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At the risk of thoroughly annoying all of the real technic builders here
(people who build cranes and trucks, etc) here is yet another tiny walker. I
said I would stop after the first one, but its kind of fun :) I was able to
make Hercules a fair bit smaller, and he can still carry a battery pack.
http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~stehlik/Hercules.html
Go ahead, try and make a smaller walker.
Rob
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first off, I love this micro bot stuff. I highly doubt that people using
technic bricks would disapprove of the microbots considering the furious
amount of momentum all the builders involved have achieved. Not too mention
the dialouge that they have inspired. Secondly your bot rocks, although
like the baby walker, it technically probably isn't a walker in that it
doesn't ever fall forward. still the ability to carry its own weight is
something to behold and you deserver major cudos. I can't wait till this
.space project that i'm trying to finish is done so i can build off off your
work and make a bot that has all four feet hit the ground at different
intervals, which i know in my heart is possible...
great work man
-tk
"Rob Stehlik" <robbby31@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:HCyEM3.woG@lugnet.com...
> At the risk of thoroughly annoying all of the real technic builders here
> (people who build cranes and trucks, etc) here is yet another tiny walker. • I
> said I would stop after the first one, but its kind of fun :) I was able • to
> make Hercules a fair bit smaller, and he can still carry a battery pack.
> http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~stehlik/Hercules.html
> Go ahead, try and make a smaller walker.
> Rob
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In lugnet.technic, Travis Kunce writes:
> first off, I love this micro bot stuff. I highly doubt that people using
> technic bricks would disapprove of the microbots considering the furious
> amount of momentum all the builders involved have achieved. Not too mention
> the dialouge that they have inspired.
Hopefully you are right. I just don't see how my stupid 5 minute micro
walker fits in with amazing cranes and construction vehicles built by people
like TJ and Jennifer Clark.
> Secondly your bot rocks, although
> like the baby walker, it technically probably isn't a walker in that it
> doesn't ever fall forward.
???? This is a wierd way to define a walker. Here is my definition: A
creature that moves by transfering its weight from one set of legs to the
other. In the case of Bipeds, the weight is transfered from one leg to the
other. This disqualifies things that drag along the ground. But, in saying
all things that do not 'fall forward' are not walkers, you disqulify all
hexapods, quadrupeds, and a large group of bipeds.
> still the ability to carry its own weight is
> something to behold and you deserver major cudos. I can't wait till this
> .space project that i'm trying to finish is done so i can build off off your
> work and make a bot that has all four feet hit the ground at different
> intervals, which i know in my heart is possible...
Sure its possible. Just bigger :) I made one version that just used cranks
with small tires on the end as feet, which provided the diagonally opposite
stride. But it didn't have the balance.
> great work man
Thanks. I think thats it for the microbots. More interesting stuff to come.
Rob
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In lugnet.technic, Rob Stehlik writes:
> Hopefully you are right. I just don't see how my stupid 5 minute micro
> walker fits in with amazing cranes and construction vehicles built by people
> like TJ and Jennifer Clark.
I agree with you, some of the awesome cranes and other projects are much
more impressive than something designed to be, literally, as insignificant
as possible. On the other hand, I know that sometimes the thought and
planning that go into making something simple can take a while (I know for
myself that planning the Twirp design took a good bit longer than actually
building it).
> ???? This is a wierd way to define a walker. Here is my definition: A
> creature that moves by transfering its weight from one set of legs to the
> other. In the case of Bipeds, the weight is transfered from one leg to the
> other. This disqualifies things that drag along the ground. But, in saying
> all things that do not 'fall forward' are not walkers, you disqulify all
> hexapods, quadrupeds, and a large group of bipeds.
Again, I agree with you. If this were the case, most of my bipeds wouldn't
be considered walkers because they are stable through the whole walking cycle.
-jrl
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In lugnet.technic, James Loewen writes:
> In lugnet.technic, Rob Stehlik writes:
>
> > Hopefully you are right. I just don't see how my stupid 5 minute micro
> > walker fits in with amazing cranes and construction vehicles built by people
> > like TJ and Jennifer Clark.
>
> I agree with you, some of the awesome cranes and other projects are much
> more impressive than something designed to be, literally, as insignificant
> as possible. On the other hand, I know that sometimes the thought and
> planning that go into making something simple can take a while (I know for
> myself that planning the Twirp design took a good bit longer than actually
> building it).
I disagree :-) Big, monster creations with a lot of function can be
impressive. However, something that is designed to be "as insignificant" as
possible can be just as, if not more, impressive!
If you take a moment and try to understand a minimalist design, then you can
appreciate the amount of thought and time put into it. For me, it is this
work and expertise that is most impressive.
