Robot guy that uses no microchip

[jposs]

I am positive when I was a kid some Candian guy, maybe from Alberta made robots without microchips. They seemed to have the ability to learn, adapt or mimic one of those types of behaviors. I think I read it in Reader's Digest say from 1990 - 95? Anyone remember anything about this?

1st post and I have little education but a bunch of thoughts. Likely some fun will be made of my present and future posts, but I trust I'll learn something even if its too much for ones that don't care and too little for any that do... Have Fun all.

 

[JaredJames]

They seemed to have the ability to learn, adapt or mimic one of those types of behaviors.

I'll start with "it's impossible" and I'll finish with "wind up?".

EDIT: I suppose you don't need microchips, you could do it with wiring, but that just makes things exceptionally difficult and over sized / weight.

 

[jposs]

I"m sure its been said before, but it is only impossible until it isn't... this guy made crab type ones that got unstuck from tape and solar powered ones that made defensive walls... or killed things and pushed them just out of there light... might be wrong but most of my delusions are bigger than one man

 

[JaredJames]

I"m sure its been said before, but it is only impossible until it isn't...

Non-sense.

this guy made crab type ones that got unstuck from tape and solar powered ones that made defensive walls... or killed things and pushed them just out of there light... might be wrong but most of my delusions are bigger than one man

I think I've just come up with the one you're thinking of.

There's some inventor I saw on TV recently that builds structures with joints and they are propelled by wind. They walk.

That's all they do. Can't remember who now, but as impressive as they are, they aren't capable of what you describe.

Here:

 

[jposs]

Not that guy, but he makes some cool thing... This guy used like walkman parts and batteries or solar power depending on the model. Maybe other stuff as well, it was a long time ago and Readers Digest or some like publication after all.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

None of the robotic capabilities you've mentioned can be done without some sort of processing power, and the only way to get enough processing power on something like a small robot would be through the use of a microchip.

I think you're incorrectly remembering the article you read.

 

[RunsWithRugs]

There are little toy robots that move by way of solar power charging capacitors which cause stuff to happen. Like the robot might reorient itself towards a light source simply because the solar panel facing the light source charges the capacitor which when it hits a certain charge can drive a wheel or something to redirect the robots direction. That isn't really a microchip. In addition, anything you can do with a microchip you can do with relays. So maybe he didn't use a chip with a program more a hard-wired adaptive system. There are neural networks that use relays so I see no reason why you couldn't create logic without a "microchip". Basically it would just be taking the functions of a microchip and simulating them using other means. I'm sure if you sat down and thought about it for a while you could make an adaptive robot in your free time. Maybe you'll be the guy to make the next generation Roomba.

 

[256bits]

Beam Robots
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics

 

[RunsWithRugs]

So I guess the real answer is "Mark Tilden".

 

[jposs]

I guess it is. Maybe Good times. Thanks all, have fun in whatever you do.

 

[Uglybb]

Dam it someone beat me to it.

We used to use a lot of opamp or comparators circuits you can mimic most things you can do on a microcontroller the LM324 quad was a popular choice.

You can do everything from oscilattors, one shots, integrators, adders .. you name it I am pretty sure its been done on an op amp.

Tandy used to sell a basic circuits book (was nice yellow) which had piles of different setups for a comparator or op amp.

Ahh showing my age :-)

 

[jposs]

Yea, I remember article saying he'd make solar ones that killed and would make a wall just outside of their solar window with the leftover scrap... sure just randomly moving stuff to where it won't go...

But, more importantly in that he made a crab type one out of walkman parts (we all show our age) and when you stuck it's feet to tape it would take X time to get away, but apparently the more you did it the quicker it would get away.

I think we undervalue so many things when we decide we are smarter or better than them and we as individuals and people as a whole miss out because of it.

 

[Uglybb]

It's called analogue circuits .. a dying art.

What takes many lines of code in a micro-controller to read and ADC do some mathematics on the result and produce and output .. takes exactly 1 OP amp :-)

 

[jposs]

It's called analogue circuits .. a dying art.

What takes many lines of code in a micro-controller to read and ADC do some mathematics on the result and produce and output .. takes exactly 1 OP amp :-)

Explain. I have no education in anything that matters, at least to me.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Analog circuits are necessary in most any system that interacts with the ouside world.

Analogue electronics (or analog in American English) are electronic systems with a continuously variable signal, in contrast to digital electronics where signals usually take only two different levels. The term "analogue" describes the proportional relationship between a signal and a voltage or current that represents the signal. The word analogue is derived from the Greek word ανάλογος (analogos) meaning "proportional".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogue_electronics

New research and devlopment in analog systems has in many ways taken a back seat compared to digital electronics, but they are still very much needed in the digital world since Humans (and the world at large) do not interact on a digital level. Several of my co-workers who are electrical engineers compare analog circuit design to black magic, mainly because there's a lot of stuff that happens in the design of a seemingly simple circuit which may affect it's performance in unforseen ways.

One interesting development at the forefront of analog circuit design (at least in my opinion): analog circuit design using Genetic Algorithms! Link to some work done at NASA:

http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/static/asanicms/pub-archive/173h/0173%20(Lohn).pdf

Abstract: We describe a parallel genetic algorithm (GA) that automatically generates circuit designs using evolutionary search. A circuit-construction programming language is introduced and we show how evolution can generate practical analog circuit designs. Our system allows circuit size (number of devices), circuit topology, and device values to be evolved. We present experimental results as applied to analog filter and amplifier design tasks.