This project is back on
we've secured a sponsorship
from World of Tanks for the next three episodes of the Power loader
Which means we also promised to have this thing moving around
within those three episodes
i'm gonna have a chat with Matt Oehrlein co-founder
of Megabots incorporated
I'm going to travel to British Columbia
to meet with Jonathan Tippett
We're going to use...
-LEGS! -TREADS!
Hey guys welcome to a new episode of our Aliens Power loader build the project
that has most of you wondering
Are they still working on that?
I know, I know, our upload schedule for this project has
been sporadic to say the least
We started at christmas 2018 and worked
on it for about half a year and then stopped
Why?
Well because we got
this awesome new facility
which arguably we kind of need for
building a giant 10-foot mech
it wouldn't really have fit in the old garage
Then we started up again beginning of this year
2020 a year for the record books and obviously it got shut down again
along with the whole world
When the pandemic started we had to send everyone
to work from home and as you can imagine it's kind of hard to build a giant mech
at home so it got put on hold again
Now, the team has been back for
about a month or so but we've been hesitant to start this
project again as we mentioned it's one of our most expensive endeavors
ever and like many businesses we did take a pretty big financial hit due to
the pandemic
Luckily things in canada are getting
better and i'm excited to say this project is back on!
And we've secured a sponsorship from World of Tanks
for the next three episodes of the Power loader
World of Tanks is an epic free-to-play
historically accurate war game that makes you feel like a real tank
commander roll out across open fields climb steep hills tear across deserts
sneak through forests and pick your battles in industrial zones devise your
battle plan and rally your teammates to destroy the competition
in over 40 battle arenas this sponsorship means...
...we also promised
to have this thing moving around within those three episodes
The way I see it
we have two options:
We can either build it just like the movie
and give it giant hydraulic legs
Or we can build it like the militarized
version of the Power loader which is in both the
comics and the video games
Now both of these options are going to
be complicated expensive and difficult to do
So before we decide I think we should talk to the experts
of giant mech building
So i'm going to travel to British Columbia to meet with
Jonathan Tippett the founder, president and CTO of Furrion
Exobionics in Vancouver
Let's go!
Welcome to Furrion Exobionics
where we're developing giant all-terrain mech suits
using our advanced exoskeletal technology to bring you the next
frontier in human skill
So we're here at Cheekeye ranch
with the Furrion racing mech and Jonathan Tippett
As you know we're building the Aliens
Power loader - Yes something i'm very excited about
And as the foremost leader in hydraulic mech
and hydraulic leg technologies in the world
I thought i'd ask you a few
questions about how this thing even works and if it's
even possible to build a bipedal Power loader
- Yes it is
possible I can tell you with our technology
we could do it
but it would take a while and it would
take a few bucks
We opted for four legs in our journey to prototype this
technology because it's just vastly easier to have four legs to work with
It lets you lift one to take a step without falling over
It's a Power loader it's supposed to pick up and carry things like a forklift
so even if you can balance on two legs
What happens when you then take a load?
Your center of gravity shifts and suddenly you have to walk in a
completely different way
One of the drills that we've evolved to
after three years of training and development
is trying to balance on two legs even with this simplified machine
if you were to embark upon trying to make a bipedal
walking machine of that scale
it would be a significant R&D
project there's a reason they put treads on things
So anyway
I'm already here
Think I can uh, take it for a spin?
Oh you want to get drained up in this beast
Well yeah I think this would
probably be my best bet at learning how to pilot a
hydraulic mech
Yeah absolutely man I mean this will give you the sort of
initial sense of what it's like to be that high and to have command of that
kind of heavy machinery at the tips of your
fingers so yeah we'll strap you in here we'll strap
you in here
You heard it here first make sure you subscribe to Furrion exobionics
I've linked it in the description below because i'm going to be learning how to
pilot this thing and walk it around
Thanks Jonathan
- Hey good luck man, I can't wait
Big thank you to our sponsor World of Tanks for bringing this project back to
life in addition to being completely free to
play it's also completely free to win this game relies solely on skill to win
battles not money whether you're a novice or a
pro you'll have a blast with the other 100 million players who share the same
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Just click on my link below to get world of tanks absolutely free
While James is in Vancouver interviewing Jonathan Tippett it's my turn to travel
down to San Francisco and meet with Matt Oehrlein
co-founder of Megabots incorporated
Just kidding...
