Looks like an old fashioned bullock cart :-)

[tks]

Share:

Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Share Link

Boston Dynamics, a Google owned company people celebrated Christmas with a female staffer riding a robot drawn cart.

One can learn a lot from how animals move I guess. This is not a technological achievement per se in the robotic area. But it is interesting to note how ideas are borrowed from the lives of animals in the design of robots.

Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3371369/Boston-Dynamics-reveals-Santa-s-robot-reindeer.html

=============================================

Santa's terrifying little helpers: The military robots transformed into sleigh-pulling reindeer after being developed to carry heavy equipment on the battlefield

Boston Dynamics rose to fame after developing the BigDog in 2005, which serves as a robotic pack horse for soldiers and can carry 340lbs (150kg) alongside a soldier moving at 4mph.


It has gone on to develop a series of robots, including the Cheetah, that can gallop at 28mph, and the Atlas, a 6ft humanoid robot that was designed for search and rescue tasks.


The firm is owned by Google and was initially created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 before it was spun off by company president Marc Raibert.

 

[Vaagmi]

Some thought on this:

I have always wondered why should we limit ourselves to think in terms of four-legged animal like robots to move weights. Is it our fixation to draft animals being four legged since time immemorial? A two legged contraption/robot appropriately adjusted for Centre of gravity should be less complicated from the design angle. One legged would still be preferable but that may be extremely unstable to manage.

A four legged contraption means a lot more of material input and a lot more of lines of algorithm written in the programme. The advantage is not proportionate to the complexity.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[tks]

For a human mind with limited capacity, study of nature provides clue to phenomenal intelligence.

Robots of all kinds exist today. I myself have a Roomba that helps to clean our house.

http://store.irobot.com/irobot-room...oductId=68167956&cp=2501652&parentPage=family

It is not very intelligent but it gets the job done.

Two legged robots have been used for certain kind of operations.

To haul some significant load four legged robots seem to be most efficient providing the right balance between speed and the physical balance.

Intelligence of how ants work, and inform each other about where food is etc has been used by a trucking company to deliver items at a significant cost reduction. All the learning happens without top level supervision. It is heuristic.

From my notes:
==========

Ants are unsophisticated in their behavior, yet together they perform complex tasks.

One mechanism they have to assist in this behavior is a sophisticated sign-based stigmergy. Essentially, ants communicate using pheromones. Trails of pheromone are laid down by a given ant, which can be followed by other ants. Depending on the species, ants lay trails traveling from the nest, to the nest or possibly in both directions.

The pheromones evaporate over time. Pheromones also accumulate with multiple ants using the same path. The end result of this stigmergy is a stronger trail laid to food sources. As those sources are depleted, the trails evaporate and new ones will be built as new sources of food are discovered. How complicated do ants have to be for this behavior to emerge?

Let's look at a natural agent system implemented as software.
Ants finding and bringing food back to the nest can be thought of as path planning. The system behavior we see shows that ants construct networks of paths that connect nests and food sources. The networks form minimum spanning trees. We know that graph theory defines algorithms for computing minimum spanning trees. Ants do not use these conventional algorithms. Instead, their optimal path structure emerges from the simple actions of the individual ants.

For this to work, ants need six basic rules, which are:

1. The ants avoid obstacles.
2. They wander about randomly.
3. If an ant is holding food, it drops pheromones at a constant rate as it walks.
4. If an ant finds itself at food and is not holding any, it picks up the food.
5. If an ant finds itself at the nest and is carrying food, it drops it.
6. If an ant is searching for food and comes upon a pheromone trail, it follows it toward the food.

How does this system work? Because only food-carrying ants drop pheromone, and because ants can carry food only after picking it up at a food source, all pheromone paths lead to a food source. Paths tend to merge together into a trace that becomes straighter the more it is used.

This approach to optimal paths has already been used successfully in telephone switching. Imagine you are in New York and you are calling someone in Los Angeles. What path will your call use to reach the other person? At different times, some lines or switches may be bogged down with traffic while others are wide open. Experiments have been done using ant path-finding techniques to find the shortest route through the telephone network.

Much of artificial intelligence is about intelligence found in nature coded using code generating frameworks.

PS: If anyone is interested I can provide specific references.

 

[yesmohan]

[h=2]Looks like an old fashioned bullock cart.[/h]Of course; but ....even if you put cart before bullock, it would run.

 

[tks]

Here the power of four legged robot can be appreciated hauling 400 pounds. It is noisy with gas engines and its application is limited in army application where stealth is key. However it can follow directions when an authorized person waves to follow. It can go at 28 miles per hour.

It is very graceful and is able to go fast like a mule. Watch the youtube segment below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ezXBEBE6U

There are other segments including one with two legs that cannot haul big weight

 

[prasad1]

[h=1]Army kills off MULE unmanned vehicle[/h] [h=2]Lack of mobility cited in FCS spinoff[/h]

he U.S. Army has decided to cancel the Multi-Mission Unmanned Ground Vehicle, one of the few systems still remaining from the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.The 3.5-ton vehicle, which has been in development for years, is more commonly known by its FCS name, the Multi-Function Utility/Logistics and Equipment Vehicle (MULE).
Although a July 29 Acquisition Decision Memorandum formalized the decision, the Army determined it no longer needed the vehicle during a 2011 unmanned ground vehicle portfolio review.
"The Warfighter's requirements in the area of dismounted Soldier equipment transport have shifted to a vehicle with an expanded air assault capability," a July 29 letter to Congress says.

http://archive.defensenews.com/arti...U-S-Army-Cancels-MULE-Unmanned-Ground-Vehicle

 

[renuka]

Some thought on this:

I have always wondered why should we limit ourselves to think in terms of four-legged animal like robots to move weights. Is it our fixation to draft animals being four legged since time immemorial? A two legged contraption/robot appropriately adjusted for Centre of gravity should be less complicated from the design angle. One legged would still be preferable but that may be extremely unstable to manage.

A four legged contraption means a lot more of material input and a lot more of lines of algorithm written in the programme. The advantage is not proportionate to the complexity.

Any thoughts on this?

I don't feel entire humanity has a 4 legged animal fixation..best example are Vaishnavas.

Vaishnavaism does not have a 4 legged animal fixation.

Adi Sesha...No Legs..yet the most stable..stable enough to cradle Narayana.

Garuda...2 legged and with wings..also stable enough to carry Lord Vishnu.

Hanuman...always depicted walking up right on 2 legs..also stable enough to carry mountains and transport Lord Rama on his shoulders.


Vaagmi ji...you have a point..may be some 2 legged form or winged form or even no leg form might do a better job!

 

[Vaagmi]

I don't feel entire humanity has a 4 legged animal fixation..best example are Vaishnavas.

Vaishnavaism does not have a 4 legged animal fixation.

Adi Sesha...No Legs..yet the most stable..stable enough to cradle Narayana.

Garuda...2 legged and with wings..also stable enough to carry Lord Vishnu.

Hanuman...always depicted walking up right on 2 legs..also stable enough to carry mountains and transport Lord Rama on his shoulders.


Vaagmi ji...you have a point..may be some 2 legged form or winged form or even no leg form might do a better job!

Some people are fixated to four legged beings.

And some others are fixated to vaishnavites here.

Narayana! Narayana!!

LOL.

 

[GANESH65]

Some people are fixated to four legged beings.

And some others are fixated to vaishnavites here.

Narayana! Narayana!!

LOL.

I would still like to support 4 legged theory. In Kaliyuga, you can still manage to stay upright with the support of other legs, in case some one tries to pull one of your legs!!