Live data from Hacker News

Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

github.com

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#11
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

Not to mention the acronym for all-terrain autonomous quadruped is pronounced 'attack'!

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#12
post #9
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

Eh, I don't really care about 'edgy' but it bothers me that so many projects, especially when those projects are computer commands, are hard to search on. Like, ss or ip. I mean, in those cases, they're central enough to my world (I'm a sysadmin) that it's worth just memorizing to the point where I rarely need to look it up, but looking up an 'ip' command is way harder than looking up an 'ifconfig' command. Not every…

This is where it’d be great to be able to limit the context of a search.

IP but not Intelectual Property

SS but not Secret Service

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#13
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

On the front page at the moment are projects named: Bear - minimal blogging platform - it's a play on bare Venom - all terrain quadruped - snakes are all terrain? Zoox - self-driving-car tech - half the other self-driving-car companies have nonsense names Facebook - I still find this a smart name for the service Looking Glass - 3D display - confused me for a second with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_ser…

Heh, I guess you’re right. I’m certainly no better at naming things. My recent personal projects seem to be named of fictional characters - I’m not sure why Ollie, from The Thick of It, reminded me of Python error handling, but that is now the name of a class that un-catches exceptions, so you can handle them yourself, like an anti-fuckitpy.

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#14
post #9
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

Eh, I don't really care about 'edgy' but it bothers me that so many projects, especially when those projects are computer commands, are hard to search on. Like, ss or ip. I mean, in those cases, they're central enough to my world (I'm a sysadmin) that it's worth just memorizing to the point where I rarely need to look it up, but looking up an 'ip' command is way harder than looking up an 'ifconfig' command. Not every…

I'm not the best at this Linux foo, but wouldn't aliasing certain commands that you need be helpful?

I mean if your going to go through the hassle of looking up that certain command, might as well make it easier on future you to alias that foo while you have it fresh in you mind.

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#15
Reminds me of Genghis [1], the granddaddy of walking insect-bots made by Rodnay Brooks back in 1989. Brooks' robot had a vary cool approach to learning to walk where he "removed all cognition processors from Genghis and left only the sensors and the code/hardware to allow it to walk"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_(robot)

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#16
post #8
post #3

Why does it move so slowly?

probably because it's not using special brushless actuators rather regular servos also the platform design does not seem fast eg. compared to the shape of a dog or a human

There are definitely faster actuators but I'd guess it's also the control loop(s) filtering out transients from the stepping motion. The backlash in the geartrain, flex in the body and gritty/chunky motion from the servos probably makes a mess in a typical six axis imu.

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#17
post #9
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

Eh, I don't really care about 'edgy' but it bothers me that so many projects, especially when those projects are computer commands, are hard to search on. Like, ss or ip. I mean, in those cases, they're central enough to my world (I'm a sysadmin) that it's worth just memorizing to the point where I rarely need to look it up, but looking up an 'ip' command is way harder than looking up an 'ifconfig' command. Not every…

What works for me on the world’s most popular search engine is “linux” + name of command. YMMV.

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#18
post #16
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably because it's not using special brushless actuators rather regular servos also the platform design does not seem fast eg. compared to the shape of a dog or a human

There are definitely faster actuators but I'd guess it's also the control loop(s) filtering out transients from the stepping motion. The backlash in the geartrain, flex in the body and gritty/chunky motion from the servos probably makes a mess in a typical six axis imu.

I guess what is "fast" though, I suppose it is not impossible for this particular design(that looks like it would wiggle/swivel?) due to the horizontal moving main joints. But I have not done calculations to prove that(which would be faster horizontal or vertical swing)

edit: which is interesting arguable horizontal join/swing design is less work

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#19
It has the wrong kind of motors to be interesting. Servos are a dead end, imo.

The interesting robot projects now are the ones embracing brushless motors with encoders and dynamic walking gaits. It’s the same components that are used in drones.

Re: Venom: All Terrain Autonomous Quadruped

#20
post #5

Cool project! Code is quite easy to follow, IMO. Somewhat off-topic, but I find the name somewhat amusing. I would never seriously hold a name against a project, but I’m always curious when one is named something a bit...edgy, without an obvious reason - and at the expense of making it harder to find!

On the front page at the moment are projects named: Bear - minimal blogging platform - it's a play on bare Venom - all terrain quadruped - snakes are all terrain? Zoox - self-driving-car tech - half the other self-driving-car companies have nonsense names Facebook - I still find this a smart name for the service Looking Glass - 3D display - confused me for a second with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_ser…

> Venom - all terrain quadruped - snakes are all terrain?

More like a [venomous] spider than a snake I think.

Post reply on HN