Category: Robots

It seems I have a foot fetish for robots in general – Mars Curiosity Rover – Wheel Wear and Tear, and a Rocker-bogie for kicks

NASA, Robots, Space

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via olafwillocx
.. these tires aren’t the tires we’re used to. These are aluminum tires. Very thin aluminum too, to save weight. The parts that are damaged are only 0.75 mm thick. The treads for grip are 7.5 mm thick.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker-bogie#/media/File:Rocker_bogie.gif

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There were several factors that drove them to design the wheels to be as lightweight as possible. The large size of the wheels means that very slight design changes add a substantial amount of mass. Increasing wheel thickness by one millimeter would add 10 kilograms to the rover’s total mass. But total system mass wasn’t the only constraint. Erickson explained that a major constraint arose from a tricky moment in the landing sequence, at the moment that the wheels deployed, while the rover was suspended from the bridle underneath the descent stage. The wheels’ sudden drop imparted substantial forces on the mobility system, and keeping wheel mass as light as possible reduced those forces to manageable ones. There were other factors that made it important to keep wheel mass low.

So the wheels needed to be as light as possible while still being able to do their job, but as to their job: “We misunderstood what Mars was,” Erickson said. “Strongly cemented ventifacts are not something that we saw on Mars before.” They designed Curiosity to handle all the challenges that Spirit and Opportunity had experienced, especially sand, which Curiosity traverses substantially better than her predecessors. “This vehicle is able to get itself out of situations that MER couldn’t; it’s got more flotation than MER had by a substantial margin.” They designed Curiosity to handle the sand traps, flat bedrock, and rocks-perched-on-sand landscapes seen by all the previous landers. They just didn’t imagine the possibility of the peculiar and never-before-seen terrain type that they found in Gale crater. “There are [places] on Earth that do have these sharp ventifacts, but we hadn’t seen them on Mars and we didn’t test against them,” Erickson said.” Source: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/08190630-curiosity-wheel-damage.html

So yeah, aluminium because of the light weight and flexibility. Wheel skin is only .75mm thick. It would have worked if it probably just driving around in sand but it wasn’t. I don’t think metal choice was the issue but the wheel design in general. Such a thin wheel skin with most metals could surely be destroyed after driving over such things. It just sounds like a design failure to me.

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via paulhammond5155 

Routine Inspection of Curiosity’s Wheel Wear and Tear:

The team operating Curiosity Rover use the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the 2 meter-long robotic arm to check the condition of the wheels at routine intervals. This image of Curiosity’s right-middle and right-rear wheels is part of an inspection set of 20 images taken during mission sol 1591 (27th January 2017). A link is provided to all of the raw MAHLI images acquired during that inspection below.

Holes and tears in the wheels worsened significantly during 2013 as Curiosity was crossing terrain studded with sharp rocks on its route from near its 2012 landing site to the base of Mount Sharp. JPL engineering team members are keeping a close eye for when any of the zig-zag shaped treads, call grousers, begin to break. Longevity testing with identical wheels on Earth indicates that when three grousers on a given wheel have broken, that wheel has reached about 60 percent of its useful mileage. Curiosity’s current odometry of 15.34 kilometers 9.53 miles, and with no grousers broken so far. The accumulating damage to wheels is not expected to prevent the rover from reaching its predetermined mission science destinations on the slopes of Mount Sharp.

Curiosity’s six aluminum wheels are about 50 centimeters (20 inches) in diameter and 40 centimeters (16 inches) wide. Each of the six wheels has its own drive motor, and the four corner wheels also have steering motors. The MAHLI image attached has been rotated, colour adjusted and sharpened, it’s also been annotated with the wheel dimensions and the location of the Morse code cut-outs in its wheels, these leave visual odometry marks in rover tracks in sand, which are useful for checking the drive distances reported by the rover. Curiosity’s six aluminum wheels are about 50 centimeters (20 inches) in diameter and 40 centimeters (16 inches) wide. Each of the six wheels has its own drive motor, and the four corner wheels also have steering motors enabling the rover to perform 360 degree turns in place.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

All of the MAHLI images for sol 1591:

http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=1591&camera=MAHLI.

