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From: mwd@cray.com (Mark Dalton)
Subject: Re: Biped robot designs & ideas (Question)
Message-ID: <1995Jan20.175005.14587@walter.cray.com>
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Date: 20 Jan 95 17:50:05 CST

COAllen (coallen@aol.com) wrote:
: I am curious as to what designs and/or ideas people have 'kicked' around
: for implementing a bipedal robot.

Don't give up though, if you want to try it.  You may want to try doing
some basic walking robots based on transistor nets instead of a CPU
at first.  It can be considerably faster response than software driven
balance and walking.  The problem will be the sensors.  Also the upper
portion should have a way of 'shifting weight' in a fast and smooth way.
(Also it should be stable the rest of the time, not like water in a
 half-full bottle).  And perhap something without a 'knee' and with a
strong foot, then add the knee when you want to be able to go over
rough terrain or up steps.

	Perhaps look into the Unicycle robots for guidance on doing
the balancing.  Others have done a lot of pool balancing with (software
based) neural nets (versus transistor based).

I am not a Mechanical Engineer but I would think to do something like
the Human legs or a birds legs.

I would probably design them like a human leg.

	/-\
         O 
        /
      _/
      |
       \
        |
        |
        \ 
         |
         |
         |

It is a bit hard to draw in ASCII.  But it goes out from the socket some.

Typically bipeds do not carry the same amount of weight per thier own
weight and are inherently less stable.  But it does 'free-up' hands to
do other tasks.

Just some thoughts.  Feel free to tear them apart (^8.  It is just
something to 'kick around'.

Mark
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Mark Dalton       CH3-S-CH2 H                      H      O       H
Cray Research,Inc.      |   |                      |       \      |
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mwd@cray.com                |       |  ||   ||     |       //     |
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URL = http://lenti.med.umn.edu/~mwd/mwd.html

