The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s • Hacker News Board

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#171

Post by credit_guy » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #16

gojomo wrote: post #2

Only millions? Amazing! To actually deliver a physical, one-of-a-kind, working vehicle of that scale & novel function, for low-digit millions, seems pretty impressive to me - especially if the effort documented enough of their choices/discoveries/limitations to help inform later efforts.

yeah, a single M1 Abrams tank costs over $4 million, and we have 9000 of them. DARPA R&D money always feels like money better spent than a lot of other military spending. We get future dividends, often civilian.

A little numbers correction: it's more like $11 MM per tank. And not to build, to refurbish.

More precisely: for the 2020 fiscal year, the US Army did not procure any new M1 Abrams tank, and is not budgeting any for the 2021 year either. Instead it is modernizing existing tanks at a cost of $1.7 BN for 165 units in '20, and $1 BN for 89 units in '21. This comes at about $10.6 MM per tank.

[1] https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMateri...

[2] https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMateri...

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#172

Post by lsllc » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #10

efitz wrote: post #8

You know we’re all thinking the same thing - where are the mechs?

Here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/furrionexobionics/alpha...

The "Hacksmith" recently spent time learning to pilot one of these, definitely interesting and worth the watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3xtVxPWf6M

Re: The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s

#173

Post by foobarbecue » Sat, Sep 19, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

sho wrote: post #166

foobarbecue wrote: post #14

I know someone who worked on a big radial hexapod robot for dod recently, and he said everyone involved in the project felt it was pointless (hexapods are just not a good platform for doing much of anything), but it was well-funded so they did their best.

> hexapods are just not a good platform for doing much of anything Care to expand on this? There's an awful lot of insects with six legs that seem to do OK. Maybe I've watched too much Patlabor/GitS but I would have thought it a viable candidate for any number of mechanical platforms.

Every actuator comes with a lot of overhead in terms of cost, mass, complexity, and two more limbs don't offer much of an advantage over a quadruped. Interesting point about insects, but this was a largeish vehicle. How many large hexapod animals can you name?