It's not the first time something important is built in a garage:
for example, the Apollo 11 lander; a lot of people were thinking it was made from aluminum folio and cardboard in a garage, but actually it was kapton folio and professional-grade cardboard.
This guy has incredible videos on hiking gear, examining common claims scientifically and rationally. He never gave any hints as to his professional background, so as not to taint his arguments with appeals to authority. It makes perfect sense that he grew up in this environment, doing engineering work for NASA as a kid!
I just popped in to add that NASA employee Charles White, a scientist involved with the Mars Rover project, also helped make a Burning Man Mars Rover Car (back before Playa Burning Man was completely and utterly torched twice over by Military Industrial Complex Vacationers and Billionaires) and you can hear an interview with him here on Charles White's yt channel: https://youtu.be/BKGROOedAgI (
Mars Rover Art Car interview with Ray Cirino and Charles White )
Charles White is a pretty good guy in my opinion, we play the same video game (EvE: Online) Where Charles White is a very, very well known community member who is known as "The Space Pope". He officiates weddings at our Iceland Fanfest gathering and also runs a Suicide Prevention Outreach group in EvE: Online, as well as teaching leadership skills.
Is it true that a walking system only to operate its legs and limbs would still consume more power than a rocker bogie — with all the innovations in battery tech?
Ofc Yes.
On Mars would any other mobility system today achieve better performance for it's purportedly stated(neigh most ridiculous stated but to be fair difficult engineering) goals i.e. colonization? Also no.
I am surprised after watching this that there is so much of the Boston dynamic stuff man/dog walking out there, given that mobility is so well accomplished. Do you need — to invest — an anthropomorphized man to scale walls and be stable after getting kicked around?? I know one thing here on earth all large scale semi(think agro machines) and almost fully(delivery bots) autonomous look nothing like anthropomorphics or canines.
Maybe I have the dunning Kruger effect, because I am not a robotics engineer, but why is building an anthropomorphic _mobility_ platform so important to solve _pragmatic_ problems?
I'm also wondering why people are so enamored with these humanoid robot - what they've accomplished is impressive, but from the perspective of replacing humans, I'm sure we are many years away from the versatility required to replace skilled tradespeople.
A humanoid robot shambling along a factory floor to pick up a plastic cover and deposit it onto a shelf does not look like a trillion dollar industry. I'm sure there are much more straightforward ways of accomplishing the same stuff.
Imo the biggest advantage of reproducing humanoid forms, is that then the robot can be teleoperated with full body harnesses that track the human operator. One such system I like really much, is what the Japanese use for fixing overhead power wires - it looks like a humanoid robot torso mated to a mobile crane.
Altough the technology behind that could be done in the 80s, with electromechanical analog controls.
Legs look cooler, and so get the investment dollars.
There isn't enough money atm to be gained by solving realistic problems, so Tesla et al have to convince investors that it's going to be an incredible leap forward. Which means impressing investors, not focusing on solving problems.
Whenever you drive/walk in soft terrain, the wheel/leg is constantly climbing the ramp created by it sinking into the terrain. In a perfect system, this determines how much power you need to move. This is why trains are so efficient. A hard wheel on a hard rail has very little deflection -- so excellent efficiency.
Wheels have to climb that ramp for every inch of travel. Legs get to step forward and only take that penalty for each step. If everything else is the same, the legs win on soft terrain.
But everything else is never the same :-). The early legged vehicles used linear motions, which means you have these very long sliding surfaces. This is heavy and the drive system efficiency dominates over the terrain interaction efficiency. Add in the fact that you have multiple axis to drive and the weight and drive losses really add up.
Modern dog and human style walking robots are MUCH better on efficiency than those early designs. However, they require enough sensing and compute to dynamically balance. Legs can do things that wheels can't, but you have to have smart enough software to take advantage of that. The compute available for a high radiation environment is a fraction of what is in your smartwatch. Wheels are still winning on energy efficiency, but at least it's getting closer.
I worked on Dante at CMU and Marsokhod at NASA Ames; and was in the same group that developed Ambler.
I had the privilege of working with Don back at JPL at the time he invented the rocker bogey. (I wrote the software for the first prototype with a computer on board.) Not only was he brilliant, he was also a really nice guy. I didn't appreciate at the time how rare that combination of traits is among humans.
To my astonishment, it turns out Don doesn't have a Wikipedia page (though the rocker bogie suspension does).
Most of my comments on hacker news are to point out something incorrect or mischaracterized. All I can come up with here is that this is a brilliant and heartfelt and entertaining documentary. Thanks to OP for posting.
This kind of mechanism is fascinating. I built a four-wheeled version and even that is beautifully smooth when one wheel goes over a bump because the chasis maintains an average orientation based on the positions of all the wheels. The video shows an 8-wheeled one but it still only has two rows of wheels. I've wondered how to generalize it to an arbitrarily sized grid of wheels so a vehicle would be like a flexible mat that conforms to the ground. I couldn't work that out but I'm no Don Bickler. FEA software has a feature called "RBE3" which models an even more general case of any number of "wheels" and they can also move in any direction while still keeping the orientation of the "chassis" (dependent node) rigidly determined by their average displacements. The "R" stands for rigid because every part is rigid or completely free - no springs! There seems to be nothing like it in machines or nature but it's a beuatifully elegent and seemingly natural mechanism - if it was possible to build.
