16 ms·
The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
- gojomo 6y agoOnly millions? Amazing! To actually deliver a physical, one-of-a-kind, working vehicle of that scale & novel function, for low-digit millions, seems pretty impressive to me - especially if the effort documented enough of their choices/discoveries/limitations to help inform later efforts.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoMillions seems about right. If it took more than $999 million I’d be pretty surprised. Hydraulics are tricky but they’re not that tricky.
- andbberger 6y agoThe kinematics are the tricky part. Trajectory planning is still quite difficult today even with our speedy modern CPUs
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoTrajectory planning what? Actually solving the inverse kinematics of 3dof manipulators is trivial. I did so 20 years ago using a Basic Stamp microcontroller for my 18 servo hexapod. I was 15. Planning foot placement is a bit harder but I would say the compute heavy part today would be perception.
- andbberger 6y agoTrajectory planning for foot placement.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoI think of “trajectory planning” as: you have a known target position and you have to figure out how to get there. That’s not hard with a 3dof manipulator. But figuring out where to place the feet, which I consider a perception problem, is very hard. But I think that’s what you’re talking about and I just use different terminology. That’s why I was confused. Sorry if I came off wrong.
- larkeith 6y ago$5m by 1985, with another $3.5m earmarked [1]. Accounting generously for inflation, that's $25m today [2]. It would be interesting to know what the price would look like if they tried the same thing today. [1] https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1985/11/4/the-pentagon-funds-a-walking-robot https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1985/11/4/the-pentagon-f... [2] https://www.inflationtool.com/us-dollar/1981-to-present-value?amount=8.5 https://www.inflationtool.com/us-dollar/1981-to-present-valu...
- opless 6y agoMantis by winchymatt perhaps? A two ton diesel powered hexapod. https://youtu.be/1h9Mw-s9mzI https://youtu.be/1h9Mw-s9mzI
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- melling 6y agoyeah, a single M1 Abrams tank costs over $4 million, and we have 9000 of them. DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. We get future dividends, often civilian.
- Firehawke 6y agoAbsolutely this. With the culling of most corporate R&D groups over the last 20-30 years, DARPA pie-in-the-sky research projects seem to be one of the last real sources for investigating anything that can't be immediately and quickly monetized.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 6y agoHow much real research, as opposed to early-stage product development, has ever happened at corporations? We can easily name a few specific examples (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC) presumably because they weren't the norm. (And there were doubtless some others at companies that weren't as aligned with what's thought of as today's tech industry such as DuPont.)
- tasogare 6y agoHave a look at MSR.
- ghaff 6y agoWhat about them? They make nice gear. They've done some nice innovation around some of the gear they make. That seems different from pumping multi-millions of dollars into research that may never have direct commercial value--unless you're talking about a different MSR.
- pedrosorio 6y ago
- greendude29 6y agoI don't think the technology behind it was particularly new or novel. It was simply arranging known technology to a new application. Given the lack of research, but perhaps the high experimentation, millions make sense.
- Animats 6y agoIt was new in that it was computer controlled. General Electric had demonstrated a 4-legged walking truck in 1965.[1] Arms and legs were slaved to the operator's arms and legs. It was very hard to drive. Trying to do that with computer control in 1985 was worth trying. Building the prototype at full scale, not so much. If they'd gone through a few iterations starting with a dog sized version, it might have worked out better. But there was a political problem. DARPA funded a pony-sized legged walker in the late 1960s[2], and it was publicly shamed as a waste of taxpayer money by Sen. Proxmire. So DARPA went for one big enough to carry a real load. Early thinking about legged locomotion was all about gait and foot placement. It turns out that balance dominates foot placement, and slip control dominates balance once you get off the flat. Today, most of the problems have been solved, and there's still no market. Which is disappointing. [1] https://youtu.be/coNO9FpDb6E https://youtu.be/coNO9FpDb6E [2] http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1968-phony-pony-frank-mcghee-american http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1968-phony-pony-fr...
- jansan 6y agoColin Furze could probably do this for less than 50,000£, and it would even spit fire!
- ytjohn 6y agoI love that guy, and you're right. So many of his projects is him trying find a different way to locomote a flame thrower.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt's amazing how much you can achieve with a relatively small team of experts. I also believe people have gone "blind" to how much a million is and what it can afford. I mean a million can employ a decent software developer for a decade, and a solo developer can achieve a lot in a decade. I've probably produced about a million LOC in that period in half a dozen languages. I was curious; the Manhattan Project cost $2 billion (in 1939) and employed 130,000 people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project, first paragraph).
- svnpenn 6y agoWild wild west...
- Texasian 6y agoIt’s delightfully chonky and I love it.
- madballster 6y agoThis looks like straight out of Aliens, loading bay scene. Fantastic.
