Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #06583
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bruce Robinson Bruce_Robinson@bc.sympatico.ca
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 22:21:09 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Reversing walkers
> Richard Caudle wrote:
>
> You know, I've watched lots of bugs
> walking and I can't recall ever
> seeing one go backwards.
Do you count spiders as bugs? Most of the varieties in my house back up.
Specifically, when threatened by a larger creature (me), they stop,
assess the situation, back up a short distance (not very quickly), turn
around, and run like heck.
The backing up motion is not smooth at all; from this I infer that it's
there only to let them move away from a dicey situation while keeping a
eye or four on things.
By the way; back in the early 70's researchers (K.G. Pearson, J.F. Iles,
D.M. Wilson) demonstrated that many insects' walking patterns were
created by what were called "motor programs". These were patterns of
movement that did not rely on feedback to control them. In effect, an
insect would initiate a "motor program" to move or turn in the desired
direction, and would keep activating that program until it got where it
wanted to go. The actual details of walking were pre-programmed. Sounds
a lot like a micro-core or bicore, doesn't it?
Bruce
6584 Sat, 9 Oct 99 23:43:17 -0600 [alt-beam] Re: Complete walker PCBs for sale Ian Bernstein Hi
I just checked it out and the CW1 PCB would run at about $6 each and I'm
not sure about CW2 because I haven't designed the board yet.
Laterz
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