The Functionoids are Coming

…aaaannndddd… they’ve gone again.

1983:

A primordial hexapod variant not only capable of climbing into the back of a pickup truck, but also capable of lifting it up as well – a 3-1 strength/weight ratio, which is fairly impressive.

There’s a scanned PDF article about it here… on a site about old robots – most of which are little plastic toy things, but not this one. I’m not sure how smart it would be… I mean the computer I was programming around then had 32k memory. Total. RAM/ROM combined.

Still… spooky looking critter.

If anyone wants to laser-cut one, here are the various bits:

It uses 18 motors – and it looks like the up/down ones operate on a screw type thing which is A) strong and b) slow.

Here’s my prediction for the future. When a mechanical muscles are properly invented… ie: a lump of stuff that contracts when you pass a current through it… there will be a massive proliferation of… well, functionoids.