Walking Robots with Wheels

This demo of the Unitree B2-W came up on YouTubewith the shot of the guy sitting astride the robot, and I thought wow! Why wow? Well, because there's a set of discussions that center around the usefulness of mecha.

These evolve around things like ground pressure, height and volume of vehicle that walks, and why oh why would you have walking mechs with wheels? It's that last discussion I'm addressing, with a shout out to my friend Roger who isn't convinced why you'd have legs if you've got wheels.

Mecha are specialized platforms. They'll be used where terrain makes the deployment of conventional wheeled or track vehicles difficult or impossible. There role will be to act as armoured support for infantry.

Think how gun Portée's were used by the SAS during WW2.

I'd had that thought too when when I was thinking out a plausible way for the introduction of purpose built mecha. They would start as field expedient platforms developed from exoskeletons that become big enough that you change from wearing the armour to a suit that's driven instead.

I'm thinking useful in urban environments wrecked by war, or traversing steep terrain where deploying anything other than  infantry is a real slog.

So, that's all for now. I've been remiss in posting stuff due to health issues, made worse by starting the new year with shingles.

Catch you all on the bounce.

The Reality of Reality: A Tale of Five Senses

Posting this rather long talk on YouTube apropos my current novel Two Moons: Aftermath, which develops the metaplot of the Gate Walker series, the reason for the existence of the pillars.

As an interesting aside, well it was interesting to me, but meta in wargaming is an acronym for Most Effective Tactics Available.

Illustrating that what we think we know is not what is 'real,' but what our brain processes to make sense of the information to predict our surroundings. That's kind of clue to the metaplot of my novels, but don't worry I'm giving anything about the story away.

Big Little Wars Update

Me relaxing.

Well, by skin of my teeth I managed to get the first draft out to my play-test/reader group on Christmas Eve. Of course that night I dreamed of a couple of things that I missed. Yeah, I have oddly specific dreams at times.

I realized that I had failed to write explanations for blast grenades.

For that matter what I meant by blast and the effects in general. The two are very different, so one has probably got to be renamed.

Blast grenades stun. Inflicting shock. Simple as that.

The blast attribute is the radius of the weapon attack. I have in mind that a roll to hit that misses uses the miss die value for determining where it hits and what might happen. But, I'll have to give it some more thought.

As I was writing the scenarios I wrote that one objective as capturing people.

I had not mentioned this as a possible action anywhere else in the rules. I have some thoughts that involve grading the ease or not of successfully capturing people.

I can excuse myself for this, because it only became apparent when I finished writing the two scenarios. Also, I wanted to write more scenarios, but I ran out of time.

However, I have ideas for more, and no doubt my play-testers will make suggestions too. But, one of my play-testers has already told me he got what I intended from the introduction:

Command and Control
Integrating a range of technologies
Asymmetry between forces

So more later. Always more later. But now I must focus on writing my next novel, which is long overdue.

NB: Added; forgot to mention, solo play

Big Little Wars

Big Little Wars is a set of rules to play games in the Gate Walker universe. It has become the main focus of my working day since I started being able to string two words together.

While this is not directly related to the next novel I'm writing, it has set me the task of working out what the everyday world is like for the average person living on Earth, circa 2071.

Clearly the world is large enough for the adage, the future will not be evenly distributed, to apply.

From a miniature gaming perspective this makes for interesting conflicts. For someone living circa 2071 it sucks. Because living in the middle of a world of proxy wars while shopping is the very definition of suck.

So I use tech levels to differentiate the disparities that arise from asymmetrical access to technology.

Anyway, my document tells me that the current word total is: 19,677 words; though the project counter only says 19,401 words. No doubt there are good reasons for this, but I haven't a clue why they differ.

Arguably, I don't have much of a clue about anything these days.

So while doing this project has completely sidetracked work on my next novel, the upside from all the work is that it has got me thinking about a lot of stuff that counts as world building stuff I will need to know for later stories.

I'll take that as a win.

Other Dimensions

I'm not qualified to answer the question. Not sure anyone is, as in can we take some theory and try to prove it/disprove it? 

Still, I like to think that we do live in a universe with more than three dimensions and time because the idea fascinates me with so many what ifs?

