Real Life Star Wars AT-ST Walker?

blog.machinefinder.com

33 points·psogle··10 comments

Ridiculous linkbait title.

It's a 6 legged John Deere (apparently by parent-company purchase) prototype machine, primarily developed for logging in difficult terrain. Looks remarkably steady and well designed, and it's discontinued.

And AT-STs are the two legged ones, AT-ATs are the 4 legged.

AT-TEs are the 6-legged ones.

Those are from episodes 1-3 though, which my wife has dubbed "The Failogy". I don't acknowledge their existence.

What I found was that it always kept 4 feet planted on the ground. Insects typically have 3 in contact with the ground and the other 3 propelling it. 3 is the minimum required for static stability, so insects with this gait are always statically stable. This machine seems to have been optimized for stability. It would be interesting to know whether it has a fixed gait or dynamically decides on which leg(s) to move based on its orientation, velocity and acceleration.

Here's another video of it doing close to 0-radius turning: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gk-yQ1H3M8

This prototype reminds me more of big dog: - http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_bigdog.html

A quick google search didn't turn up anything at deere.com. But, the device was made by Plustech, now Timberjack. Anybody find anything more specific?

The original article said it the prototype was discontinued.

It was built by a Finnish company called Plustech 15 years which went bust and through a series of takeovers ended up as john Deere

I recall being extremely impressed with the Finnish demo video. Sad to hear that they didn't make it.

Link bait title, and the video was uploaded to youtube in 2006 - seen it years ago. Prototypes aren't hard - useful mass production is hard.

I was hoping for guns or laser cannons, but it's still pretty sweet.

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