I’ll cut a loooong story short. Has anyone tried to build a (small) robot based on one of the drones from the '70’s film “Silent Running”? (Yes I know the film robots were actors in costumes!)
If anyone has tried, were they successful, or if not what difficulties did they face. I look forward to your replies.
This guy made some. Found it by doing an image search on Google for silent running robot…
Thanks, I’ve come across his models before, however I meant a working **walking **model with servos etc
Just looking at the drone pictures, robots built like this wouldn’t actually be able to walk (maybe hop). The legs are spaces too far apart to be able to balance on one foot while the other is off the ground. “Movie magic” is able to over come the real world issues.
I remember that movie! 8)
I agree that the wide foot spacing on the SR drone makes shifting the COG from one foot to the other a bit of a challenge. Todays kits either have overlapping feet or feet so close together that a small lean to the side is enough to allow the opposing foot to be lifted and moved. Maybe the problem can be overcome?
Imagine you are the actor inside the robot suit. These guys were double amputees (no legs) and so were able to walk about on their hands. Now think about the sequence of movements necessary to walk:
“Throw” you weight to one side while lifting a leg and moving it forward.
Could a powerfull enough servo accelerate a weight/move a limb fast enought to recreate these movements? How about some sort of weighted pendulum within the drone body powered by a servo? You guys have the experience, let me know! I’m not looking for a full sized model, RoboNova size maybe.
interesting… so the actors were basically “walking” on handstands. not people you’d want to arm wrestle with much I’d think.
do you have any relative scale type drawings? I am thinking the reason they are the shape they are is they would need room for the guys shoulders when they transfered to a single hand. you would have quite a bit of downward force on that “hand” that can be applied to the instep of the foot. if you knew the relative scale relationship then you can put the thing in solidworks and scale it to fit standard servos and hardware, basically driving overall size by that. Also you can probably do center of mass and force type analysis in solidworks to figure out if its even possible to make it walk. I would also tend to think this thing will want to be LiPo powered for sure, just to get the weight down as much as possible.
No scaled drawings available as far as I know. Model makers have used stills from the DVD to take measurements. I’m not after an exact replica at this stage, just curious to see if it’s possible.
The Solid Works analysis sounds interesting, but wouldn’t it be easier just to build working model? If there was a way to shift the COG from one foot to another quickly that would go a long way to solving the problem (servo powered pendulum?). I have a few basic servos & Lynxmotion brackets to experment with but nothing with a really beefy torque and/or speed. Hoping some of you with more robotics skills have come across and solved a similar problem.
