The Segway has great technology that allows it to remain stable over all sorts of terrain. Could you scale this up to make an Imperial Walker type mechanism or some similar giant robot?
Stable or not, as I recall, one of the big problems in building an mobile walking machine/exoframe/colossal death robot, is the power supply problem. Something that massive would require a lot of energy. And if you start adding more weight for fuel/bigger generators/etc., the problem just gets compounded.
But, suppose for a moment, that you’ve solved that problem. Either with a power supply the size and weight of a Coke can, or maybe an Invader Zim-type extension cord. How about then?
Assuming you got the power supply problem licked (say a nuclear generator), you’re going to have to do some rewiriting of the software. After all, it’s designed for a wheelchair/Segway, not a giant four legged mechanical beast. So while, it’d be a good starting point, you couldn’t simply just port the software to the main computer of an ATAT. The biggest problem, however, would be Kamen himself. He’s pretty much a humanitarian guy and probably wouldn’t take kindly to you adapting his technology to a massive war machine. Expect to hear from his lawyers shortly. 
Another evil genius thwarted by lawyers.
Ha! Lawyers are no match for the ATAT.
Oh, if only that were true! (Insert wistful smiley here.)
Waitaminnit! Does that mean that the giant steam-driven mechanical spiderbot in Wild Wild West wouldn’t be feasible!?
I’d hate to think that such a flaw would mar an otherwise classic piece of cinematography.
But back on topic, have you heard of
Asimo? Under the technology link, there is some talk about how it stays dynamically balanced.
The question is, how would the forces necessary to maintain balance be affected as you scale the robot to Mechwarrior size? My hunch is that you’d have to slow everything down to keep the inertial forces at manageable levels. I bet that computers are fast enough to handle the dynamic changes in force, but the actuators for a giant robot would have to be damn strong.
So yeah, back to what Ranchoth said. And in addition to the weight of fuel storage and generators, you’d have to add the weight of superstrong actuators.
I don’t understand why we’re talking about ATATs (although I can see why the little baby two-legged ones would need some sort of balance). The Segway is built on wheels, so just beef that up.
From a quick scan of the how it works section [segway.com], the Segway mimics human walking, which I heard somewhere described as a series of controlled falls - lean forward, put your foot out to catch yourself, repeat. The Segway lets you lean forward, and then it starts moving to “catch” you.
So, couldn’t we do something similar? Take two 8 foot wheels from a [URL=“http://www.thom.org/gallery/unnat/MNHBtruck/”]giant dump truck/URL], strap a killing chasis around a small nuclear generator, and let it loose in downtown Chicago. Try giving that a parking ticket.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
I’ll be in my workshop.
The power supply isn’t the problem, really - you can get a lot of power out of a turbine-powered generator. Maintaining stability while driving over cars and highway dividers would be trickier. It would look really cool - if I had a spare few million for parts and research and the garage space for it, I’d be tempted to build something like this.
I’m thinking that this not the technology you want for your giant killer robot. The Segway uses gyroscopes to perform its little magic. Gyroscopes don’t have to be all that big if you are stabilizing a few hundred pounds of person and Segway.
But scale it up to 60 or 70 tons of armor and weaponry (the weight of an M1 battle tank) and you’re talking some big honking gyros. Aside from the weight and complexity, think of all the failure modes of a gyroscope in battle (seized bearings, shrapnel, etc…) and think about what would happen if a ton or so of rapidly spinning metal suddenly decided it wasn’t happy staying where it was…
The gyros do not physically stabilize the Segway. The gyros in a Segway are solid-state devices which provide feedback signals to the control computers, which control the wheel drive motors to provide stabilizing torques. All of the balancing is done by very carefully controlling the speed and direction of the drive motors. You could actually keep the gyros and the computer systems the same when scaling the Segway up, just use bigger wheels and more powerful motors.
Well, if it’s any help, might an AT-TE be easier to build than the aforementioned AT-AT?
And, as I recall, NASA was doing some experimental work with a very LARGE (Like, horse sized) walking robot quite a few years ago…I can’t recall the name, though, so I’ve had no luck searching for additional info online. Any help?
The problem with giant killer robots is that they stick out too far above the ground, and make big targets for things like RPGs and LAWs. Even if the shot didn’t destroy you, the force might be enough to knock you over, and it would be difficult for a giant robot to right itself. Of course, this only applies if your giant robot is armored with convential materials. If you have any super-alloys or a force field, then maybe it could work.
Astro you ask the best questions!
[hijack]
Why aren’t there segway wheelchairs? Thats the first thing I thought of when I saw the HT’s. The leaning would work peferctly for a disabled person.
[/hijack]
Wearia – Kamen started out working on the iBOT wheelchair, and then used the same technology to create the Segway.
It looks like the FDA announced just today that the clinical trials of the iBOT were effective.
On a more practical note, it has occured to me that the iBOT wheelchair’s base would make an excellent starting platform for a bomb disposal robot. It can handle stairs, curbs, and driving offroad while carrying a decent payload, yet can get into narrow spaces that most bomb disposal robots can’t.
And yeah, DreadCthulhu points out the reason why the military won’t build mechs, even if they could - you might as well hang a big “shoot me” sign on them. Being tall is much more of a liabilty than an advantage in modern warfare.
Walkers aren’t impossible even now, just not very practical. Like DreadCthulhu said though, bipedal ones are asking for trouble.
Here’s
a six-legged one, though I don’t think it’s exactly fast, nor is it close to AT-AT sized.
That’s one creepy looking machine. Maybe they should make it ten to twenty times bigger and put guns and rockets on it and such.
Man, that would be cool.
If you were to build one it (IMHO) would have to be
- Four/six/eight legged
2.use Nitinol or muscle wire
a.when small amounts of current flow through nitinol it
contracts like a human muscle
b.it contracts only 5-18%, I am not sure that would be enough - it would have to be low to the the ground to avoid being a big old honking target
4.militarily it would only make sense in situations where tanks would not be practical (cities, mountains, etc.) - any non anti-personell weapons would have to have very low recoil unless the base was very stable
just my $0.02