- ovi256 6y agoOr Archer Crazy Cyborg vs. Space-Bot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqSvbkTLevQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqSvbkTLevQ
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iso1210 6y agoHey, guys, you ever see that really old movie, Empire Strikes Back?
- manifestsilence 6y agoMoral of that story: these things are weak to cable tripping.
- iso1210 6y ago> Moral of that story We all get older
- jaza 6y agoEmpire Strikes Back released 1980, complete with its AT-AT walkers. This US military walking tank project kicked off 1981. Just coincidence? Or a big-budget fan-boy tribute?
- hellweaver666 6y agoIf you go to the Clone Wars you'll see vehicles with six legs that look a lot closer to this one!
- uryga 6y agothey're called AT-TE for anyone who wants to google it
- efitz 6y agoYou know we’re all thinking the same thing - where are the mechs?
- myself248 6y agoHere: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/furrionexobionics/alpha-mech-pilot-program https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/furrionexobionics/alpha...
- lsllc 6y agoThe "Hacksmith" recently spent time learning to pilot one of these, definitely interesting and worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3xtVxPWf6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3xtVxPWf6M
- rangibaby 6y agoWhat are some advantages mechs offer over a combination of tanks + helicopters?
- kjaftaedi 6y ago485lb payload. Regardless of the design, it makes sense why they scrapped it.
- bigiain 6y agoThese days delivering that sort of payload with a hexacopter is only a "stupidly expensive hobby grade" project. (Though I'm not aware of any homebuilt multi rotors up in the 485lb plus a ~170lb pilot range. Yet.)
- imtringued 6y agoThese days? Car sized hexacopters have been vaporware for several decades.
- bigiain 6y agoPerson carrying multicopters are common enough on YouTube videos (at least some of which probably aren’t fraudulent). Give me $30k, and I’ll build you a multicopter capable of delivering a 500lb payload 1km away made mostly out of hobby parts. It’s no longer rocket science.
- oblio 6y agoI wonder what they could do with modern computers and modern materials science. They would at least save a bunch of weight for the computers carried.
- mschuster91 6y agoI would not be surprised if Boston Dynamics scaled up their dog to truck size rather sooner than later.
- taneq 6y agoThey did one the size of a large horse, but for the complexity and cost, it unfortunately didn’t seem to have much practical benefit over a semiautonomous 6-wheeler.
- imtringued 6y agoSomething like the Rheinmetall Mission Master was pretty much the expected outcome.
- jasode 6y agoI just watched an interview with Vijay Kumar who worked on that robot when he was a graduate student and talks about it for a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYsLTNXMl1Q&t=0m58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYsLTNXMl1Q&t=0m58s The whole 1 hour interview is also interesting.
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoWent to Penn and had no idea! On a related note Vijay's students are really bright, and he's quite a savvy administrator.
- foobarbecue 6y agoI know someone who worked on a big radial hexapod robot for dod recently, and he said everyone involved in the project felt it was pointless (hexapods are just not a good platform for doing much of anything), but it was well-funded so they did their best.
- mulmen 6y agoDo researchers feel the same responsibility as defense attorneys to act on their client’s behalf?
- sho 6y ago> hexapods are just not a good platform for doing much of anything Care to expand on this? There's an awful lot of insects with six legs that seem to do OK. Maybe I've watched too much Patlabor/GitS but I would have thought it a viable candidate for any number of mechanical platforms.
- foobarbecue 6y agoEvery actuator comes with a lot of overhead in terms of cost, mass, complexity, and two more limbs don't offer much of an advantage over a quadruped. Interesting point about insects, but this was a largeish vehicle. How many large hexapod animals can you name?
- robomartin 6y agoI have many books on on robotics and AI from Stanford and MIT from that era, back when I started to get deeply involved in the field. My son is about a year away from graduating with degrees in CS and Robotics. He was quite surprised to realize that much of what he is learning today isn't new at all. Tremendous work was done decades ago in both domains. Put simply, you can only get so far with neural networks when your only option is an 8 bit microprocessor with 64k-bytes of RAM and a a megabyte or two of non-volatile storage. One of the key differences between now and then is the monumental improvement in computing power, sensors, hardware in general and energy storage. As a result the devices we produce today look far more impressive. Think about it this way: I don't think there's anything in a Roomba that did not exist in the 1980's other than far greater computing power at a very low cost. It is an interesting exercise to look through the Old Robots site (www.theoldrobots.com). One of my favorite's (because I owned one and still have a couple of arms on the shelf) is the Hero 2000: http://www.theoldrobots.com/hero2k.html http://www.theoldrobots.com/hero2k.html Check out the specifications here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_(robot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_(robot) It took an Intel 8088 processor and 11 Z-80 8 bit processors to run this thing in the early 90's. That cost thousands of dollars. Today you can to a thousand times more with a $5 to $30 single chip processor.
