Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #03145
To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Wilf Rigter Wilf.Rigter@powertech.bc.ca
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 14:53:50 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: a useless idea
Inertial positioning!
Useless???? You have practically invented a phototropic MOBILE ! This is of
course a brilliant (although perhaps not entirely new) idea ! A low
friction bearing would permit the same mechanism to be used for standard
head applications with a tripod support. While interesting for
head/bot/mobiles that turn with respect to a fixed reference this idea is
much more practical when used in referenceless application: Most effective
in zero gravity applications (in space), it can also be used for zero
bouancy applications in the air for example with helium filled spherical
"AIRHEAD" or under water for example a cylindrical shaped or spherical 1 or
2 DOF "AQUAHEAD" suspended in a transparent tank (aquarium) could use this
phototropic inertial positioning idea to follow a light.
enjoy
Wilf Rigter mailto:wilf.rigter@powertech.bc.ca
tel: (604)590-7493
fax: (604)590-3411
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wouter Brok [SMTP:w.j.m.brok@stud.tue.nl]
> Sent: Sunday, May 09, 1999 11:33 PM
> To: beam@corp.sgi.com
> Subject: a useless idea
>
> Hello,
>
> Yesterday I thought up an weird hanging robot (well, you can hardly call
> it
> a robot, but it moves). I attached a scanned drawing to make things more
> clear, and I will write down a couple of remarks below. Maybe somebody
> thinks it is a funny thing to make (be my guest ... I would like to hear
> about it) or maybe somebody can make a greater idea from it (... I would
> like to hear about that too).
>
> In a hanging box (which could be made with PCB, with the components on the
> outside) a motor is fixed with a weight attached to the axis. When the
> motor turns the box will turn around the line of the wire to which it is
> attached. If the circuit is equiped with photodiodes it can turn itself so
> that these will keep pointing at a light source: the circuit will control
> the motor in such a way that the side of the box with the photodiodes will
> keep pointing to the light-source (is it clear what I have in mind?)
>
> - it is not interesting from the practical point of view (at least I
> wouldn't know an application which can't be done easier), but from the
> physics and system-control point of view it is.
> - it can be made with a bicore (which is a really cool circuit, for
> refference see http://www.beam-online.com/Bicore_article/select.htm).
> - the mass as drawn in the picture doesn't need to be excentric, as long
> as
> it is quite a mass compared to the overall mass.
> - the box should be able to rotate freely around the point to which the
> wire is attached, else the wire will excert a force on the box wich will
> try to turn it; that only complicates things.
> - a little friction however can be usefull because than the motion is
> damped.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Wouter Brok
>
> PS: hope the file isn't too large
>
> << File: Idea1.GIF >>
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