Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #04222
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bruce Robinson Bruce_Robinson@bc.sympatico.ca
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 12:02:59 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: BEAM forcefield....
"van Zoelen, Bram SSI-TSEA-352" wrote:
>
> So with magnetic pole will be facing inwards , North or South?
Why have a pole face inwards? Have all the poles face up instead. Every
magnet has the same pole facing up (e.g. north), including the ones on
the robots. Arrange them so the tops and bottoms of each magnet are at
approximately the same height; if your magnets are very thin between the
poles, use a length of steel or iron rod to extend them.
Now you have all the north poles on top and all the south poles on the
bottom -- all repelling each other. The only concern is that very
powerful magnets could flip a robot over on its back. However, with all
the magnets the same height and same distance off the ground, the
attractive distance between any two magnets would be greater than the
repulsive distance (attraction is on a diagonal, repulsion is a straight
distance). The robots would never get close enough to the "force field"
to experience a strong "flipping" force. In theory. In practice, one
rogue robot that managed to overturn could create a real mess.
Think of it this way -- two levels of monopoles (one north, one south)
on two different horizontal planes.
Regards,
Bruce
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