- robomartin 6y agoAnd speaking of legged robots, this interesting bot showed-up in the early '80's. I remember it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX9iRw33OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX9iRw33OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHoJ2naN5HI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHoJ2naN5HI Again, considering available computing power, sensors, etc., this was nothing short of amazing.
- areoform 6y agoIt's under-appreciated just how brilliant the initial set of AI and Robotics pioneers were. Our future lies in the past. Would you be open to digitizing these books via the Internet Archive, or something similar? If they're sufficiently technical, you may have the only copy in the world for some of them.
- banmeagaindan2 6y agoI love it. Tachikomas!
- dang 6y agoIvan Sutherland worked on something like this. Seems related? http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1983-six-legged-hydraulic-walker-ivan-sutherland-american/ http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1983-six-legged-hy...
- Animats 6y agoOh, that thing. Back when I was into legged locomotion, I found out more about that machine than I ever wanted to know. The designer was really into four-bar linkages. The leg mechanism is set up so that one actuator moves the leg in X, one in Y, and one in Z, with a four-bar linkage encoding that into the leg position. This simplifies the control problem, while complicating the mechanics. I suspect they wanted to be able to get the thing home by manual control of the actuators if the computers crashed. It's not towable; you'd need a crane and a flatbed. It could only walk on flat ground. It was supposed to be able to cross a ditch, but that was manual. The driver had to drive it up to the ditch and stop. Then lock five legs, and, using a joystick, move one of the leading legs across the ditch and set it down. Then, with support in place, move the vehicle forward slightly with no leg lifts. Then lock five legs again, and place the second forward leg. Repeat until all six legs had made it across. Cool, but not useful. In the 1990s, a company in Finland got this right.[1] They built a six-legged walking timber harvester. It's impressive. Deere bought the company But it's not better than 8-wheel articulated timber harvesters [2], so it was never produced as a product. [1] https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y [2] https://youtu.be/BwCTDXatIYA https://youtu.be/BwCTDXatIYA
- ChuckMcM 6y agoOh I want one of those "Timberjack" machines. (well without the timber cutting stuff). Based on some of the papers I found on the OSU project it seems like you could replace the entire computing infrastructure it was carrying around with about one pound (1/2 kg) of computers. I don't suppose you have a pointer to an IK paper on the 4-bar linkages do you? Looks like something that might be fun to cons up with servos.
- jcims 6y agoThere are quite a few quadruped robots that use them for legs: https://youtu.be/2k5lOUGenkE https://youtu.be/2k5lOUGenkE
- Animats 6y agoNow that's a more modern way to use a four-bar linkage. The ASV used it to simplify the kinematic problem, which is doing arithmetic with big steel connecting rods. That little quadruped is using it to get two degrees of freedom without the first actuator having to carry the mass of the second one.
- berkas1 6y ago...and so Star Wars AT-TE idea was born? :D
- bserge 6y agoLooks really cool and futuristic. I'm sure something much better and faster could be built today, but wheeled/tracked machines are still superior. It's actually impressive how versatile wheels are - a legged truck would have to move much faster and be able to cross some extreme terrain to be a better choice than something with 4+ big wheels.
- tobyhinloopen 6y agoThat website is just awful, why is shit like this even upvoted here?
- myfonj 6y ago> Between the engine and the 18 variable displacement pumps [...] was a 100-pound flywheel. It spun up to 12,000 rpm and could store .25 kWh of energy. > The flywheel also allowed the vehicle to recuperate some energy from the pumps when the ASV came to a stop […] and ensured a smooth shutdown in case of a sudden loss of power.
- ronanyeah 6y agoI wonder if this was related to the DARPA/ArmsTech partnership back on Shadow Moses.
- mattgreenrocks 6y agoCame looking for this comment. Thank you.
- AniseAbyss 6y agoThe things you can do when you don't have to tackle child poverty or provide healthcare for all. Its probably because of my Euro socialist identity but all I see is wasteful spending.
- ahelwer 6y agoDARPA is basically just a way to hack the US' intensely militaristic nature to fund basic science & engineering advances. I'm happy some public money was spent researching robotic legged locomotion.
- crocodiletears 6y agoThis is why I believe the US should withdraw from NATO, and many of our other foreign military engagements. We could service our population's worst off so much better if we cut our global footprint to the bare minimum required to secure our most core interests (napkin math, but at ~150 billion usd, overseas bases make up ~20% of the DoD's budget[0]). Even reallocating those expenses by a quarter would be a tremendous boon to our social services infrastructure while still allowing us to invest in new technologies. [0] https://www.mintpressnews.com/214492-2/214492/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/214492-2/214492/
- dbspin 6y agoDo you genuinely believe that whats holding back spending on social services in the US is the necessity of maintaining its military? That seems naive in the extreme.
