MechWarrior series. They seem a bit more realistic.

Still, love to see this walk/work!

Techical knowledge is there, but not with this guy

[StCredZero]

The control problems are not trivial, and I doubt that this guy will be able to solve them. But a lot of these problems have already been solved by Sarcos [sarcos.com]. In particular, look at this page [sarcos.com], especially at the "Sensuit" and the "Large Arm."

The Large Arm is especially impressive, holding a freakin anvil like it was a stein of beer!

If you could build the whole body of the Sensuit to a large enough scale that the whole pilot can be encased in a haptic feedback harness, you'd have a viable mecha.

Other *Real* Mecha/Teleop links

[StCredZero]

• TOPS/CVM [nosc.mil]
• Immersion Haptic Workstation [immersion.com]
• Utah Dextrous Hand Master [utah.edu]
• Green Man [nosc.mil]

Forget this guy in the post. He clearly doesn't have a clue. But the problems have been largely solved in the past several decades with DARPA money.

If you put a full body haptic interface around someone strapped into a huge robotic body, you'd have it. (See the Immersion Corp link.) But the thing would have to be freaking huge. A full-body haptic cockpit would be something like a sphere 8' in diameter, implying a mecha 30 foot tall!

Perhaps have the cockpit controlling separate and much smaller mecha body remotely, and just have the haptic controls on one of those motion simulation platforms.

Re:Giant Robot Website Crushed By /.

[plover]

He can get on any plane he wants to. Who's going to stop MechaCarlos? Puny airport security guards? Bah! They are but the buzzing of flies to MechaCarlos!

Now, you get the TSA to hire Gundam, then we'll have security.

How about some prize money...

[Goldenhawk]

Sure, it wouldn't be as "sexy" as the X-Prize, but wouldn't some privately sponsored prize money do wonders for this longtime human dream? Call it, say, the Mecha Prize, and offer a few million bucks to whoever builds the first mecha that can go a half mile, pick up a Dodge Neon and move it in the air for 50 feet, then return to the starting line. Or something similar.

I have no doubt that someone as creative as Rutan is out there, and with a little incentive and the promise of some real financial gain could use modern actuators and pressure pads and gyro sensors and so forth to finally create a useful mecha.

I also have no doubt that (unlike Spaceship One) a mecha that could complete the above test would immediately be of great value in quite a few industrial and/or emergency applications.

Re:Sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the article between the lines, I think the operator/driver is supposed to provide the balance. Similar to stilts, only powered.

That said, I don't think it will work unless the movement rates for the extremities are really high and very well controlled. That takes lots of power, lots of hydraulic pressure, and lots of testing.

Re:Other leg-enhancing system?

[electrichamster]

Do you mean those weird kangaroo leg things? People bounced along with them, and they were supposed to yeild twice the motion for the same amount of legwork.

Re:Limited Usefulness

[StCredZero]

If you have a mech that's approaching 20 ft tall, then you can have a cockpit that allows a full range of motion for the pilot in a full-body haptic feedback harness. (See this site for a full-arm haptic harness [est-kl.com].) Short of a direct neural interface, this is the only way you're going to provide force-feedback. If you don't have force-feedback, then you won't be able to control a bipedal humaniform robot well enough to do real combat.

But if you dispense with dynamic balance, then you can build mecha on tracks like these Japanese guys did for real! T-52 [kyoto-u.ac.jp]

Motion Control

[iamlucky13]

Owens said he can't afford top-of-the line equipment, like infrared sensors and electronics that would govern the motion. Instead he's using a hydraulic system to transfer the motion of his limbs to the larger structure,

It sounds like he's basically he's relying on his own sense of balance to control this thing. We do it unconsciously as adults, but it took us a long while to learn and a lot of falling down. It may be possible he's got everything figured out and the control is natural enough that he'll just climb in and start walking. Somehow, though, I imagine him lifting the first foot and getting his center of gravity outside the edges of the other foot. Then he's got to shake off the bruises, bring a crane over to lift the thing up and repeat until he gets the hang of it. That's assuming his hydraulics are fast enough and he has enough degrees of freedom to keep the thing balanced to begin with. Having a heavy legs like he mentioned will reduce, but not eliminate the danger of shifting the weight to far out.

This is way cool and it'd be awesome to see it work, but I'm officially a doubter.

Re:Limited Usefulness

[BrynM]

I'm not too sure where that figure of 20ft for the height comes from.

Same here. My first thought of a battlefield mech is the Robotech [google.com] Cyclone [robotech.com]. That seems versatile to me - but hard to build without Protoculture for a fuel source.

The whole transformer idea is what makes mecha seem useful to me. Maybe I'm just a little old school.

Japan

[kai.chan]

Korea is not the country with the mecha-craze. It is Japan. The building of a giant robot is not new. Many years ago, this giant robot [geocities.co.jp] was already being developed in Japan. Although there is no actual functionality with this Gundam, but I doubt that NMX04-1A can be made to be autonomous any time soon.

Other amateur Mecha

[TheSync]

On this page [tinyurl.com] there are photos of exosuits which were at Robonexus in October in a mecha lifting contest.

Mechanicus [machinegod.com] is another home-made exoskeleton from Austin, TX.