The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

Re:The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged w... by TaylorAlexander on Monday September 07, 2020 @03:37PM (#24402035)

Millions seems about right. If it took more than $999 million I’d be pretty surprised. Hydraulics are tricky but they’re not that tricky.

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Re:The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged w... by andbberger on Monday September 07, 2020 @06:39PM (#24403548)

The kinematics are the tricky part. Trajectory planning is still quite difficult today even with our speedy modern CPUs

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Re:The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged w... by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @05:15AM (#24406623)

Trajectory planning what? Actually solving the inverse kinematics of 3dof manipulators is trivial. I did so 20 years ago using a Basic Stamp microcontroller for my 18 servo hexapod. I was 15.

Planning foot placement is a bit harder but I would say the compute heavy part today would be perception.

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Re:The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged w... by andbberger on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @03:11AM (#24418183)

Trajectory planning for foot placement.

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Re:The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged w... by TaylorAlexander on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @07:06AM (#24419690)

I think of “trajectory planning” as: you have a known target position and you have to figure out how to get there. That’s not hard with a 3dof manipulator.

But figuring out where to place the feet, which I consider a perception problem, is very hard. But I think that’s what you’re talking about and I just use different terminology. That’s why I was confused. Sorry if I came off wrong.

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