Log Book

Date: (Classified)

	Experimental Mechanics Research Project Description: Development of a walking machine. Several leg or leg-like mechanisms acting in a coordinated way to move the object forward. So I start. With a bendy leg mechanism, hip, knee, elasticized foot movement for stabilty and simple shock absorbtion. A single demonstration leg seems to make sense. Movement as it's driven is nice, cams and pinioning motions, the right sort of lifting action. Thus onward to a complete mock-up. A version with more legs however fails, not enough power in the mechanism even to hold its own weight. Structural changes, lighter materials, differering the profiles of the stock used, none of it helps. I deduce that the machine, in this style, is simply unbuildable. So back to the drawing board. This is the stuff of invention I surmise, attempt, fail, redesign, adapt, rebuild. Repeat until success is apparent. I channel the spirit of Edison, one of the greatest inventors of the modern age, the inventor of mono sound; I study the biomechanics of an insect in its simplicity; I peruse learned books of great antiquity and freshly minted tomes of the latest state-of-the-art knowledge of cybernetic systems. A simplifying process sweeps over the design, a counterbalancing complexification of control, then a revision of design based upon strenuous calculations leads to massive simplicities crystalising out of the apparent nonsense. Once again, a single leg is built as a demonstration, the motions are simpler but finer, the mechanisms lighter, more elegant. It moves beautifully, the rigours of a more complete analysis paying off. But once again the complete mechanism fails, the materials revolt against me and leave me in a mess of failed visions and optimistic physics. No, it is my methods that are at fault. I am not the paper-design genius that I want so much to be, the architect planning massive contructions from a desktop pad with a pencil grasped in one sweaty hand. No, I must learn to know my materials, I must plunge into the Pauli Exclusion Principle world of real physical objects, I must discard my draughtman's table, I take a leap into the sweaty real world of tensile strengths measuresd using real gauges and my fingers, not theoretical measures obtained from voluminous tomes of tables and listings of all known physical parameters. The design process becomes a cluster of small changes made directly to the apparatus, the plan is unclear, but as a swarm of industrious bees with no apparent plan can build a nest of surprising complexity, so too do the changes, apparently random, begin to take on a seemingly purposeful bent. The combined intelligences of my materials and my hands seems to be leading me on toward something I cannot yet frame in my minds eye, yet I perceive a plan. With a start, I realise the last move I will need to make, the final repetitions of changes, so I take a quick pause to peruse my work so far and try to understand where I am going. I see the effect that my last move will make, I am surprised and I decide to lay my tools aside. For good. I have rediscovered the wheel.