Mech Warrior is a profession in the fictional universe of Battle Tech, a wargaming
and science fiction franchise created by FASA Corporation and currently owned by
WizKids. Mech Warriors are individuals who pilot BattleMechs: large robotic war
machines that are central to the Battle Tech series.
The fictional events of the Battle Tech universe constitute a future history that
describes the course of humanity from modern times until the mid 32nd century. It
also be considered an alternate history distinct from our own, since its point of
divergence from the real world occurs in the past. This is not the focus of the series,
though, and is more the result of real-world history overtaking the early years of the
Battle Tech timeline.
Given its central theme of military conflict, the events of the Battle Tech universe
can be classed as a military history, albeit a fictional one. Incessant wars are the
backdrop of most Battle Tech stories and historical happenings, the majority of which
concern individuals in the military rather than civilian sectors. Equally important to
Battle Tech history are politics and technology.
The earliest events distinct to the Battle Tech universe occur after the end of the
Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States, Europe, and Japan
announced in 1994 their intention to jointly construct an orbiting industrial facility
named Crippen Station, which was successfully launched 11 years later. A 1997 coup
d'état by hard-line communists restored a militant, Soviet-style government in Russia and
sparked a "Second Cold War" with NATO that lasted until the start of peaceful reforms
under premier Oleg Tikonov in 2005. The republic crumbled in 2011, igniting a civil war
that drew in NATO and saw the successful use of the Western Orbital Defense Network
(WODeN) — successor to the earlier SDI — to intercept a preemptive Russian missile
attack against western targets. The war ended with a Western Alliance victory in 2014.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
amount. The Bioloid system was an
excellent tool to prototype with and
was made even better by the fact
that moving over to the higher end
Dynamixels was a simple transition.
I planned on keeping the same leg
design since, “if it ain’t broke, don’t
fix it.”
I chose the RX- 64 Dynamixel as
the actuator to build the second
revision of Hagetaka, however, this
presented one major challenge: I
would need to build a completely
custom chassis to house the larger,
more powerful servos. Although the
Bioloid system comes with a variety
of brackets, the actual selection of
brackets is rather limited. Custom
design was the only way to go. I went
to work in Inventor essentially scaling
up and porting over the existing
Bioloid brackets used in my prototype
to an RX- 64 compatible equivalent.
At this point, I had all of the
structural components for Hagetaka
v2.0 designed within Inventor, but
lacked a means of machining the
components. I started contacting
various machine shops locally, but
almost all of them had very high
minimum order amounts and seemed
better suited towards someone
making mass quantities of a single
part, rather than small quantities of
multiple parts. Most of the quotes I
received were in the thousands of dollars, which would put me far over an
already stretched budget. I happened
to find Big Blue Saw ( www.big
bluesaw.com) which — unlike many
other machine shops — does not have
a minimum order amount. This is
especially useful for experimenters
and hobbyists working on personal
projects, or others not needing parts
manufactured in quantity.
Conclusion
Next time, we will cover the
assembly of the robot’s chassis,
wiring and power distribution scheme,
remote control setup, weapons,
supporting telepresence electronics,
and a more in-depth explanation of
the walking gait. SV
Links
Trossen Robotics Community http://forums.trossenrobotics.com
Big Blue Sawwww.bigbluesaw.com
Pololu Robotics www.pololu.com
Mech Warfare http://mech-warfare.com
SERVO 06.2009
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