I also consider that some people have a relatively small collection of
parts, and therefore make due with what they have. So it is a considerable
acheivement when they produce something cool.
I hope people realize this. Because I know it's intimidating reading this
group and seeing MOCs made from thousands of pieces, and then considering
posting a MOC made from a handful of parts.
The whole walker thing is quite interesting, and very cool, I think. It has
certainly caught on and built up some momentum. It's something that's on a
reasonable scale that most people can participate. I like it!
-TJ
p.s. I'm an engineer, and I'm constantly pressed to design things as simply
and as cost-effective as possible. It can be very difficult trying to do
this, and a considerable amount of design work goes into everything no
matter how small. When you see a finished design, it will seem very simple,
and the amount of thought and work that went into the design is not apparent
to an outside observer.
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> I disagree :-) Big, monster creations with a lot of function can be
> impressive. However, something that is designed to be "as insignificant" as
> possible can be just as, if not more, impressive!
I often build big, but I don't put much effort in what I build. I build for
recreation from a long day of problem solving so I don't like to struggle with
more problems when I get home. My projects almost always "fly togheter" from a
handful of sittings. Take the Lynx for instance, it was built in one sitting:
http://www.lotek.nu/creations/lynxmki/index.html
And it's grandson, the Lynx MkIII was built in two:
http://www.lotek.nu/creations/lynxmkiii/index.html
So IMHO there is nothing impressive about those. But to someone with a small
collection of parts they might appear impressive 'cause they use a lot of
parts. Bullocks to that, it's just a lot of parts. All that took was money and
time!
Then look at the small walkers, derived from several iterations into something
small and perfect. That's amazing!
Sure, the stuff Jennifer puts out (and a lot of others) both use a lot of parts
and took a long time of problem solving before they were done. And this is even
more impressive, but it does not make the small creations bad. If all were to
build those giant projects and finnish something every six months this group
would be dead!
When I accumulate even more parts, I hope to be able to build those giant
projects and when I get tired of them (it will happen) I hope to have those
extra parts to build other things, maybee small walkers, until the inspiration
to finnish "the big one" comes back. My Jas 39 Gripen will be the first serious
attempt to build quite big, detailed and with a lot of functions...
> If you take a moment and try to understand a minimalist design, then you can
> appreciate the amount of thought and time put into it. For me, it is this
> work and expertise that is most impressive.
Take the hoovercrafts as an example of this. One motor, some cross axles and a
handful of miscellaneous parts. A lot of trial and error. The result? The crowd
goes wild! It's so simple that anyone with a few bricks can do it, if they can
figure out how to use the parts!
> I also consider that some people have a relatively small collection of
> parts, and therefore make due with what they have. So it is a considerable
> acheivement when they produce something cool.
Take Luis Hernández little Sports Car:
http://news.lugnet.com/technic/?n=9644
I still can't believe he made *that* from a collection of just 1.000 LEGO
pieces!
> I hope people realize this. Because I know it's intimidating reading this
> group and seeing MOCs made from thousands of pieces, and then considering
> posting a MOC made from a handful of parts.
Agreed!
> The whole walker thing is quite interesting, and very cool, I think. It has
> certainly caught on and built up some momentum. It's something that's on a
> reasonable scale that most people can participate. I like it!
The minimalistic design have perhaps narrowed it down to those who own a
micromotor only. But don't be afraid to make one with any other motor and
challenge the others to make a better biped with that specific motor.
> p.s. I'm an engineer, and I'm constantly pressed to design things as simply
> and as cost-effective as possible. It can be very difficult trying to do
> this, and a considerable amount of design work goes into everything no
> matter how small. When you see a finished design, it will seem very simple,
> and the amount of thought and work that went into the design is not apparent
> to an outside observer.
A solution that works good and as effective as possible almost always looks
simple and obvious. But to get there is almost never simple! KISS - Keep It
Simple Stupid. It's so hard to design by that rule...
Best regards,
/Tobbe
http://www.lotek.nu
(remove SPAM when e-mailing)
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In lugnet.technic, Thomas Avery writes:
> In lugnet.technic, James Loewen writes:
> > In lugnet.technic, Rob Stehlik writes:
> >
> > > Hopefully you are right. I just don't see how my stupid 5 minute micro
> > > walker fits in with amazing cranes and construction vehicles built by people
> > > like TJ and Jennifer Clark.
> >
> > I agree with you, some of the awesome cranes and other projects are much
> > more impressive than something designed to be, literally, as insignificant
> > as possible. On the other hand, I know that sometimes the thought and
> > planning that go into making something simple can take a while (I know for
> > myself that planning the Twirp design took a good bit longer than actually
> > building it).
> I disagree :-) Big, monster creations with a lot of function can be
> impressive. However, something that is designed to be "as insignificant" as
> possible can be just as, if not more, impressive!
