European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - November 16, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 16 the stars and stripes saturday november 16, 1985 Driver cockpit Hydraulic cylinders robot with laser infrared laser eyes the first lumbering Steps by Malcolm w. Browne new York times Footpad w Ith a blast of exhaust smoke and Anear splitting howl a three Ion robot came to life in a workshop at Ohio stat University last week tentatively flexing the Hydraulic Muscles on one of its elephantine legs and practising the movements that will eventually enable it to walk. The great limb powerful enough to crush an automobile but gentle enough to manipulate a fragile cardboard Box merely took a few Dummy strides in its latest series of tests. But the builders of Ohio state s adaptive suspension vehicle . Believe their robot creature the product of $5 million and nearly two decades of research and development is nearly ready to lumber out of the Laboratory. The project has always been regarded by its directors As a research exercise for developing the theory of robotics and in the Early years financial support came mainly from the National science foundation. But because a Large walking robot has obvious military potential the defense department has been the main supporter of the project since 19bo. Controlled partly by a Battery of computers and partly by a human Driver the . Will walk As no machine has Ever walked before. At Large a Dan our but with the agility and balance of a crab or insect the Walker will Man Euver through forests bogs and desert Sand up and Down Steep Hills across ditches up to nine feet wide and Over obstacles up to seven feet High. Scanning its path with infrared laser eyes the 17-toot-Lorig machine will plan each step it takes looking for footholds avoiding holes and making the Best of whatever terrain it has to cover. Vision is not the Only sense with which the robot has been endowed. Like a Bat it will use acoustic echoes to gauge the proximity of neighbouring objects. Pressure sensors in the machine s footpads will constantly inform its computer brain of the nature of the ground it to covering Ana a gyroscopic balance sensor will serve the same purpose As an animal s vestibular system. At if All Ohio state s mechanical beast is expected to to As sure footed As a Camel stronger than an elephant and a Good Deal smarter than the insects on whose Mode of locomotion it is partly based. To the Ohio state professors Robert b. Mcghee and Kenneth j. Waldron who have devoted Large parts of their careers to the . And its antecedents the six legged Walker is no Mere machine it is the embodiment of discoveries that have significantly advanced the Fields of robotics computer control biology Anatomy and even Medicine. Systems developed Lor use in robot walking machines have found important applications in prosthetic limbs for human patients. Nonetheless the . May be the precursor of a family of machines so interesting to the defense department that the project is now financed by the defense advanced research projects Agency Darpa. The army has e to mated that about 50 percent of the Earth s land Unace is inaccessible to All conventional vehicles whether they run on wheels or tracks or. Mcghee said in an interview that s one of the reasons the armed forces Are interested in the . A vehicle that can walk  unlike Early experimental walking machines this one is built for rough Field use earn ing its own motor and accessories. Motive Force for the . Is supplied by a 70-horsepower motorcycle engine whose Energy is stored by spinning a 100-Pound Flywheel to a Speed of More than 12,000 revolutions per minute. The Flywheel in turn Powers a score of Hydraulic actuators that move the various joints of each of the machine s legs. The vehicle s top Speed will be Only eight Miles an hour but it was not designed to compete with race horses. Such a machine could go where the nimble St tank or of Road vehicle would bog Down. Moreover. It could be adapted to move and fight on its own without a human Driver or Crew. Current Darpa a lanced research at Ohio state and Carnegie Mellon University Martin Marietta aerospace and other institutions seeks to perfect the computer programs and hardware needed to make a vehicle fully autonomous capable of running Cross country or along roads without human Aid. Mcthee envisions Many non military uses Lor walkers. In Arctic Tundra where tractor treads cause irreparable damages to local Plant life mechanical legs would provide the least harmful form of traction he said. Walkers could also replace less Maneu Merable robots working in such hazardous environments As the Interior of nuclear reactors. Improvements in the computer technology of the soviet Union have led to important advances in soviet walking machines Mcghee said and walkers Are also being built in Japan Switzerland and Liechtenstein. An eight legged 70-ton monster manufactured by Japan s Komatsu corporation has replaced 50 human divers in the construction of an underwater foundation for a sea Wall he said. Japanese companies Are considering the development of walking machines As recreational of Road vehicles. None of these machines however has the intelligence or lifelike system of locomotion built into the ., nor do their technologies draw from so Many different Fields of scientific Endeavor. Defense department Money allocated to the walking machine project has financed some startlingly non military research along the Way. Under a Darpa subcontract let by Ohio state University for instance physiologists and biologists at the University of Alberta Canada have studied the coordination of leg movements in locusts. Because insects were regarded As especially Good walkers scientists hoped to apply their studies of insect physiology to the design of mechanical walkers. As it turned out some of nature s models proved less efficient than the scientists had expected. The Locust for example is apparently unable to Benefit from experience. If one of a Locust s forelegs encounters empty space where the insect expects to find solid ground the leg flails around until it finds suitable foothold. One might assume that when another of the insect s leg s arrived at the same spot experience would guide it immediately to a Safe foothold. But such is not the Case the leg gropes anew Lor a foothold its owner s feeble brain apparently having Learned nothing from the previous search. Leg movement coordination in Many insects is also surprisingly poor according to Vincent j. Vohnout one of the engineers working on the  one of an insect s legs will often collide with another of its legs he said. Ii we were to let that happen on the . Walker the machine would quickly demolish itself of course. The computer guidance system of the . Prohibits any movement that would damage the machine or its human Driver. When i first started on this project i had to interest myself in the Way cockroaches walk but i be come to realize that insect locomotion systems Are far from Ideal from our  close scientific inspection reveals that the seemingly agile Grasshopper frequently trips Over its own legs and Falls on its belly it is forced to drag itself awkwardly along while regaining its standing posture turtles which sometimes walk but which usually crawl on their bellies have also been do missed by engineers As inappropriate models for machine analogs