These are mostly boy toys made for the computer generation. The games, or rides - they are so new there is no consensus on what to call them - are basically complex versions of three familiar movie genres and video-game formats: the Star Wars space adventure (shooting things), the Days of Thunder road test (running over things) and the Rocky boxing match (punching, kicking and gouging people). But all the systems have a common goal: to give you a new-horizons, touchy-feely, out-of-mind experience. Most are only virtually virtual: variations on arcade games or tweakings of Disney's Star Tours ride, which craftily gyrate a pod in time with jolting screen images. Only a few make use of the computer helmet that guides your wraparound view and allows you to "move" objects in cyberspace. Not all the effects fit the strict definition of virtual reality. And why not the arcades? Video games are a $5.3 billion business in the U.S., about as large as the theatrical movie market. A penny in the slot once offered streetwise strollers a peek at Fatima's dance now $4 to $30 gets you a sleigh ride on a space ship (in Cybergate) or a fretful stroll through a computerized Acropolis (in Dactyl Nightmare, by Virtuality). With the needed joints and programming to replicate the range of motion of multijointed fingers plus palms and wrists, true hands are more complex to design than feet.For now, though, VR entertainment is starting to bloom where movies did nearly a century ago: in the arcades. Claw-like robotic hands instead are programmed to open and close their pincers to preprogrammed positions to hold the same type of object over and over. Without a feedback mechanism telling the robot how hard it's squeezing, robot hands designed to grip items can damage things by squeezing too hard or not hard enough. Robots don’t inherently have any feedback mechanism to tell the system how tightly the machine is squeezing something, they just open and close their joints a programmed amount. Robotic arms and grabbing devices used in many industrial settings tend to have ‘hands’ with few fingers that look more like crab claws – vices that move between fixed positions rather than using several flexible fingers. ![]() Many bipedal robots that walk fall because the system can't balance without similar systems and programming to keep it upright.Įven harder to design are grasping hands, which require the same flexibility, control, and precision as feet and more. Standing ‘still’ on two feet is an active task, with several muscles all over the legs and feet constantly firing to reduce swaying around as the balance is constantly adjusted. Bipedal walking requires a constant balancing act between nerves and muscles. ![]() The fact that Earth doesn't have many bipedal or handed species should paint a picture of how complex these functions are, and replicating them is difficult and expensive. The biological systems of walking on two legs and grasping hands are complex, requiring several systems to run precisely in synch. It is ultimately the inherent difficulty of designing and programming humanoid legs, feet, arms, and hands that make such robots so hard to create, as explained in Silicon Republic. Related: This Super Springy Robot Leaps A Record-Setting 100 Feet Several attempts have been made over the years to varying degrees of success, but those most common and successful of these robots tend to feature simple claws or friction grip hands and have either four legs or walk on two bird-like legs. Walking legs and feet can handle terrain that wheel and tread using machines cannot, and the flexibility of human-type hands makes them the best all-around object manipulators. The human body is incredibly versatile and roboticists have been trying to replicate it for a very long time.
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