What ifs? are at the foundation of the SF. It is what makes SF a genre. Not mundane what ifs? But the big questions about life, the universe and everything. Cue standard response...

Things are difficult at the moment for me. So, just another post as proof of life. Enjoy.

Augmented Reality

 

The US Army's New Augmented Reality Goggles Look Like 1970s Sci-Fi is the title header. Bit what is more important is that this is the development of the 5G system I shared back here.

This is totally rocking the idea that I described in Bad Dog when the Marines are searching under the mountain trying to find the lost Special Forces team that had gone missing.

Fusion Plants

Six years ago, General Fusion announced that they're working on  a fusion reactor.

The general consensus from Susan's colleagues at Imperial College was that this General Fusion doing some hand-waving to stimulate their stock prices. Colour us cynical.

Then there was Los Alamos National Lab 2016 announcement. With a promise of a first working model in five years or so (2021ish), and not only that but it would fit in a shipping container too! Again, we discussed how they might have found a trick that would allow them to deliver on their announcement.

Either way, the reaction in the Parker-Pollard household was wouldn't that be nice, if it comes true. Wishing for a better future for all mankind.

Do You Love Me?

 

 

Susan caught this and passed it onto me, knowing that I love what Boston Dynamics do. This is both a fun video, and for those of us into RealRobo a very exciting step towards walking robots and mechs.

It could also be a sign of the robot apocalypse, but I tend towards optimism and liking people, rather than the more common misanthropic pessimism that tends to pervade SF genre and fandom.

Chinese View of the Rest of Us

I read a lot of news. Mostly technology, science, and military. But I also have reasons to follow Chinese news (propaganda), and came across this article about how the Chinese sees America, and by extension, the rest of the world.

They're here for the long haul. 

Therefore it's wise to note that they are proud of their 5000 years of recorded history of their civilization, and how they perceive themselves as resilient across time. Also useful for me, because China is a world super power in the Gate Walker universe, and therefore this stuff helps me get inside the head of Chinese ambitions.

 

As you can infer, I'm still researching for the next book, having realized how little I know about the nature of Chinese ambitions, and the world of espionage.

On Lemons, Lemonade and Robot Tales

Life is still serving us lemons, and I'm overwhelmed with trying to turn them all into lemonade. but I found this article through my feeds on Defence News.

I also have a friend who is working on 5G connectivity for the Army, link in the picture below. 

 

So, as you can imagine from reading my books, these are both very interesting projects as they show I wasn't too far off extrapolating the tech needed for my near future Mil-SF stories.

Currently I'm wrestling with a short story, project title: Omake – Japanese for Extra –The story of what happens to the lost robot explorer team seen briefly in my second novel.

I had planned to include this as an epilogue in Strike Dog, but readers thought it left too many questions hanging like a loose thread, and so I cut it out. Since then I've gone and expanded what was a couple of short paragraphs into several thousand words of odd snippets.

My plan is to turn these into a bunch of short stories about an android and robot dog.

But first I have to knock all the fragments I've written into a coherent narrative, rather than the number of short 'cool' scenes I have compiled.  So, I intend to use the Omake name for a collection of these shorts, as and when I can get my ass into gear.

And, I haven't thought of a good title for the first of the tales of  the android and his robodog, and what happened to them, their discoveries, and the consequences for them and mankind.

Keep well, stay safe, and catch you all on the bounce.

Cool Mech Pilot Control

YouBionic forearm I found on YouTube, as one does, which is just cool.

I deliberately left how the mecha in my novels are driven to avoid Zeerust (yesterday's vision of tomorrow), warning the link will take you to TVTropes, and you're at risk of losing hours of time browsing.

I know I just did.

Catch you all on the bounce.

Visualizing 4D Spacetime

The video above is a visualization created with mathematics of a spacetime manifold. I thought this was an excellent representation of what looking at what our universe would look seen in 4D spacetime.

Yep, this is the stuff that goes through my head, and all part of the research that goes into my Gate Walkers holographic multiverse setting.

SnakeBots

I found this snake robot climbing a tree, and just love how some of the whacky ideas I had for my Gate Walker setting are coming to fruition.

