Control of a robot dinosaur

The Palaiomation Consortium, supported by the European Commission, is build ing a robot Iguanodon atherfieldensis for museum display that is much more sophisticated than existing animatronic exhibits. The current half-size (2. 5 m) prototype is fully autonomous, carrying its own computer and batteries . It walks around the room, choosing its own path and avoiding obstacles. A bigger version with a larger repertoire of behaviours is planned. Many design problems have had to be overcome. A real dinosaur would have ha d hundreds of muscles, and we have had to devise means of achieving life-li ke movement with a much smaller number of motors; we have limited ourselves to 20, to keep the control problems manageable. Realistic stance requires a narrower trackway and a higher centre of mass than in previous (often spi der-like) legged robots, making it more difficult to maintain stability. Ot her important differences from previous walking robots are that the foreleg s have to be shorter than the hind, and the machinery has had to be designe d to fit inside a realistically shaped body shell. Battery life is about on e hour, but to achieve this we have had to design the robot to have very lo w power consumption. Currently, this limits it to unrealistically slow move ment. The control system includes a high-level instructions processor, a ga it generator, a motion-coordination generator, and a kinematic model.