🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990May30.... M.W.Tilden writes:

>Brooks at MIT seems to have a reasonable solution.  They've built a 
>6 legged walker which uses a simple Algorithmic State Machine network
>as the control (simulated in a single 8bit 68HC11 processor).  The 
 . . .
>the work was being done for inter-stellar rovers, and a 8bit uP is 
>certainly more robust and compact than the multiple high-speed 68020 
>systems  . . .
>
>Anybody know why this work is not in the running for space exploration?
>

I know a high-school student that built a 6-legged walking robot (about
3 feet long) run entirely from a dozen or so switches on a remote panel.
No computer at all! (so there :-)  Not that it would walk on its own...

The idea of several "small, fast, and stupid" rovers instead of one
lunking monster certainly has merit, and I believe such concepts *are*
in the running (walking?). They may not get as much press, maybe because
prototypes tend to look like consumer toys instead of real space hardware.

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