coudl we really build giant robots
Added on August 7th, 2013 by 3dge | Report Post
Tags:Fantasy - Science Fiction, Godzilla, NASA, Pacific Rim, Transformers, Voltron
Tags:Fantasy - Science Fiction, Godzilla, NASA, Pacific Rim, Transformers, Voltron
While science is nice,this is science fiction. I really don’t like pushing the square cube law so hard like it has all of a sudden. As it enters nerd zeitgeist(normies wont give a shit), the next movie about giant robots will be expected to address the issue. Do we want long science explanations, or giant robots punching giant monsters?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law
If noone else has seen anything on this, I feel like every armchair physicist has come out of their dirty hole in the ground screaming “these robots cant exist because SCIENCE”, when in reality they aren’t pushing for accuracy, there just trying to one-up other nerds. I will definitely state that the above rant is partially one-uping them, but I want to push that our science fiction does not have to be grounded in reality.
im having a problem with the difference of size between mechagodzilla and gipsy danger. i remember in the old movies, sometimes tanks were as big as one of MG’s toes. hm. i want to drink scotch and talk about this in a dim room lined with comic long boxes and posters of witchblade.
[From the Wiki page] “When a physical object maintains the same density and is scaled up, its mass is increased by the cube of the multiplier while its surface area only increases by the square of said multiplier.”
The kick is, of course, that there’s no reason to maintain the density when scaling up a robot. There’s a reason why this law doesn’t quite apply to airplanes (they’re mostly empty inside). And giant robots should work the same way.
My biggest problem with credibility is with using the human shape as a basis for the giant robot. Star Wars had a better idea with the AT-ATs (quadrupeds) and the Walkers (true-biped-like legs). The human body shape is the result of taking a tree-climber’s shape and stretching the legs to allow a clumsy form of bipedal motion, and isn’t particularly suited for any activity other than holding objects while walking.
Signed
You are correct. Though cool, a human shaped robot serves little if any purpose. The profile on these things are huge. For military applications it makes little sense because it’s a LARGE target.
Another hurdle is powering one of these things. The amount of energy that would be required to power one giant robot would be enormous. All I can imagine at this point would be a nuclear reactor like the type you would find in a submarine. Imagine how unstable that might be, The amount of armor required to protect that nuclear core would be insane.
Now on a smaller scale, your options open up substantially I would imagine.
yes. i think one of the jaegers from pacific rim had a nuclear reactor in it. crimson typhoon maybe? and the russian one, cherno alpha, had a shit load of armor, but the acid spray from a monster kicked its ass anyway.
They all had “unspecified” nuclear reactors. Gypsy had a “oldschool” “analog” main nuclear, and a huge amount of diesel engines in the limbs..
I think the one of the few times the decision to make giant robots made any sense was in Macross…Humans found remains of 7 meter tall humanoids and their powered-armor space-suits, then adapted it to a robot suit. This insured that if they had to perform combat operations inside enemy ships/facilities they would be able to maneuver more easily. Then they got silly and made some of the robots turn into planes and re-rigged a 3-mile long ship to also turn into a giant robot because when you find alien super tech, why not go overboard.
Always thought this was an elegant solution.
It saddens me sometimes when I am reminded that the internet is full of morons.
The machines in Pacific rim are NOT robots. They can be called a number of things, but direct control by a human means they aren’t self-actuated and therefore not robots.
They are like super-versions of the loader that Ripley drives in Aliens, and I think of them as ‘waldoes’.
It saddens ME sometimes when I am reminded that the internet is full of morons!
waldo [?w??ld??]
n pl -dos, -does
(Engineering / Tools) a gadget for manipulating objects by remote control
[named after Waldo F. Jones, inventor in a science-fiction story by Robert Heinlein]
ro·bot [roh-buht, -bot]
noun
1. a machine that resembles a human and does mechanical, routine tasks on command.
2. a person who acts and responds in a mechanical, routine manner, usually subject to another’s will.
3. any machine or mechanical device that operates automatically with humanlike skill.
adjective
4. operating automatically: a robot train operating between airline terminals.
Origin:
< Czech, coined by Karel ?apek in the play R.U.R. (1920) from the base robot-, as in robota compulsory labor, robotník peasant owing such labor
Waldoes are strictly remote controlled robots. Both the Power Loader and the Pacific Rim machines had internal pilot control systems. Giant Robo however is a waldo as it operates solely from commands given from the control watch.
TLDR: a robot is anything that does labor in place of a human. A waldo is anything that works by remote control. a robot that does not need a pilot or remote control is called an "autonomous robot"
Boosh!