Comment on Kawasaki is developing a robot to be ridden like a horse - Asia Times
j4k3@lemmy.world 4 days agoThis isn’t internal combustion. Every motor drive will be unique. Robotics are nothing like cars or motorcycles. I’m excellent at working on cars. I’m pretty good with electronics. I mean my bedroom is a Maker lab set up for design and etching my own circuit boards and I have messed around with robotics a bit. I have also ported heads for nostalgia drag, pit for unlimited class sprint, and owned an auto body shop building my hotrod stuff on the side and owned a couple bikes.
I’m saying, in the real world, shit happens and that adds intelligent perspective on how you’d look at a thing like this when real world stuff has happened. It is hyperbolic for illustrative purpose.
Such a complex system will inevitable be connected to the internet. Anything that needs dealer support as a crutch is not owned by the end user. If this is not fully transparent and open from the start, it is means of exploitation. Only fools trust others to do the right thing or care about track records so far. That is feudalism and will result in the dark ages exactly like it did in the past. There is no reason for any consumer to trust if an honest product is sold. Honest products are completely open source and parts can be second sourced from an independent vendor unrelated to the manufacturer and anyone can potentially replicate the parts and sell them. There cannot be any single choke point where if some asshat quits supporting or goes out of business the hardware that people paid for fails. Trust inevitable leads to this stupidity and to exploitation of the built in leverage. It is corporate piracy in the end and that has to stop.
They state that each leg has it’s own motor so there would have to be some kind of standardization there.
I can’t imagine electric motors being THAT hard to swap out, I mean, my wheelchair has two of them and they’re user replacable. (Right hand motor and Left hand motor being separate units).
I’m not sure about user REPAIRABLE, that’s a different deal, but at a minimum user replacable.
It is quite a bit different in robotics like this. Check out James Bruton on YT for a practical example of open source larger robotics. www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbDcUPed50Y_7KmfCXKohA
The motors used are almost always brushes because of the speeds accuracy and torque required. That means everything has software and electronics. This stuff gets very complicated fast. Most traditional auto makers are also outsourcing most of their software development and certainly not full stack or ground up oriented. This kind of thing needs to be designed from the start with every potential feature and future thing as part if the initial project. These types of things cannot be expanded easily. Like this is why China is actually good at EVs because they invested in building the whole thing from the bottom up the eight way, instead of hack patching garbage and outsourcing.
You’re not very familiar with Kawasaki Heavy Industries are you?
Open source projects aren’t remotely comparable to what the big Japanese manufacturers can do.
If they ever bring this to market it will be exceptionally complex and require a supply chain that makes your concerns about sourcing parts elsewhere completely irrelevant.
Ooh brushless motors. Very fancy stuff… I wonder if Kawasaki Heavy Industries has any experience with them?
Huh seems they build robots already
Have you ever worked in industry. I spent a couple of years as an operating engineering out of local 12. I worked at asphalt plants and a groundman and loader operator. Most heavy equipment is basically a rental contract with caterpillar or whatever manufacturer. Once the operation is above a certain size, the company is in a position to negotiate contracts that are tens of millions of dollars or more. When a loader or other equipment has an issue, the cat rep sends their team in to do the fix. The only things that are done on site are basic filters maintenance type stuff and when the contract is up, the equipment is replaced.
In this situation, there is no potential for exploitation because ownership was never part of the equation. There is no room for manipulation because the contract covers everything except basic maintenance. This system is already feudalism. When a feudal lord interactions with another feudal lord, of course they can come to terms because they each posses considerable power. The stupid peasantry has no such negotiable position. Our only power us in democracy where we become the largest feudal power against exploitation. This is how the real big picture world works. There have been various democracies in the past where citizens had power against exploitation, and all of those were fumbled by idiots and fools that allowed consolidation of wealth and assumed that giving power to potential exploitation was okay and that those in power would do the right thing. This NEVER turns out to be the case. Ownership IS democracy and a founding principal of autonomy and self determinism. People that fail to realize this critical factor are ushering in a neo dark age in the exact same fashion as what created the last. The future will look back on our era dumbfounded about epic and unrivalled stupidity of the people that ended post WW2 democracy by just giving it away for nothing of substance. It is unfathomable brain rot on epic scales.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 days ago
All of this faff, expense, and heartache and you’d still have something less effective, less green, less yours, and more expensive than an actual horse.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah, but you don’t have to feed it and dispose of poop. :)
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It eats grass and uh
I think it craps there too