>
> If you take a moment and try to understand a minimalist design, then you can
> appreciate the amount of thought and time put into it. For me, it is this
> work and expertise that is most impressive.
I agree completely. Einstein said "Make things as simple as possible, but
not simpler". Making things as simple as possible takes a lot of work
sorting out relevent from irrelevent. That is a lot of mental effort.
>
> I also consider that some people have a relatively small collection of
> parts, and therefore make due with what they have. So it is a considerable
> acheivement when they produce something cool.
Living within constraints is a challenging and creative process. When I was
contacted by Syngress to work on a book based on the Dark Side Developers
Kit, it took me a while to get into the swing of things. My most favorite
of all my robots in the book is Go-Rilla, a fast weight shifting biped. I
consider it minimallistic: http://www.users.qwest.net/~kclague/Go-Rilla. I
also consider http://www.users.qwest.net/~kclague/maniac a pretty
minimalistic weight shifter for an RCX carrying biped.
I *love* all this inspired micro-walker building. Last night I started on a
micro-motor based weight shifting biped.
>
> I hope people realize this. Because I know it's intimidating reading this
> group and seeing MOCs made from thousands of pieces, and then considering
> posting a MOC made from a handful of parts.
When I went to brickswest, I realized that people like to build at different
scales. Eric Sophie's Jama is a wonderful example of building at a very
large scale, and is very impressive. Seeing it in person made me realize
that I really like small scales.
>
> The whole walker thing is quite interesting, and very cool, I think. It has
> certainly caught on and built up some momentum. It's something that's on a
> reasonable scale that most people can participate. I like it!
>
> -TJ
>
> p.s. I'm an engineer, and I'm constantly pressed to design things as simply
> and as cost-effective as possible. It can be very difficult trying to do
> this, and a considerable amount of design work goes into everything no
> matter how small. When you see a finished design, it will seem very simple,
> and the amount of thought and work that went into the design is not apparent
> to an outside observer.
I am also an engineer, but my work does not press me for cost-effectiveness
in the same way usually. I prefer keeping things as simple as possible
because they are less confusing (to me) that way. I often intuit down to
the essence of things because that is the way my brain works. The
irrelevencies just get in the way.
Kevin
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In lugnet.technic, Thomas Avery writes:
> I disagree :-) Big, monster creations with a lot of function can be
> impressive. However, something that is designed to be "as insignificant" as
> possible can be just as, if not more, impressive!
>
> If you take a moment and try to understand a minimalist design, then you can
> appreciate the amount of thought and time put into it. For me, it is this
> work and expertise that is most impressive.
>
> I also consider that some people have a relatively small collection of
> parts, and therefore make due with what they have. So it is a considerable
> acheivement when they produce something cool.
>
> I hope people realize this. Because I know it's intimidating reading this
> group and seeing MOCs made from thousands of pieces, and then considering
> posting a MOC made from a handful of parts.
> > The whole walker thing is quite interesting, and very cool, I think. It has
> certainly caught on and built up some momentum. It's something that's on a
> reasonable scale that most people can participate. I like it!
>
> -TJ
>
> p.s. I'm an engineer, and I'm constantly pressed to design things as simply
> and as cost-effective as possible. It can be very difficult trying to do
> this, and a considerable amount of design work goes into everything no
> matter how small. When you see a finished design, it will seem very simple,
> and the amount of thought and work that went into the design is not apparent
> to an outside observer.
You have some good points there. I wasn't meaning to speak badly of the
small walker projects- I'm actually one of the people who started the whole
mini-walker thing. I meant that some of the larger projects have definitely
been more complex, elaborate, and imposing. Like Rob said, a tiny little
walker doesn't really fit in the same class. The good thing is, though, that
it doesn't have to. A small, relatively simple design can be very cool in
its own way. For instance, a large crane may be very complex and impressive,
but you can't build one in 5 minutes and have fun watching it stomp around.
I guess each project should be appreciated for its own merits. Comparing a
large project to a small one is really apples to oranges.
-jrl
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In lugnet.technic, Rob Stehlik writes:
> At the risk of thoroughly annoying all of the real technic builders here
> (people who build cranes and trucks, etc) here is yet another tiny walker. I
> said I would stop after the first one, but its kind of fun :) I was able to
> make Hercules a fair bit smaller, and he can still carry a battery pack.
> http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~stehlik/Hercules.html
> Go ahead, try and make a smaller walker.
> Rob
Hey, cool design tweak. I've come up with a design revision for Hercules
that is the same overall size as this one, although it uses a different
design. I think if you combined this foot design with the one you just came
up with, you could make it a bit narrower. Here's the link:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=39519
-jrl
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