i was once at the srl
compound when the above
machine was demo'ed. very ingeneous design! it used an s-shaped loader for the projectiles that seemed to have been
salvaged from a
soda machine, and fired
beer cans filled with
concrete that were cupped at one end to maximize the force of the commpressed air that was used as the propellent.
if i remember correctly, the control system and cameras (2 of them, it had
stereoscopic vision!) was linked to an d/a converter and capture card, respectivly, on a
linux box, which was in turn connected to a
java app that did the video and control for the
robot. the people controlling the robot that day were in
germany. anyway, they had a bunch of random objects set up as targets and, when fired, the cannon would shoot the soda cans *through* the target, *through* the wooden (heavy) backdrop and hit metal objects behind in the
junkyardtalk about
tele presence!