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Kenny Baker, the actor behind my favorite robot

Film, R2-D2, Robots, Sci-Fi, Star Wars

Kenny Baker, the actor behind R2-D2

Kenny Baker, actor behind R2-D2 via the guardian.

View post on imgur.com

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Press to Beep – via reddit.
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My next favorite robot is of course a sarcastic one:

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Speaking of it – interstellar is not necessarily among my favorites – but loved Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, have seen them both many times each. I spin Edge of Tomorrow often ( rip solarmovie ).

 

What is your humor setting, TARS?
100 percent.

Let’s bring that down to 75.

 

To be honest i like my robots and humans at 100 percent.

Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed WALL-E, talks about the clues to a great story

Film, Great Stories, R2-D2, Robots, Sci-Fi

“Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.”
― William Archer



A tourist is backpacking through the highlands of Scotland, and he stops at a pub to get a drink. And the only people in there is a bartender and an old man nursing a beer. And he orders a pint, and they sit in silence for a while. And suddenly the old man turns to him and goes, “You see this bar? I built this bar with my bare hands from the finest wood in the county. Gave it more love and care than my own child. But do they call me MacGregor the bar builder? No.” Points out the window. “You see that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands. Found every stone, placed them just so through the rain and the cold. But do they call me MacGregor the stone wall builder? No.” Points out the window. “You see that pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands. Drove the pilings against the tide of the sand, plank by plank. But do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? No. But you fuck one goat … “

 

The clues to a great story transcript:
https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story/transcript?language=en

 

 

Wall-E was in part inspired by R2-D2 (1:50):

 
More on WALL-E: WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008) — Humanity and Dysfunctional Robots:

Yet throughout the film, robots express much more emotion than the humans. Almost all of the robot characters, from WALL-E to AUTO to MO have personalities, feelings, desires, and prerogatives outside of their simpler tasks. Even simpler robots, like the typing bot outside the Captain’s quarters are shown to have personality and desires, although they might be latent or ignored in favor of their pre-determined purpose. The human characters, on the other hand, are portrayed as dull and almost lifeless; they do nothing for themselves, are perpetually bored, and exhibit none of the creativity or connections that supposedly characterize the human race. They become almost robotic: they have a singular purpose, behave in repetitive ways, and rely on external input to change their actions. In a way, the robotic characters are far more human that the actual human beings because they do exhibit genuine emotions. The “dysfunctional” robots in the ward, for example, seem to feel real relief when WALL-E frees them, and even help her in the ensuing revolution aboard the ship.

http://filmtank.org/forum/forum/film-development/films/23040-wall-e-andrew-stanton-2008-humanity-and-dysfunctional-robots

Are we Happy and Effective? We are now programmed for perfect happiness

Film, George, Robots, Sci-Fi

Just run into the latter movie and immediately thought of one of my favorite movies, George’s THX 1138. George wins here big time because he doesn’t try too hard, you don’t have to try too hard when you are inventing a genre. Movies today do not hold back as they have the genre worked out already for them and all they have to do is fit the script with an appropriate visual.

Here is the original trailer and clips from George’s movie which i find superior in every respect:

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A new attempt at the same themes – the movie is Equals (2015), with bigger smart screens but much less subtlety. A trailer ( can’t stand trailers to be honest but whatever ) and a clip:
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Which reminds me to share with you my favorite sci-fi movie of recent –

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Even if you are not fond of their grandiose schemes – you must admit the Wachowskis are a visual institution, the Matrix started the 21st century culturally and put whatever was in their minds – in the minds of millions of people. The blue and red pills, the streaky hallways, the bullet time – these grandmasters made the geeky weird mainstream. If you have ever sat in front of a computer 16+ hours you must know that feeling – my setup at Lucasfilm consisted of 3 computer screens and 3 televisions, 3 consoles, 2 computers and several other devices, including a Wacom tablet and various controllers. When I get off at the end heading to Chestnut street – I would see polygons and wireframe triangles everywhere, my brain would process and dismember all into visual components and put it back together in the next frame.