real mechs

Originally posted by Lonestar24

Originally posted by jaamaan
how about this thing

www.newlaunches.com...
....

I dont think it is hard to imagine this with some legs

*sigh*

Are you aware that this is a simple autonomous gun? the only part of it that is really high-tech would be the image recognition software. Well, and it is very hard to imagine this thing put on legs.

I´d like anyone who thinks that mechs can´t be TOO hard to make to consider this for one second: How often have you seen a machine larger than lets say one meter that even REMOTELY moves with acceptable stability, speed and versatility - all the way powered for hours with its own energy supply? (And I MEAN only moving on legs, I´m not even considering any armor, sensors or weapons on that machine)

Right, never.

[edit on 23/11/2006 by Lonestar24]

world.honda.com...

This is what i mean with legs
cant be that hard to combine legs and turret

First off, I want to brag. That Chinese cat/dog looking thing is nearly exactly what I had in mind when I said (in some thread or another here) that robots could end up ruling the battlefield given that they had the economies of a motorcycle and the agility of a race care in a dog sized or smaller unit deployment footprint. I would still inset one pair of legs to get greater stride length and 'sitting' height even as I would probably articulate the body for true ungulate energy recovery performance using simple springs and a universal joint. But the masted sensor/weapons pedestal is about right, as is the ground clearance issue.

The ability to kneel the platform is equally good and while I would prefer distributed optics to a single 'head', the option of a modular, replaceable, subassembly is nice.

Do a bit more with the aesthetics and armor angles vs. total volume enclosure as well as providing some lateral/rotational flexibility to the body or limbs and you will be well on the way to useful quadrupedal robot that is MORE than an auto-donkey.

Well done!

OTOH, the 'sentry gun' is not terribly impressive.

I don't know what the heck those low-to-ground optics are for (anti aircraft use?) but they will be masked in both surface and roofmount conditions about 90% of the time. I would further speculate that the fixed viewing FORs are themselves faulted because you don't want to spin a heavy weapons pedestal mount, nor even externally articulated sensor boxes on it. Both for vulnerability and mechanical reliability issues, you HAVE TO have either a distributed array of off mount sensors feeding a single zoom-targeting aperture on-mount or a spinning mirror type 'wide angle' surveillance system which can be _stopped_ (digitally or otherwise) to tight-field image a given magnified area.

Such is the only way to suitably refresh a full or even sectored horizon trace without being nailed to a cross of slow-to-traverse and mechanically hard-worn reliability issues. It is also a lot harder for a threat to determine whether he/it is under observation or not if you don't bias his awareness by turret slew (sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not).

Imagine a Cylon Centurion and then complete the rotation rather than fix it to a raster type FOV coverage.

The tracking of the visible spectrum targets didn't impress me much as it is clear from the little green 'track surrounds' that there IS a lag between cluttered target movement and decision-tree rejection of the fore/background imagery for the actual target 'ducking out from behind the other side'. This tends to indicate to me that the system is _heavily_ biased towards historical motion analysis rather than true shape-definitive 'recognition'. Like tracking a lightsaber by it's glow-trail, if there is limited target area (blade is towards you or man is on-ground) it can be deceptively vulnerable to first-to-fire initiative loss on either LAW or ATGW. The IR equivalents are much more contrast impressive but only until you realize that these are once again non masked targets (Thellie Suit or later). I'm reminded of the images of apes moving around the encampment in 'Congo'. For a human and particularly an insurgent or SWO trying to penetrate a known-robotically defended installation to be so stupid is unbelievable.

Lastly of course we have the 'halt and be recognized' idiocy. I would not want ANYONE to be in front of an auto-gun without MITL intervention during 'normal business hours' yet I swear it looks like the two volunteers are effectively being challenged and responding to a typical controlled entry/checkpoint type scenario. Which is of course ridiculous because if you let junior get that close and he /isn't/ friendly, you are risking a quarter/half million dollar automated pedestal to a simple suicide bomber type charge or even (again) target fixation and engagement by another threat.

I don't know how windy it was that particular day either but if yelled voice recognition is going to work, it had damn well better be effective in controlled conditions of ambient noise to a MUCH more distant target (100yards, minimum). The alternative again being to put one sensor on the entry control point. And the auto-gun on a separate pedestal or mast looking down a firing lane as killsac.

CONCLUSION:
The sad part of course is that by automating warfare to the extent that no man-as-soldier can occupy a battlefield without being just /butchered/ by robotic weapons systems, you encourage a possible scenario whereby automated 'security systems' come to dominate an alternative market. One which is often going to interface with civillians in a way that could become totalitarian without requiring a federally authorized standing army. Such could be a real problem with corporate interests coming to totally dominate politics anyway and many of these systems starting to popup via foreign manufacturers who don't have anything like our laws forbidding milspec weapons in the hands of industrial/corporate users (i.e. the rise of the machines could be /very/ fast, simply because the SOA is 'imported').

At which point, Mecha will indeed become critically important. Since only they will be sufficiently sacrificial to challenge these kinds of systems (on a magazine count basis if nothing else) and only they will then be able to enter and navigate designed-for-humans facilities and structures.


KPl.

- how to let it walk
- how to keep it upright
- how to gain a distinct advantage in any thinkable application

This japanese behemoth doesnt solve any of it.

How to let it walk? Use the same tech they use for that honda bot. or others. they have them out there they just got to stop using hidrolics and use pnumatics instead.

Big Gyroscopes keep it upright

No advantage just cool and would scare the crud out of anyone.

'Gyros' typically means RLG or FOG type _position and rate sensing_ systems. Which allow the motor or pneumo/hydraulic based servo systems to respond on the fly to changes in balance deriving from external movement (i.e. to hold a gun on target as the body leans into a running position).

Hence the 'gyros' _should not be_ 'big'. But rather the limb motive systems must be sufficiently /fast responding/ as to accomodate the repoint cycle without overly dampening overall movment.

The folks at Disney did a lot of work with this stuff back in the day as they pioneered the animatronics of the various fixed theme-rides.

Things like 'over control theory' (letting a limb move past a given postion and then recover to it) to smooth the apparency of robotic movements towards a human norm would still apply today to an android (bipedal anyway) combat system. Just on saved fatigue at joints and fewer valve cyclings on fluidic controls etc.

As the sentry gun showed however; such an ambulatory method may not be the best solution for combat systems overall, simply because it raises the signature line to a vertical axis so as to obviate the discretion-over-armorup advantage of human-form prone movents overall.

Indeed, it seems to me that IF android type walking combat automatons are to be invested in, it MUST be with the intent of replacing humans in more than than war.

War is not used often enough, in the way it should be, to justify the massive investment of resources we at-tribute throw at it.

The labor:profit:time ratios of slave labor remains the one means by which we can completely undercut any 'capitalist' driven attempt to gain East Asian wealth building economic dominance. Provided we DO NOT fight them because they give U.S. no 'moral reason' to do so.

Just imagine. YOU replace YOURSELF with a robot at factory-X. YOU then _never commute to work_. As a functional means to improve efficiency of output (no intermediate travel/prep/sleep time lost when YOU could be working at 5 instead of 9) while conserving transport fuel, there can hardly be a more empowering element of social change than to let men own slaves which do not bleed and are never tired and have no skin color by which to pretend superiority.

As is, WE are owned. By those we pretend under the Constitution to call our 'equals'.

For this and this alone are biped combat units justifiable. Otherwise, the best you can ever hope for is a small-storeage-footprint replacement for the horse so that humans can maneuver at the same speed as fully mechanized units before debussing to engage on foot as usual.


KPl.