Bafang bpm & cst motors - what variations are available?

[Beach Thorncombe]

Yes, D8veh. The ultimate goal would be for my fabricator friend, Matt, to take one of my Powabyke Euros* and mod the forks to allow provision for a 4" fatbike tyre option but, with existing ebike projects, a new DIY kit 3D printer to build AND, (later), with starting to build my life sized humanoid robot as an urgent priority, I'm already pushing myself with too many fanciful projects!

The robot project is dead cool though.

http://inmoov.blogspot.co.uk/

http://robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/robot-inmoov-3d-printed ,

... and my substantial garden needs tidying for spring ... and the greenhouse needs loading with seedlings in propogators ... and with the carpet for the whole ground floor of my home arriving, well ... modding a Euro for 4" clearance will just have to wait.

Although, as an aside, I have been hungrily looking at a cheap, brushed motor, crank drive from China, with ideas of bolting it onto the XByke just for fun. (The XByke currently being my lightest, coastal exploring machine).

* The more years that pass, the more I appreciate my original Powabyke Euros and, of all the other machines that have come and gone since I first purchased my first one, the sheer grunt of their robust hub motors, (and their impatient raw acceleration), have yet to be equalled or beaten.

Truth is, (for me), here in hilly and, often, 'off-road' West Dorset, I keep being seduced back to the Euro's entirely functional but impressive, old school technology.

It'll be interesting to see how the BMP hub compares ... though, providing I tackle the added torque liabilities, I'm guessing the new hub will exceed all expectations.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Ah yes, the humanoid robot:

 

[soundwave]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39116876

 

[Deleted member 4366]

A 500w BPM at 48v and 25 amps or 36v and 30 amps would absolutely blitz that Powabyke for torque as well as speed.

 

[Beach Thorncombe]

Ha ha. First YouTube link was brilliant!

... and the second?

Absolutely awesome!

I've been following Boston Dynamics for several years. (Before Google bought the company).

I'd always imagined that a humanoid robot like ASIMO, (from Honda),

was the way robotics was going ... (Been watching Asimo's progress for over a decade), BUT ... Boston Dynamics have raised the bar, (and anxiety levels), by producing a whole stable of incredible machines more akin to the Terminator film gebre.

My favourite BD video is this one.It's an old clip but incredible non the less.

Blimey, D8veh. Do you mean blitz in a positive way as in it'll make my Powabyke rock!!!??? OR do you mean blitz in an ominous way as in ... it'll destroy the forks and tear my machine apart???!!!

As it happens, at the last minute, (though before reading your blitz comment), I'm wavering on my 26" versus 700c option / choice ... and struggling to find either size in a ready made up front wheel. (Within a budget of £140).

700c BPM equipped front wheels are conspicuous by their absence.

Not keen on spoking a wheel by just buying the basic hub motor on its own.

But the carpets and the 3d printer have been ordered!

 

[Deleted member 4366]

When I was a schoolteacher (recently retired), we had a robot club. I went with them four times to take part in the World Cup Robo-Soccer. They had every class of robot there including humanoids.

It was absolutely comical watching the humanoids because it took so long for each to figure out what he was supposed to do. I remember one time, the goalie was rubbing his back up and down the goal-post, like a bear on a tree, while the attacker was lining up for a shot, but it was no problem because the attacker tripped over his own foot when he tried to kick the ball at the open goal.there was a big crowd watching, and everyone in hysterics.

During those 4 years, the advancement in the robots' skill was very noticeable.

Many people were using lipos to power their robots. One time, in the main hall where there's tables on which the teams programme and fix their robots, there was a massive bang as a set of lipos went off. Everybody ran, and then, when things calmed down, everybody crowded round the table to see what happened - just as the second set went off!

Fond memories.

 

[IR772]

 

[Beach Thorncombe]

Amusing anecdotes, D8veh, (made me smile), and, sure, it was all very painful to watch even just a few short years ago BUT A.I, (now more astutely described as 'Machine Intelligence' and motor advances, (as in the actual physical technologies used to motorise / actualise robotic movement and feedback), is advancing at such a pace as to seem intimidating.

I regard myself, have always regarded myself, as a futurist keen to push things as swiftly, (and as early), as I could get my head around an idea or concept but the pace of innovation in robotics and machine intelligence has advanced so quickly over the last few years, it has left me feeling seriously concerned for ourselves as a species.