...thanks a lot pandemic
looks like I'm going to be doing a zoom call instead
Hey Matt, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today
- Yeah my pleasure
So as you may or may not know we here at Hacksmith industries are currently
building an Aliens Power loader we've got the upper body built
and now we're trying to figure out what to do for the lower body and as far as I
understand you guys went through the same decision
with your two robots
Yeah I mean plain and simple we went with tracks
because it's sort of a proven mode of locomotion
you can buy off the shelf components and you can basically get your robot
operating and moving much more quicker than spending the
resources to get legs working it's very very difficult to make
a walking robot that is dynamically stable
we're really youtubers and we make entertainment
we're not boston dynamics, right?
We can't spend the next 10 years developing a custom motion system
to get this robot to move
What about treads?
Yeah the main difficulty with
treads is it doesn't look as cool which is a
detriment when you're building an entertainment company
they do allow an easy mode of control because really there's
just two actuators and you make both actuators go forward
when you want to go forward and you can apply them in opposite
directions when you want the robot to pivot
we did get the performance we were looking for in our track system for the
robot to be able to navigate most standard environments a
little bit of hills and be able to pick up and interact with
cars so I would call our treads on Eagle
Prime a success
So in conclusion if you were building
the Power loader what do you think would give us the absolute best mobility
for our money
I wouldn't even look at doing legs I would go
straight to tracks you're going to get the most power the most
simplicity and capability for your money
Alright Matt well thanks for taking
your time to talk with us about legs vs treads I wish you all the best
What's next in line for Megabots?
We're still building big crazy things on the Megabots Youtube
channel and I've got some collaborations with
Jörg from the slingshot channel
- Hello and welcome to the slingshot channel
Where we're doing some projectile
launching weapons as well
So what you're saying is that once the
Power loader is done you're gonna give us everything we need to militarize it
I think we might have something for you
Awesome, all right well best of
luck on that and we'll talk to you again soon!
Alright thanks a bunch Bogdan
Alright so I talked to Jonathan from
Furrion Exobionics
And I talked to Matt from Megabots
And based on our research we've compiled the following pros and cons list
And now we know without a doubt what we're going to use for the Power loader
We're going to use:
-TREADS! -LEGS! Wait-
No we should be
using legs we definitely need legs if we don't do
legs they're going to complain okay but you know what i'd rather get
the project done and actually have it moved and be really
unstable and really expensive
Just kidding we actually decided on tank
treads a long time ago pretty much at the beginning of the
project because there are just way too many caveats with using hydraulic legs
and if you were paying attention
So to try and help fund the build I've designed a new t-shirt that i think you
guys are really really going to like
Anyway the real question here is
where are we going to get treads from?
I'm on it
I don't think these are the tracks we're looking for
What a weird tank doesn't have treads
Hey guys, do you guys know where treads are?
Did I mention World of Tanks has a huge arsenal of tanks including artillery
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Back to you Bogdan
That's perfect!
Why did I wait here?
Alright, alright I got it
we're gonna use
the treads from a compact track loader
That could work...
...but how much is that gonna cost me?
About a quarter what legs would have
Yeah I guess that's I guess that's good
Basically
we get our skid steer get rid of this we're not gonna need that bucket anymore
don't need that bam we've got our track base and then we
take our Power loader get rid of the legs
a little bit of
super glue
stick that right on there and bam we've got our tracked Power loader
Alright it looks like we have our work cut out for us in the next episode we're
gonna have to buy a bobcat strip it down and start designing for
our Power loader with tank treads plus since it's sponsored by World of
Tanks we're also gonna be mounting a cannon to it
and driving it around like a remote controlled tank if you guys want to help
support this project and our channel check out
hacksmith.store to buy our awesome t-shirt