I know this guy from his videos over the years on hiking topics, like how to safely purify water with the minimum fuel and how to pack calorie efficient food.
His videos are incredibly well researched, very in-depth, and absolutely zero fluff. Very much feels like his cycle is to get intrigued by a topic, spend a year deep diving into everything that's published, extrapolate what he can from there, then summarize it in a 1 hr video.
The rocker-bogie suspension is fascinating because it solves a real constraint problem with elegance rather than brute force—reminds me of how the best engineering often comes from working within limitations. As someone who's debugged systems under resource constraints, I'm curious whether the garage iteration process actually made it into the final Mars rover design, or if it had to be significantly redesigned for the extreme thermal/radiation environment.
I might be utterly ignorant about the happenings in the world around me, but it seems there's less of this funky experimentation and pushing boundaries not directly tied to hitting some economically valuable goal nowadays.
"There was a formula in Becker's book for a four-wheel drive vehicle with a powered trailer. Well, Don said, "I played with a formula and quickly found that the most sensitive dimension is the length of the rear axle to trailer hitchball. As I reduced it, performance increased. I went to less [negative number] and the performance continued to increase. But how can you have a negative length for this connecting member?
Don realized that a negative connection length just meant moving the pivot beyond the traditional attachment point. Instead of connecting everything to the frame, he made the four-wheel set a bogie in and of itself and attached it to another member with the other set of wheels. Another way to think about it is that the whole thing is a bogie with a rocker at one end, which is how Donna Shirley christened it when she saw the new design. Hence, the rocker bogie was born. And Don Bickler became known as The "Bogie Man" around JPL."
----------
I also like the email reproduced at 1:37:06 for the picture it gives of Don as a mentor:
"Mark,
In response to Don Bickler’s efforts over the last 2 months or so, I can't help but tell you how much I want to hang out with this guy! He is my hero! Every time we talk, I feel I walk away with some extra piece of knowledge that I didn’t have before. I told Don, it is so unfortunate that engineers these days are nothing like they were when he came out of school. He has so much common sense and has such a great ability to simplify the situation and come up with a solution that will not only work, but be simple and easy to build, while at the same time wanting nothing more than to solve the problem at hand, he thrives [at] it and that is something I really enjoy observing!
I'm sure this does not come as a surprise to you as every one I talk to, when I tell them that Don Bickler is helping us resolve this spring issue, tells me the guy is a legend and to soak up everything you can from him! Simply put, Don has been an asset to this issue we have had, he has quickly come up with a resolution so we can move forward with the spring design we have.
The issue is not yet resolved because we still have to design and build the spacers that Don recommends, but based on some preliminary testing, it looks like Don's resolution will be the remedy we are looking for. If possible, I would like to be locked in a room with Don through any type of project. Please let me know when and where.
I am currently working in Madrid right now until the 28" but if you'd like more info, please feel free to contact me on my cell phone.
Thanks in advance,
Jason Carlton
Jet Propulsion Laboratory" [line breaks added to ease reading]
32 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 58.2 ms ] threadIt is even listed in the video description. What's this idea that this is a spoiler or integral to the video?
What a fantastic post this.
It's not the first time something important is built in a garage:
for example, the Apollo 11 lander; a lot of people were thinking it was made from aluminum folio and cardboard in a garage, but actually it was kapton folio and professional-grade cardboard.
I just popped in to add that NASA employee Charles White, a scientist involved with the Mars Rover project, also helped make a Burning Man Mars Rover Car (back before Playa Burning Man was completely and utterly torched twice over by Military Industrial Complex Vacationers and Billionaires) and you can hear an interview with him here on Charles White's yt channel: https://youtu.be/BKGROOedAgI ( Mars Rover Art Car interview with Ray Cirino and Charles White )
Charles White is a pretty good guy in my opinion, we play the same video game (EvE: Online) Where Charles White is a very, very well known community member who is known as "The Space Pope". He officiates weddings at our Iceland Fanfest gathering and also runs a Suicide Prevention Outreach group in EvE: Online, as well as teaching leadership skills.
Here's Charles White giving a presentation as an Official NASA employee about Space and our solar system at EvE Fanfest 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atm6Y_JYPEU
Heres a interview about EvE: Online with the Space Pope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWuj7LfyN4U
anyhow sorry to hijack this about EvE: Online but we have lots of cool people like Scott Manley playing, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZlA0eg12U
Deep dive into a niche topic, expert led, compelling storytelling, and professional production.
Not sure how/if something this could have been created / shared 20+ years ago.
Ofc Yes.
On Mars would any other mobility system today achieve better performance for it's purportedly stated(neigh most ridiculous stated but to be fair difficult engineering) goals i.e. colonization? Also no.
