Each ankle has a 3-axis force/torque sensor that measures the normal force. Each foot also contains an inclination sensor which measures the angle of the slope. Also, the rate gyro and the inclination sensor of the body allow the device to stabilize itself. A simple joystick set into the armrest of the chair can control the robot's movements. Researchers at KAIST have said that the walking chair can be used for carrying old or disabled people, moving heavy loads, and killing people. Internet users around the world took the third mention, military uses, and ran with it. The popular news aggregate site Slashdot.org posted a story about the walking chair which quickly generated about 250 comments. Many users of the technology news site equated the chair with popular computer games such as Mechwarrior. Posters commented that walking military robots also evoke powerful visions in the world's imagination. The walking chair could theoretically be mounted with RPGs or chain guns, weapons that would be too large for a soldier to carry alone.
Not first
This is not the first walking chair created, however, and also not the first to be related to combat robots. Toyota produced a smaller walking chair robot, the iFoot, approximately one year ago. It was expressly based on the popular Japanese cartoon and computer game series Gundam.
"It's not too distant from Gundam, except that Gundam can do a thousand more things a lot better," explained Tokyo spokesman Nolasco when the iFoot was first announced. "It's a way for some of our engineers to express their artistic ability or dream world -- I mean they grew up with these things." "In a way, the people who came up with those things were seeing visions of the future themselves," he added. "That was their way of creating a technology whether it was just on paper or on film."
Long time coming
Robots have been at the forefront of mankind's imagination for thousands of years. Aristotle, who lived in the 300s BC and taught Alexander the Great, himself had the idea of automated machines. In speaking about the slavery of his time, he said: "There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each inanimate instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation."
After two thousand years, this unknowing prediction by a leading philosopher is about to come true. How much longer will it take for the unknowing predictions of our cartoons and games today to come true as well Surely not even half as long.
