Re: Legs vs. treads
- From: drachirREVERSEEACHPARTTOREPLY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Richard Kennaway)
- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:48:27 +0100
Damien Valentine <valends3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The argument for the "giant robot walker" theme in SF seems to be that
a vehicle with legs is more effective in urban or rough terrain than a
vehicle with treads. So: suppose we have a 20-some-ton "mech", and a
20-some-ton "tank", one with treads, one without. Why would one
perform better than the other?
"First, build your giant robot walker."
The bar to successful walking machines is high, for several reasons. A
walker, while it's in motion, must devote a great deal of effort just to
staying aloft. A wheeled vehicle doesn't: the passive strength of its
materials prevents it from falling down. A walker must also devote a
great deal of computational effort to the task. Wheeled vehicles need
no computation. The Japanese efforts have achieved, literally, baby
steps in comparison to the SF version.
In principle, walkers can go where wheels can't, and there have been
walking truck-equivalents that do better than wheels in bad terrain.
The problem is that they do far worse than wheels on good terrain, so
you still need a big wheeled truck to transport the walking truck to
where it's useful.
--
Richard Kennaway
.
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