- crocodiletears 6y agoIt isn't at all, however Americans fixated upon some mythical conception of state fiscal responsibility will find the expansion of certain programs more politically palatable if accompanied with roughly commensurate cuts in other areas. Reducing America's global footprint would also likely have the effect of producing a massive global political realignment, as nations in an increasingly multipolar world would need to adjust their security policies in order to face the potential challenges of existing without a global hegemony interested in fixing national borders and guaranteeing the secure flow of trade good worldwide. This resulting uncertainty would, I believe increase the relative value of maintaining a presence large internally stable (relatively speaking) markets like the NAFTA, while reducing the viability of complex, brittle supply chains dependent on outsourcing the production of many individual components overseas. With companies increasingly incentivised to produce where they sell their good, the power disparity between laborers and corporate entities would be reduced, as their labor force and their consumer base would be either the same, or intermingled. With workers better able to negotiate terms with their employers, rather than be forced to increase benefits for their workers, companies might find it more expedient to outsource the provision of a social safety net to federal and state governments through lobbying efforts. None of this, of course fixes the general administrative incompetency of the American government. But it also sets the stage for a greater latitude of internal reforms by simplifying the machine that's in motion, as well as reducing its number of foreign dependents.
- znpy 6y agoUh, an early Metal Gear Rex?
- porknubbins 6y agoWas just thinking how did Kojima not put this in a game.
- atum47 6y agoI've been talking about this kind of stuff with some friends. You can't just tell reality from fiction by the news, anymore. Sometimes is a crappy politician who you wouldn't believe act / say / do the things the news report (I'm Brazilian by the way, I have grounds to say this). Some other times is this crazy sci-fi things no one in a bar conversation would believe you if you told them. Go ahead, next time you're on bar with your friends (In a few months I think the bar are going to be open - hope) tell them this exactly headline and see how they react to it.
- Judgmentality 6y ago> Go ahead, next time you're on bar with your friends (In a few months I think the bar are going to be open - hope) tell them this exactly headline and see how they react to it. I don't think many Americans would doubt our military has funded all sorts of crazy stuff. There are confirmed paid studies for mind control and attempting to kill goats using telekinesis by the CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats It's even been made into a Hollywood movie, so this stuff isn't that fringe. And the fringe stuff is really weird.
- 082349872349872 6y agoWow, that's up there with the premise of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I tend to optimistically/pessimistically believe people are rational but devious, and therefore believe that goat-staring is likely a way to launder money that immediately leads people into talking about how silly attempted telecapricide would be, instead of asking, no, really, what did you totally not get compensated for not having done, the other 39 hours of the week? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23597523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23597523 Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuduj0yeV4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuduj0yeV4c
- lopmotr 6y agoWhat did you imagine the 1980's was like for this to be surprising? Hydraulic earthmoving equipment, statically-stable legged walking toys, and cheap computers were all in widespread use around the world by then. This is nothing like Boston Dynamics' robots because of the "dynamics" part.
- JshWright 6y agoI'm surprised no one had mentioned the "Spidertron" that was included the recent 1.0 release of Factorio.
- phendrenad2 6y agoMan, now I really want one of those computer boxes. Looks like the boards are common, but the mil spec case might not be.
- momokoko 6y agoThese are general purpose US funding of research which is done under the "Military spending" banner for various reasons. I understand how people outside the US might not understand this, but it always surprises me complaints about "military spending" from educated Americans that don't understand these are actually enormous investments by the US government into general applied science. The Army did not spend millions of dollars on a giant walking robot. The US government, by way of military spending, invested in research of the things required to build such a machine.
- hiddencost 6y agoThis is garbage nonsense. You could just as easily manage this funding process somewhere else with different priorities. We've been moving university research funding out of the NSF towards defense budgets quite aggressively over the last two decades, and it's quite palpable how shifting control of this funding from pure science oversight to military oversight has reshaped priorities.
- momokoko 6y agohttps://www.csis.org/analysis/wtos-first-ruling-national-security-what-does-it-mean-united-states https://www.csis.org/analysis/wtos-first-ruling-national-sec...
- bluthru 6y ago>I have contacted the University of Ohio's engineering department in an attempt to gather more information. You probably won't get very far considering that is a different university.
- ganafagol 6y agoAnybody else thinking of the walkers from star wars when reading the headline? I was a bit disappointed seeing the size as it promises "giant" which does not really live up to star wars size expectations.. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Walker https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Walker
- MayeulC 6y agoWell, not that kind of "giant", but I was thinking about Ghost in the shell's tachikomas and fuchikomas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikoma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-IsysrqUlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-IsysrqUlU (original tank fight scene, may spoil it a bit).
- feralimal 6y agoAll that money won't spend itself!!
- jzig 6y agoThe DOD has also spent tens of millions on a web application to track biological threats that will never see the light of day. I work on it :(
- godelzilla 6y agoImagine if they spent those resources on something worthwhile.