Of course, I'd heard of flexible robots before writing my novels, and just thought "wow, that's cool," I've got to have them in my story.

Moving on. The last couple of weeks have been difficult.

Full of unexpected obstacles that stole from my writing time, and the worries of juggling stuff outside of my control, have left me drained with fewer new words written than I would like.

But despite all that, I've been putting together a short novel.

It's a collection of my three novelettes set in the World of Drei AI cybertank universe with an additional prologue I wrote. Reviewing the text I found a shed load of typos that I'm in the process of correcting.

Once that's done then I just have to sort out a cover. It is what it is.

HyperStealth

In my Gate Walker series I call this concept ChameleoFlage, and World of Drei series I call it Adaptive camouflage. Either-way, meta-materials might well be a game changer.

If you follow the link above you can see that this stuff interferes with thermal imaging, which I thought wasn't possible.

First Generation Power Armour

 

Here's a link to Onyx from Lockheed Martin, a further development of their earlier HULC system. For those of us who have dream of power armour and exoskeletons this is exciting news. While Onyx is only a lower torso enhancement it does look promising.

There was a thread on the Heavy Gear FB group about the practicality of mecha – larger walking power armour. I posted this:

In general to the OP. It all depends on your assumptions whether or not large bipedal combat suits make sense. When writing my novels I made some assumptions on how they developed (basically a step on from riding a mechanical horse), to use (dense terrain), and factored in adaptive camouflage (reduce chance of being seen).

So it's all about the assumptions. Open field advances across the steppes of Russia, not so much. Lurking around in urban areas providing fire support for infantry and able to keep up with vehicles, possibly what's needed.

The last couple of weeks I have been writing more, working on my novel Two Moons, which will give the readers more information on where the series story arc is going that the characters will have to work through. I'm excited.

Keeping Up With Tech

I found this on New Scientist; Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight.

The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl.

That’s why he and his team wanted to invent a self-destructing material. They began with polymers that have a low ceiling temperature, which is the point at which the key bonds holding the substance together begin to break.

Lots of polymers break down slowly when they reach this temperature because many bonds have to be broken. But Kohl designed his material so that as soon as one bond breaks the whole thing rapidly unzips.

Those of you who have read Strike Dog will remember the scene where the drop sleds are deployed and what happens after they land. So it was cool to see an article describing this tech.

State of the Writer

 

I've been very quiet of late.

Lots of good reasons, which are in fact not so good. Health issues have been a bit of a strain. However, I have been working on parts of my craft doing online courses with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathyrn Rusch here.

I recommend all my writing friends to check them out.

The picture is for those readers who want to know what the Conex boxes of Alpha Base look like. This is the kitchen unit.

NB: a couple of links:

3-IN-1 Foldable Shelter Deployment

3-IN-1 Expandable Shelter

Holographic Quantum Gravity

Holographic Quantum Gravity is one of those outré ideas that's rather intriguing, but whether or not it's true is another matter. However, I liked it enough to use the idea to underpin the workings of the pillars in my Gate Walker series. You can read more about it here.

Currently I'm taking an online writing course as a way to refresh my creative voice, which has been bashed around a bit by health issues.

Catch you all on the bounce.

RAFAEL's Advanced Suite for AFVs

Found this on the web: RAFAEL's Advanced Suite for Armoured Fighting Vehicles - A Quantum leap in Armored Vehicles Transformation. There's an interview about the project here.

People who have read my novels will know that the combat armour suits have AI/expert system interface that allow the pilot to get on with the mission, which is the foundation for their nicknames.

The Marine suits are called DOGS, which stands for: Dispersed Operation and Guidance System.

The Army version are called APES, which stands for: Autonomous Pilot Expert System.

This YouTube video pretty much nails what I described in my stories. It's really hard to stay ahead of what can be done, let alone predict what might be doable in the future.

RollaBot

All Terrain Surveillance Robot - Guardbot. This version is a little bit, a lot, larger than the RollaBot I describe in my novels, but it gives one the general concept. Though if you go to their site they say it will come in a range of sizes, so that's good.

The problem is that when I started writing my trilogy back in 2012 the descriptions of the androids, RollaBots, and SnakeBots looked science fictional. Now it seems that will be sold on Amazon in the next few years.