Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #11641



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Jean auBois aubois@trail.com
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 03:38:14 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] VBUG series of robots


I figure that I can name four of the robots that were in the VBUG
series. Version 1.1 is Spyder, V1.2 is the Lobster, V1.5 was the first
successful Walkman and V1.6 is another Walkman, recently on exhibit at the
Los Alamos Bradbury Museum. On the Solarbotics site in the Gallery
section, one reads:

>As we run into this question on a regular basis - NO, we don't have plans
>or schematics for Walkman. Too bad, since Walkman was stolen out of Mark
>Tilden's Lab at the Los Alamos National Laboratories.

I've got to agree that the question has been raised a jillion times about
how to get plans for Spyder and Walkman. However, isn't the device
described in Tilden's patent effectively Spyder? I realize that the patent
doesn't cover the exquisite mechanical work that went into Spyder's
construction, but the robot in the patent has eight motors and I've never
seen a description of any -other- eight motor robot built by Mark (and
definite disclaimers that he hasn't built one since). And, of course, it
ought not be an _excessive_ task to go from the diagrams in "Living
Machines" to schematics. Perhaps it is the sheer simplicity of the
diagrams in "Living Machines" that confuses people, but it seems to me that
the Nv and Nu neurons shown in the diagrams are exactly the ones that
people have been discussing in this list lately.

I will admit that even once the diagrams are converted into schematics that
the values of resistors and capacitors and so forth have to be determined
(just as people have done for the unicore), but for the most part you can
start with the 1Megohm/0.22micro-Farad combination and work from
there. Lobster would obviously be more difficult because you are talking
about a ring within a ring: this was part of the problem with it not being
able to deal with too much input -- the Nu ring was moving "too quickly"
which ended up jamming the Nv ring or some such.


Anyhow, food for thought and all that...


jab

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