i found this mech a half a year back while searching for a good robot site. Hope you guys enjoy!!!
OMG, someone has already beaten me to this idea…
They seem pretty cool, I had a similar idea floating around, which involved walking robots fighting (as opposed to glorified r/c cars fighting), I’m not sure about the human in the chassis portion though, although it does look intriguing from a military/defense perspective.
i dont think that it would work well for that application, its too unstable, and plus it wouldnd’t really be able to hold and heavy artilerally, maybe once they can adcance with like, a ton of better tech
but notice the dating at the bottem and the last guy to send him funds… the website seemed to not get enough funds and seems to of fallen… so your dream is still possible just make sure you have a good source of funds…
I think the Case tractor holding the robot is more impressive.
While very cool looking standing still, the movement tests seemed somewhat unimpressive. He had it chained up (and counterbalanced with all that metal in the back) and it still could barely take a step. However, considering he basically built it out of junkyard scraps, its still quite the accomplishment. The dual flamethrowers are a bit rediculus though.
My favorite life-size is the one here: i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=10753 mainly because if it could walk a few times faster and didn’t cheat with the wheels in the feet for turning it looks like it came right out of Mech. Warrior 2.
There was also a rather goofy looking pair of silver legs developed in Japan (about 10ft tall with a cockpit) for the elderly to use that could carry up to 300 lbs of payload. Unfortunately all the links seem to be dead. Here’s the slashdot link hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/26/148233 but the actual article cited was deleted. It actually had near ASIMO level speed and handling (could go up stairs and over rough terrian), meaning that you could probably install two miniguns, some light rockets, and armor plating to get a useful light tank out of the thing (if you used a light enough pilot). Hmm… Maybe there’s a real reason they always pick a 14 year old girl to pilot the thing in anime?
Don’t forget all those hydraulic exoskeleton suits being developed to boost human power.
I must admit, leaping buildings in a single bound does peak my interest.
There’s a group in California working on a ~20 foot tall walking machine as well. See mechaps.com/ for hints. Not much information about the project itself yet, but give 'em a year or two.
Getting airborne isn’t necessarily a problem but, well, you know what they say… any landing you can walk away from is a good one. 
I don’t know if it’s still there but Carlos was selling that mech on EBAY for a while with the goal of using the cash to start over on a new design. He should have started smaller. Bicycles were made before cars, cars were made and improved upon before funtional tanks could be designed…
I’m starting small but my goal is to build something like Masamune Shirow’s Landmates. Man-Machine interfaced Bionics. Or even the Patlabor type machines would be acceptable. The trick is to start light weight IMHO. I have plans for a biomemetic hydraulic actuator that in early models will be actuated by hobby servos.
The only things I’ve spotted that resemble a funtioning Mecha are Toyota’s I-Foot and John Deere’s forest harvester.
I hope Carlos gets the money to keep building. The Japanese and probably the Chinese are kicking our @$$3$ as far as true mecha are concerned. The project in California appears to be a huge waste of capital and creative minds so far…
Ah yes, finally, someone that will agree with me that the guy up in Alaska is a nut case… Wait… I lived there too… Crap. Though currently in the military and not much time to devote twards these random crazy things I design up I got caught on mecha, mostly landmates. And then I met a person who was working with whats’ his name up in north cal on the no ---- ‘mech.’ With a steering, wheel two joysticks a throttle, three pedals and multiple touch screens… (A friend of mine happened to be a part of their team for a while, though we’re deployed to Iraq now…) My god they’ve created a monster, mostly a monster of a thing to try and pilot, the instruction manual for the pilot would be a friggin’ million pages long…
Though I wouldn’t count mechaps out yet… Although I like exoskeletons much more and wished they’d go under at one point in time (was conveinced exos were the only way to go and got in a big arguement with my friend while he was still working with mechaps) I’ve come to the conclusion… They’re actually making headway, I would expect it to be running around any time soon, though yes, give it a couple years.
Now then, landmates, I think two turbine engines (one in each leg) with oversized compressor sections used to pipe compressed air to air muscles (do a search on yahoo) would prove to be quite a viable plan. Though as well this idea yields many problems as well. The arms sticking out of the sides, how do you build a pivot that can case your arm yet still provide enough flexibility? Your legs inside its’ legs, you’d have to match up where the legs pivot with your own, or build a set of sensors and case (because that is where your leg goes and how you control it) that would shift insides its’ leg due to the fact that the pivot points are in different places.
Sighs. But alas, maybe someone will come along with the same interestest as myself and these ideas could be poured over and mangled around a bit, because I’m out of ideas.
Anyway, enough rambling, I hate when I do this…
Without the aid of computers, it is going to be near impossible to get it to walk in a reliable manor. I think if it had a gyro to keep it stable, then all that would be needed is the input from the driver.
Well Met Sir,
I don’t think you sould let go of your exoskeletal dreams.
In order for form and function to coincide I believe the exoskeleton is the most efficient also. Festo makes production air muscles that are very promising. My design uses a more substantial fluid for actuation. The comression of the air make control a headache…
Do/have you made any prototypes/drawings?
A Landmate would sure come in handy where you’re at…
Luckly for the general public its’ a good thing my old computer ---- the hard drive and I lost what little design idea I had going, otherwise there is a possibility someone could have gotten the idea off of the damned thing and had working examples running about the countryside by now.
And now, the solving of many peoples questions…
I’d thought about it more, how much strength does it really take for a human to walk? We’re all just falling repititiously. Thus came along my idea of using a lever connected to a bone and a hydralic actuator somewhere in there to pull on the lever and then have the airmuscles setup from the end of the lever so you had some brute force to work with if you needed to.
And no, an internal gyro wouldn’t be necessary, you are the gyro, twist your mind around this, if you started to fall over (and weren’t drunk,) what would you do? Most obviously stick a leg out in hopes of stopping this process before you have to go into the ‘wild flailing of arms’ mode.
The exoskeleton is not a machine that you pilot, it is and extention of -you-. If you, in the machine, start to fall over, stick your leg out, guess what the machine will do! Since most people here can put two and two together I’ll leave it at that.