Even without the, often, negative, (and reasonable), warnings from the likes of Musk and Hawkings, the concept of 'singularity', (the tipping point where artificial intelligence will match and then, exponentially, accellerate way past some equivilent expression of human intellect), WILL happen, possibly in our own lifetimes - say the next 20 years. (I'm currently 60).

Some folk dismiss such happenings as ridiculous, citing our own human intelligence as representing an unattainable goal for 'mere machines' but I often cite insect intelligence as a counter argument, reminding others that even a basic ant or bee colony, (though consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of individual tiny brains of limited computing power), can display utterly breathtaking social feedback, topographical awareness and intelligence based decisions ... based on no more than "the power of numbers" being applied ... even by such ancient, rudimentary insect feed back systems.

The military, (and others), have now picked up on this alternate concept of non human intelligence and, as an example, the insect intelligent feed back loop can now orchestrate hundreds of electronic drones at a time, with each small on board computing processor contributing to a greater 'whole' that, for all intents and purposes, can "think", plan, organise, deploy and act ... without, what we humans might call intelligence as we used to perceive it.

And here is something to think about ...

I am not some conspiracy theorist OR a great believer in the idea of UFO's, (although with every star now considered to have an exoplanet or two orbiting around it, the idea of UFO's cannot be regarded as fiction any more), BUT ... there was always one question nobody ever understood.

IF UFO's could travel at thousands of miles per hour yet turn, at right angles, in an instant, the inertia or G force should turn the occupants bodies to mush! Right?

Perhaps but ... that line of thinking assumes such occupants follow some human blueprint, (with flesh, blood and guts encased in a sack of skin).

I offer a solution to the conundrum.

The reason the occupants of a 'flying disk from another world' don't fuss about inertia or gravity is because ... they are, likely, not flesh and blood but, rather, solid state and, for lack of a better word, electronic ... or machine-like.

Think about it.

Even using terrestrial phrasing, a thinking, sentient being composed of motherboard, graphite, kevlar or some similar, near indestructable material, (rather than flesh and bones), could be / would be bothered, not a jot, in the sudden 'inhuman' G forces of changing direction at 10,000 mph!

In a nutshell, aliens, if we ever lived long enough as a, (free), species to encounter them, are, in all probabilty, going to be based on a technology we, here in the first part of the 21st century, are actually inventing right now.

They, (whoever they are), say that the downfall of every civilisation is seeded in that civilisations greatest achievement.

Our greatest acheivement will be to create sentient, self aware, artificial life.

I'm convinced that same incredible achievement will also herald our own extinction.

However ... looking on the cheery side, between now and that time, Robotic Hardware Stores, (looking just like our current bicycle stores), will spring up all over the globe and, just like the bicycle and the electric bike / pedelec industry, (and culture), there will come a time where old, redundant robots will lie rusting at the bottom of our gardens, (or be getting disposed of at our Local Authority recycling centres), and, until the revolution comes, we will have a few years, (maybe 10 - 20 years), to aquire, buy, mod or tinker with humanoid and other robotic forms in exactly the same way we aquire, buy, mod or tinker with our electric bikes and pedelecs.

I'm entering that phase myself right now ... by 3D printing my own humanoid ... and getting to grips with the open source A.I / machine language that will turn my creation into a 'meet and greet' entity that will welcome the customers that walk down my passageway.

 

[Beach Thorncombe]

Hah!

See?

Thanks, IR772.

The very fact that Boston Dynamics's Big Dog is being parodied in a YouTube video just goes to show that the 'robot' of science fiction fame is no longer corralled in a time and space representing a mere possibility of "what might be".

For those unfamiliar with the real Big Dog, here is the official Boston Dynamics machine.

 

[Beach Thorncombe]

D8veh,

Can you do me a favour and address the question I asked earlier?

"Blimey, D8veh. Do you mean blitz in a positive way as in it'll make my Powabyke rock!!!??? OR do you mean blitz in an ominous way as in ... it'll destroy the forks and tear my machine apart???!!! "

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I mean that it would win substantially in a race.

 

[Beach Thorncombe]

Ha ha.

Thanks D8veh.

That's good to know!!!