OGL-V

OGL-V 02.jpg

The sentence
"Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. He was convinced there could be no living thing on that remote, forbidding planet..."
from Jeff Waynes, version of War of the Worlds, popped into my head the other day, but I thought I'd reverse it a bit and send a human tripod machine to Mars.

- The name of the rover/walker is OGL-V to link to the astronomer Ogilvy
- In the text update the info of 'probability of life in sample . . . ' references the lyric "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said"
- The battery and light info references the final message from the Opportunity mars rover
- The red 'tentacles' in the bottom corner is the martian red weed "As Man had succumbed to the Martians, so our land now succumbed to the Red Weed..."

The legs of the tripod are modified versions of a robotic leg I had created a little earlier based on the leg of a horse, an idea which took far longer than I expected to transfer from my brain to blender.

 
 

Android - Lex

gort klaatu barada nikto

This one has been sitting in a ‘work in progress’ status for a long time and is possibly the most re-worked project so far given that the original version was pretty much abandoned and re-started. 

The ball joints controlling the movement are supposed to be worked by magnets or internal ligaments. Because of some of the coverings on the limbs, the android does lack the full level of movement/mobility that your average human would have, this is something that if I re-visit this project at some point would be an area to tweak.

The design was also based around the idea of removing complexity where possible with things like:

  • what would be the upper spine is a single block

  • Dropping down to two fingers and a thumb

  • Removing the heel and foot and replacing it with a ‘blade’

The darker segments inside the ribs are supposed to be fuel cells that can be swapped out easily. 

Fluffy Kill-Bot

You have fluffteen seconds to comply. 

Furry here is purely descriptive and is not meant to imply that this kill bot was designed to attack the Furry community or conversely that the Furry community is in the habit of building kill bots, live and let live that’s what I say.

The initial idea was to have a robot with hair/fur and overtime thinking and sketching it morphed into the furry kill bot.

The smooth raised areas on the legs and body were originally meant to raise and sink as the legs moved, to imply an artificial muscle structure. Although I did get this working with shape keys and the armature, it slowed the animation process down to even more of a crawl and so I abandoned this as the effect wasn’t all that noticeable even before adding the hair. Another animation bit that I dropped was the feet could originally extend and retract ‘toes’, but again dropping this did not really detract from the animation and sped things up / simplified things. 

To help highlight the various raised and errr anti-raised areas I popped into Vertex Paint mode and created a vertex colour map using the ‘dirty vertex colours’ option, this was then used to blend a lighter and darker version of the camouflage/marble material used for the body. 

 Vachyderm

Roombas are fine and all, but they are limited in their range, the Vachyderm is a more evolved autonomous vacuum cleaner, in addition to being able to suck through its flexible trunk, it can also choose to suck through its feet and so stick and or climb vertical walls.

The Limbs and trunk are controlled or moved by using (the grey) artificial muscles and tendons.

Shown more clearly in the 2nd work in progress image below is the tip of the vacuum which can switch between a small intake for tight areas or a wider flatter intake that can cover a larger area.