a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
CSERNY Márton Márton is from Budapest, Hungary. His human-powered walking machine is novel in that the front legs do not pull the cart, but are pushed by the pedals, chain and sprocket. The pedaling action also rocks the 'hip', which raises and swings each free-swinging leg in turn. Video Akció a "Lépegeto gép"-pel / action …
Read More “1993 – Human-Powered Walking Machine – CSERNY Márton (Hungarian)”
Dante: In 1992 a walking robot named Dante1 was designed and built at Carnegie Mellon University. Using a tensioned tether, Dante can ascend and descend steep slopes. It is designed to rappel into and explore active volcanic craters. The Dante project was an ambitious attempt to proceed, in 10 months, from idea to implementation. The …
Read More “1992-4 – Dante & Dante II – John E. Bares & William “Red†Whittaker (American)”
A good example of the "big iron" approach to mobile robots is AMBLER (acronym for Autonomous MoBiLe Exploration Robot), developed by Carnegie Mellon University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This behemoth stands about 5m (16.4ft) tall, is up to 7m (23.0ft) wide, and weights 2500 kg (5512 lb). It moves at a blistering 35 cm …
Read More “1988-91 – AMBLER – John Bares & William “Red” Whittaker (American)”
DATE:25/04/08 SOURCE:Flightglobal.com ESA to undertake lunar rover study By Rob Coppinger The European Space Agency is offering €500,000 ($786,500) for a pressurised lunar rover (PLR) phase 0/A study to produce a conceptual design, to evaluate its functional, technical and operational requirements and determine its likely cost and development schedule. ESA envisages a rover with …
Read More “2002 – ESA Lunar Rover – (Student concept) – Europe”
Russian Walking Machines from Dept. of Theoretical Mechanics. All source material from here. Now tens of scientific groups in the world are developing this problem. Walking machines can be divided into two parts: dynamical stability (with a few legs) and statical stability (multilegged) machines. The letter can be divided into vehicles of profile practicability and …
Read More “1995 – Swamp Walking Machines – Dept. of Theoretical Mechanics (Russian)”