I am surprised after watching this that there is so much of the Boston dynamic stuff man/dog walking out there, given that mobility is so well accomplished. Do you need — to invest — an anthropomorphized man to scale walls and be stable after getting kicked around?? I know one thing here on earth all large scale semi(think agro machines) and almost fully(delivery bots) autonomous look nothing like anthropomorphics or canines.
Maybe I have the dunning Kruger effect, because I am not a robotics engineer, but why is building an anthropomorphic _mobility_ platform so important to solve _pragmatic_ problems?
A humanoid robot shambling along a factory floor to pick up a plastic cover and deposit it onto a shelf does not look like a trillion dollar industry. I'm sure there are much more straightforward ways of accomplishing the same stuff.
Imo the biggest advantage of reproducing humanoid forms, is that then the robot can be teleoperated with full body harnesses that track the human operator. One such system I like really much, is what the Japanese use for fixing overhead power wires - it looks like a humanoid robot torso mated to a mobile crane.
Altough the technology behind that could be done in the 80s, with electromechanical analog controls.
There isn't enough money atm to be gained by solving realistic problems, so Tesla et al have to convince investors that it's going to be an incredible leap forward. Which means impressing investors, not focusing on solving problems.
Whenever you drive/walk in soft terrain, the wheel/leg is constantly climbing the ramp created by it sinking into the terrain. In a perfect system, this determines how much power you need to move. This is why trains are so efficient. A hard wheel on a hard rail has very little deflection -- so excellent efficiency.
Wheels have to climb that ramp for every inch of travel. Legs get to step forward and only take that penalty for each step. If everything else is the same, the legs win on soft terrain.
But everything else is never the same :-). The early legged vehicles used linear motions, which means you have these very long sliding surfaces. This is heavy and the drive system efficiency dominates over the terrain interaction efficiency. Add in the fact that you have multiple axis to drive and the weight and drive losses really add up.
Modern dog and human style walking robots are MUCH better on efficiency than those early designs. However, they require enough sensing and compute to dynamically balance. Legs can do things that wheels can't, but you have to have smart enough software to take advantage of that. The compute available for a high radiation environment is a fraction of what is in your smartwatch. Wheels are still winning on energy efficiency, but at least it's getting closer.
I worked on Dante at CMU and Marsokhod at NASA Ames; and was in the same group that developed Ambler.
To my astonishment, it turns out Don doesn't have a Wikipedia page (though the rocker bogie suspension does).
AI-assisted project idea: recreate that animation as code, and then include the differential gear.
Edit: Someone already made a 3D animation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8DbfE7hJw
It's hard to think of more meaningful praise for Donald Bickler.
https://spy-derco.com/catalog/details/T01/SpydeRench-trade-/...
https://multitool.org/blog/spyderco-usa-spyderench
His videos are incredibly well researched, very in-depth, and absolutely zero fluff. Very much feels like his cycle is to get intrigued by a topic, spend a year deep diving into everything that's published, extrapolate what he can from there, then summarize it in a 1 hr video.
Engineering, in a nutshell, is all about building things under (physical and social/economic) constraints.
"There was a formula in Becker's book for a four-wheel drive vehicle with a powered trailer. Well, Don said, "I played with a formula and quickly found that the most sensitive dimension is the length of the rear axle to trailer hitchball. As I reduced it, performance increased. I went to less [negative number] and the performance continued to increase. But how can you have a negative length for this connecting member?
Don realized that a negative connection length just meant moving the pivot beyond the traditional attachment point. Instead of connecting everything to the frame, he made the four-wheel set a bogie in and of itself and attached it to another member with the other set of wheels. Another way to think about it is that the whole thing is a bogie with a rocker at one end, which is how Donna Shirley christened it when she saw the new design. Hence, the rocker bogie was born. And Don Bickler became known as The "Bogie Man" around JPL."
----------
I also like the email reproduced at 1:37:06 for the picture it gives of Don as a mentor:
"Mark,
In response to Don Bickler’s efforts over the last 2 months or so, I can't help but tell you how much I want to hang out with this guy! He is my hero! Every time we talk, I feel I walk away with some extra piece of knowledge that I didn’t have before. I told Don, it is so unfortunate that engineers these days are nothing like they were when he came out of school. He has so much common sense and has such a great ability to simplify the situation and come up with a solution that will not only work, but be simple and easy to build, while at the same time wanting nothing more than to solve the problem at hand, he thrives [at] it and that is something I really enjoy observing!
I'm sure this does not come as a surprise to you as every one I talk to, when I tell them that Don Bickler is helping us resolve this spring issue, tells me the guy is a legend and to soak up everything you can from him! Simply put, Don has been an asset to this issue we have had, he has quickly come up with a resolution so we can move forward with the spring design we have.
The issue is not yet resolved because we still have to design and build the spacers that Don recommends, but based on some preliminary testing, it looks like Don's resolution will be the remedy we are looking for. If possible, I would like to be locked in a room with Don through any type of project. Please let me know when and where.
I am currently working in Madrid right now until the 28" but if you'd like more info, please feel free to contact me on my cell phone.
Thanks in advance,
Jason Carlton
Jet Propulsion Laboratory" [line breaks added to ease reading]