Maine Robotics eNewsletter
November 3rd, 2010
In This Issue:
- Body Forward update
- Know some science
history!
- HRP-4C Humanoid
Robot
Dear Robot Enthusiast,
Welcome to our November eNewsletter. This now goes out to over
1300 people! If you know anyone who would like to get this
publication, send them to our sign up link!
Know some science history!
Steam Power through the Ages
Body Forward update
Come join us on
DECEMBER 11th at the
Augusta Civic Center for the
Maine FIRST LEGO League
Championship.
WE NEED VOLUNTEERSto
help us run the program,
serve as judges, help with
scoring, setting up the
playing fields and all sorts of
good clean fun.
The first example of a steam engine was whenHero of
Alexandria invented his Aeolipile (Greek for Ball of Aeolus, Aeolus
being the Greek god of wind). More commonly called Hero’s Engine,
this was the first time that thermal energy (a fire) was used to create
kinetic energy (motion).
Steam remained a possible, but largely forgotten force for 1500 years
until Giovanni Battista Della Porta used steam to make water rise
through a column in the early 1600s.
Once Porta had “opened the floodgates” it was only 100 years before
Newcomber produced the first self actuating steam engine (1712)
and then another 55 years before Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot had built
the first steam powered transportation machine, thefardier à
vapeur or “vapor truck”.
If you are interested in
Volunteering, pleasesend us
an email with your contact
information, thanks!
8:30 Team Check in
9:30 Opening Ceremony
10:00 Judging and robot
trails start
12:00(ish) Lunch
3:00 End of competition
3:20 Closing Ceremony
4:00 End of FLL
The design never
worked as he had hoped and it was eventually scrapped, although it
can still be seen in the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in
Paris, France.
The 1800s where truly the age of steam around the world. The first
steam powered locomotive was built in 1802 by Richard Trevithick in
England, followed in 1807 by Robert Fulton’s Clermont, the first
commercial steam ship. By the middle of the 1800s steam
locomotives, steam tractors, steam engines in factories, and steam
ships had all begun to replace the days of sails, wagon trains, and
water powered factories.
The Stanley Steamer!
Early automobiles where first run by steam. Two inventors
fromMaine, Francis and Freelan Stanley were the start of the Stanley
Motor Company. While not the first steam powered car, the Stanley
Steamer was best known for its reliability and was manufactured in
Newton, Massachusetts.
The Stanley Steamer held the world’s speed record from 1906 (124
mph) to 1909. The steam engine had only 13 moving parts and was
simple in design. From 1900 to 1904 the Stanley Steamer was the
world’s most popular automobile. As the internal combustion engine
took hold and gained favor, particularly after the invention of the
electric starter motor, the steamer steadily lost ground and by 1925
the 125 steam automobile manufacturing companies that had started
the century had all closed.
Principles of Steam:
Steam engines take advantage of the simple principle of expanding
water. Gaseous water (steam) takes up 1600 times more space than
liquid water. So when you heat up water inside of a sealed boiler to a
temperature above the boiling point (212° Fahrenheit or
100° Centigrade) you have a tremendous push to get the liquid to
turn into a gas. But inside the boiler it isn’t allowed to expand. When
you finally feed that pressurized steam into an engine cylinder it does
a LOT of work when it is finally allowed to expand.
What were some downsides of Steam Power?
a. Steam engines start with water in a boiler, and release
this as steam. But that means you steadily lose water from
the boiler and it has to be replaced; this may require
powering down the whole engine (later engines had water
pumps that could pump the water in without shutting down)
b. The startup time for a steam engine is longer than for a
combustion engine. The water in the boiler would have to be
heated above the boiling point and this would take from 5 to
30 minutes, depending on the engine.
c. A boiler, vessel, or pipe full of superheated water is
under considerable pressure. If failure of the safety
mechanisms occurred the vessel will explode from the built
up pressure. This is called a steam explosion. It is also
called a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion
or BLEVE. History has shown where poorly designed or
maintained steam locomotives, ships, tractors, and factory
power plants have all suffered these explosions, usually
catastrophically.
HRP-4C Humanoid Robot
Designed and built at the
National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and
Technology in Japan, the HRP4C is the latest in a series of
humanoid robots that have
been evolving to not only
perform like humans, but to
look like them as well. The
HRP-4C is 5 foot 2 inches tall
and weighs 95 pounds. It can
walk, move its arms, legs, and
head and can talk and sing
using a vocal synthesizer that
is coordinated with its facial
expressions and mouth.
For more detailed information,
check out the
Wikipedia webpage (in
English) or see the latest
video on YouTube.
To understand the fast development of humanoid robotics, you need
to understand that in technology, many factors lead to this explosive
growth rate closely following Moore’s Law.
Moore’s Law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who in
1965 wrote about the trend that components in integrated circuits
had doubled every year since the invention of the integrated circuit in
1958 (and he predicted that this trend would continue for at least
another 10 years). Well we have seen this continue since 1958 and it
is now predicted to continue until at least 2015 (how long do you
think it will continue). What this means is that memory capacity and
processing speed have all increase at an exponential scale. With
increased capacity you get increased ability to process multiple
degrees of freedom with the robot and robot components.
As an example the Intel 1103 Dynamic RAM chip (Random Access
Memory) was introduced in 1972 and it had 1K of memory (1
kilobyte). Today you can purchase a 4GB (4 gigabytes) RAM memory
card for your computer for about $60. So in just under 40 years
we’ve seen a 4,000,000 increase in memory capacity…
Degrees of Freedom(DOF): Has to do with the number of
possible ways something can move. If you look at your hand,
each finger has several degrees of movement: it can curl in and
straighten out; it can be spread away or together from the other
fingers; it can work with or against the thumb; you can bend or
rotate your wrist. All together you have 27 degrees of freedom with
just that one hand. Your brain is constantly getting feedback and
giving direction for the operation of your hand. For a robotic hand to
do the same, we had to wait for processing power, communication
bandwidth (network) and memory in order to receive, process, and
control the hand.
Imagine what the next 10 years will mean for the HRP-4C?
If you would like to write an article suitable for the Maine Robotics
community, or have a topic you would like to see included, please let
us know.
See you in Augusta!
Tom Bickford
Maine Robotics
167 Bennoch Road
Orono, ME 04473
(207) 866-4340
[email protected]
www.mainerobotics.org