Re: Robotic iguanodon ref.

["Leonidus A.K. Giganotosaurus" <alex@voyager.net>]

Oh, if only I could be on the team working on that, it would be incredible,
I've got a great deal of skills and designs that would be perfect for such an
exhibit, as that's what I've been working towards doing for at least a third
of my life.. (As many of you may remember, I once or twice have sent
off-topic mail, detailing my own similar group doing just these things, and
now look at this!)

Anyone know if they're going to be keeping public contacts on this project?
I'd love to be on some sort of news list, electronic or otherwise, detailing
this incredible event, as well as providing a design journal.

Just now, I can suggest one thing, if anyone was to be paying attention to me
at this point, but, as few probably are, I'll just say it anyway. With the
problem with the batteries' life being a limit of an hour, if they were to
have the robot feed from plants, either fakes in displays, or potted plants
in the hall, perhaps they could set up recharging stations at each, as long
as they somehow avoided the problem of battery-recharge memory
imprints(either finding a non-imprint battery or replacing them every week or
so), they could create a thing that, as the iguanadon's snout was buried in
the plants, it could grab a device that would fit into it's jaw, that would
connect with contact points inside the mouth, probably on the roof, or both
on the roof and under the tongue, and for the time it was browsing, it would
briefly recharge long enough to make it to the next nearest plant/recharge
device, including enough time to move around different obstacles. The
jaw-piece could even be like a sports retainer, and be on a cord, allowing
the creature to 'browse' around the plant.

If anyone's gotten this far and has expertise in the field of robotics,
please, critique my concept, or, if anyone from that robot design team
happens to be on this list, please, tell me your opinion. This is not meant
to be misplaced information, it seems on-topic enough.

Adrian Thomas wrote:

> FWIW
>
> TI: Control of a robot dinosaur
>       AU: Papantoniou_V, Avlakiotis_P, Alexander_RM
>       NA: EUROPEAN ASSOC RES LEGGED ROBOT,RUE LIMAUGE 13,B-1050
>           BRUSSELS,BELGIUM
>           UNIV LEEDS,SCH BIOL,LEEDS LS2 9JT,W YORKSHIRE,ENGLAND
>       JN: PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON
>           SERIES B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 1999, Vol.354, No.1385, pp.863-
>           868
>       IS: 0962-8436
>       DT: Article
>       AB: The Palaiomation Consortium, supported by the European
>           Commission, is building a robot Iguanodon atherfieldensis for
>           museum display that is much more sophisticated than existing
>           animatronic exhibits. The current half-size (2.5 m) prototype
>           is fully autonomous, carrying its own computer and batteries.
>           It walks around the room, choosing its own path and avoiding
>           obstacles. A bigger version with a larger repertoire of
>           behaviours is planned.
>           Many design problems have had to be overcome. A real dinosaur
>           would have had hundreds of muscles, and we have had to devise
>           means of achieving life-like movement with a much smaller
>           number of motors; we have limited ourselves to 20, to keep the
>           control problems manageable. Realistic stance requires a
>           narrower trackway and a higher centre of mass than in previous
>           (often spider-like) legged robots, making it more difficult to
>           maintain stability. Other important differences from previous
>           walking robots are that the forelegs have to be shorter than
>           the hind, and the machinery has had to be designed to fit
>           inside a realistically shaped body shell. Battery life is about
>           one hour, but to achieve this we have had to design the robot
>           to have very low power consumption. Currently, this limits it
>           to unrealistically slow movement. The control system includes a
>           high-level instructions processor, a gait generator, a motion-
>           coordination generator, and a kinematic model.
>       KP: MAMMALS
>       WA: robot, dinosaur, walking, quadrupedal locomotion
>
> Not lego.
>
> Cheers,
> Adrian

 --
Leonidus
alex@voyager.net
Shyrrokar: http://www.geocities.com/Shyrrokar/