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Despite their cool look and visually appealing design, QUGVs are still not optimal for practical real-world applications. Their limited mobility in comparison t
by tamimio 3y ago
Despite their cool look and visually appealing design, QUGVs are still not optimal for practical real-world applications. Their limited mobility in comparison to UAVs for ISR operations, coupled with a mediocre payload capacity relative to traditional UGVs, results in a platform that have disadvantages from both categories. In my opinion, QUGVs are primarily beneficial for educational purposes or just a show or a ‘wow’ reaction from those outside the robotics field. For example, Boston Dynamics cannot descend stairs in reverse last time I checked, while Unitree tend to overheat rapidly, with internal components that are susceptible to failure, and they are constructed with cheap components, such as three Jetson Nanos, rather than a single, more robust SBC, etc.
- tweetle_beetle 3y agoYou're not wrong, but probably applying a critique which is irrelevant to the product under discussion. I don't think potential owners of 'robotic pets' will be making purchases based on maximising payload capacity, or practical real-world applications.
- tamimio 3y agoYou are not wrong either, hence why I said > QUGVs are primarily beneficial for educational purposes… But it still beneficial to give a heads up for anyone before investing efforts and time that QUGVs are simply for these purposes, which is something you can see in some comments in here, personally, I would invest those efforts in drones but YMMV.
- idiotsecant 3y agoWhat efforts are you saying are poorly invested? Objective: robot cat. Output: robot cat. Seems like everyone is getting what they want and you're just inserting a random pedantic critique.
- admax88qqq 3y agoPeak HN "I want to build a robot cat" "What you really want to build is a drone because quadrupeds cannot go downstairs backwards"
- Avicebron 3y agoIt's a Stack Overflow overflow...
- mkoubaa 3y agoHumans bred cats for thousands of years for utility that had nothing to do with "payload capacity"
- rafaelmn 3y agoYou think these robots are good for pest control ?
- nadermx 3y agoCould be with a proper addon
- mavamaarten 3y ago10kW laser for zapping gnats
- l33tman 3y agoI would buy THAT for a dollar!
- idiotsecant 3y agoI think I saw that black mirror episode.
- tacocataco 3y agoYes... if we breed robot cats for thousands of years.
- bagels 3y agoMost analog cats won't descend stairs in reverse or carry loads either.
- mschuster91 3y agoTell that to my cat, at least if you consider anything up to the size of a small pillow a load!
- dtgriscom 3y agoWell, not when we want them to...
- greggsy 3y agoThey can manoeuvre uneven terrain in areas where UAVs and wheeled UGVs are unsuitable though. Combined with UAV capabilities, it could be a very capable mapping or ISR tool in places like caves, or following earthquakes. The ‘hopping’ type in particular might be particularly valuable for lunar and asteroid mapping.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Their limited mobility in comparison to UAVs for ISR operations UAVs are highly susceptible to wind and drift, especially indoors with no GPS, and while DJIs collision avoidance is pretty good, any land based vehicle won't (fatally) crash if it touches anything.
- jpt4 3y ago"Hopping drones", with movement akin to the hunting method of robins [0], will be used as a kind of living minefield in military operations. When anti-air is absent/suppressed, they will engage in high energy aerial maneuvers to cover as much ground, with as little contest, as possible. Once emplaced, they will lower their signature and engage in low energy defensive fire/ambush behaviors, to hold territory. The critical consideration is that movement is dangerous, under conditions of pervasive battlefield surveillance, so when it is possible at all it must be exploited to its full potential, and thus can be conducted via an expensive process such as flight. In turn, to make movement dangerous to the enemy, one must make terrain frictionful to cross, through high lethality, low detectability assets, of which mines are the paradigmatic example. [0] Brief bursts of flight interwoven between slow stalking of different ground locations for worms.
- eszed 3y agoI hadn't thought of that, but it's terrifying. Like, far more nightmare-inducing than a conventional minefield. How would you counter? Up-armoured bipedal robots with roughly human-shaped heat-signatures is the only thing that would defeat easily-implemented automatic counter-measures. But if the "minefield" is under surveillance + command and control, then that goes right out the window. Besides, the cost-benefit (let alone logistics) is firmly in favor of the defender's "robins". I suspect attackers will try jamming signals and then send in the meatshields. Ugh.
- nine_k 3y agoWhy, a "vacuum bomb", that is, a large-volume detonation of combustible spray, could give a serious kick to anything and everything within the area. (If not that, a small nuke can generate enough heat and gamma rays to burn everything near the point of the blast, but the military escalation hasn't reached this point just yet.)
- persnickety 3y agoQUGV? UAV? ISR? SBC? OMG, WTF!
- clhodapp 3y agoWDIMR?!?
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoIf you're looking for a visually appealing design, then it's hard to beat a real cat. The internet agrees.