Black Sea 2007, Day 29
Two new things happened to me today. The first was we had tripe for lunch. Let’s just say, I didn’t finish the whole plate. And no, it doesn’t taste like chicken. The second thing was I got a rare opportunity to operate the Kraft manipulator arm. Todd Gregory, the chief pilot of Hercules, gave me some helpful tips, and then handed over the controller. There are two manipulators on Hercules, the Kraft arm (so named by the manufacturing company) and Mongo (so named by the character in Blazing Saddles, played by Alex Karra, who’s most memorable lines are “Mongo like candy!”, and “Mongo pawn, in game of life”). Mongo is an old style manipulator. It’s still heavily used, but clunky and slow. To move Mongo from one position to the next, you enter commands on a push-button screen. If you want it to go left, you push “Left, left, left, left....etc”, and every time you push the button it moves slightly left. You continue to do this until you’ve moved it into position. This becomes slow, because the vehicle maybe moving slightly, do to current.
The Kraft manipulator is much more advanced. It has a remote that is basically a miniature of the arm, as you can see from the picture. And each joint in the remote, has a sensor that, when moved, mimics the same movement on the arm. To stretch the arm out on the vehicle, you stretch the remote out. It’s very tricky, because if you’re shaking (from too much espresso, say) the arm will mimic your movements. This makes it easier to move the arm to the correct position, and be able to react to movements of the vehicle, but makes it very difficult for a novice to pick anything up. I was commended on my skill at not moving terribly fast and being able to pick up a log, that was placed horizontally, and put it on end.
The other really cool part of the arm, is the fact it has, what is called, force-feedback. Which means if you try and pick up something that is too heavy for the arm to lift, instead of the arm straining and possibly causing damage to the manipulator, it will actually pull your own arm down. This minimizes damage to the manipulator and gives the operator a better understanding of what the object its trying to pick up is really like.
posted by DaveandBrian @ 6:19 AM
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