Chapter Eighty-Nine: Humanoid Robots

Wang Yinan's ultimate goal is, of course, to build a mountaineering robot that can climb mountains.

Generally speaking, there are two different ways to achieve this kind of functional machine, one is to simplify the prerequisites, so as to achieve a relatively simple machine, but this function can be done to the extreme.

For example, on long journeys, the use of wheels instead of human legs is a huge innovation, which requires simplified conditions, such as paved roads, where even horse-drawn carriages can run much faster than people, but when they encounter mountain roads or no roads, they will be blinded.

The other is to create anthropomorphic machines, for example, Zhuge Liang's wooden ox and flowing horse is a prototype of an anthropomorphic (or simulated horse), which does not run very fast, but is much better than a carriage for the road.

The same is true for the propulsion of surface vessels, you see which fish has a propeller behind its tail, but the boat with the propeller installed, in the long run, is faster than any fish, but the noise and propulsion efficiency are not complimentary.

The design of mountaineering robots also has the same two ways.

But in the specific environment of mountaineering, there seems to be no good functional design method, especially in the current environment of environmental protection, if Wang Yinan's whole machine comes out, all the way to the mountains and rivers, it will have to make a mess on the way to the summit of Mount Everest.

Even if it is a scientist who is bullish, after facing the condemnation of the entire Blue Star, it is estimated that he can only get out of the way.

Therefore, this mountaineering robot also has an implicit premise, that is, in the process of mountaineering, the environment cannot be damaged, and the remaining choice is nothing more than to choose an anthropomorphic route, or a quasi-gecko, or a quasi-goat route.

Wang Yinan finally chose to anthropomorphize, after all, getting a robot goat out seems to be a bit too Lo.

Chen Zihao got all the design drawings from Boston Dynamics, Wang Yinan was not going to study on the basis of that information, they proved that the possibility of this thing was enough, and if you want to learn, the best mountaineering machine must be a Sherpa man, not a Boston machine.

Sitting on the balcony of the hotel room, there is a whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows behind it, and in front of him is the king of Shu Mountain, Gongga Mountain, Wang Yinan's luck is not bad, the clouds and mist have just dispersed, and the sunset has plated the entire snow-capped mountain with a layer of dazzling gold.

In order to wait for such a view, it is common for many photographers to squat in the ravine for a month or two, but they did not expect to encounter it the next day.

Using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and connecting to the Gödel system through the hotel's network, Wang Yinan started working.

The design of the robot starts from the lower body, Wang Yinan first simplified the design of the upper body, including only the head, torso and upper limbs divided into two parts, mainly to maintain balance, the torso and head are the same as normal people, and the range of movement is smaller.

The upper limbs are divided into large arms and small arms, which can basically move freely, and are mainly used to maintain overall balance, just like the human body.

The lower part of the robot is complicated, Wang Yinan basically follows the anatomy of the human body, and even the five toes on the soles of the feet are retained, using the Achilles tendon to connect the calf and the soles of the feet, just like people, they can move freely within a limited range.

The bones are made of metal materials, and the specific steel or alloy is used, Wang Yinan is not sure for the time being, because this thing is not under the condition of a certain strength, the lighter the better, after all, if it is too light, the stability will definitely decline, and in the high mountains, such a strong wind, maybe a gust of wind will blow away.

The use of liquid cushioning layer between the bones, the main purpose is shock absorption, of course, if there is an opportunity to replace this thing with air shock absorption, Wang Yinan will also be happy, air shock absorption is a high-end product.

Wang Yinan decided to equip each power unit with its own battery and drive circuit, and use the near-field network (2.4G is a communication method connected to the central control system), so that the difficulty of wiring can be reduced, and each power unit is completely independent and does not need any wiring.

Because the consumption of electricity by artificial muscles is very small, Wang Yinan did not even design an overall charging device, according to his estimates, a power unit can have a working life of several years, when needed, it is enough to charge each power unit separately.

Of course, there is no need to completely copy the structure of the human body, Wang Yinan found some documentaries about the mysteries of the human body and the mysteries of sports shot by the Discovery Channel, and carefully studied the sports analysis of long-distance runners and sprinters.

In this way, dozens of basic units of different lengths and shapes are designed, each of which includes an artificial muscle, a liquid buffer layer, a battery and a control chip.

These basic units connect dozens of metal bones to form a humanoid robot, mainly the lower body, of course, with only an awkward-looking torso, head, and two arms.

Even if this robot were built now, it wouldn't even be able to stand up, let alone walk.

What Wang Yinan needs to let Gödel's system do is the same as what Ge Kunpeng needed to do back then, which is to let these piles of soft skeletons scattered on the ground learn to stand up and then walk.

Wang Yinan first taught the basic Newtonian mechanics and rigid body mechanics theory to the Gödel system, and after learning the physical rules, if you enter the simulation space of the Gödel system, you will find that under the action of gravity, this pile of things that look like people are immediately sprinkled on the ground like mud.

"Well, it's too difficult to get the system to learn to get up", Wang Yinan looked at the scattered bones on the screen and said to himself,

"Let's stand up first", Wang Yinan picked up the mouse, lifted the humanoid mud, and stood on the ground (of course, the gravity effect was temporarily canceled in the process).

"The first task is to make this mess stand firm", Wang Yinan said to himself,

The learning task of the neural network is to maintain the existing form of this bone, Wang Yinan starts the Gödel system, and starts the training process with the standing human form and its starting condition.

In the simulation space of the Gödel system, if someone observes, they can see that this pile of mud is constantly collapsing, and then constantly returning to its original state, slowly, the speed of collapse is getting slower and slower, and the time to maintain the original state is getting longer and longer.

As one of the bones tilts in one direction under the weight it bears, the artificial muscles begin to learn to contract, straightening the bone so that the whole muddy humanoid machine can stumble and maintain its balance.

Slowly, this mud learned to stand, Wang Yinan began to randomly exert force in all directions, push left, pull right, the whole humanoid machine looked very fragile under the action of such an external force, and soon fell to the ground, but with the lengthening of the training time, there were several times after the robot shook for a while under the action of external force, and successfully regained its balance.

This success was quickly discovered and strengthened by the Gödel system, which in the next few collisions was able to dissolve the external force with a heavy lift.

Wang Yinan looked at the humanoid machine with slightly bent calves on the screen, and nodded with satisfaction, "It's very good, I actually learned this standing posture to maintain balance, it seems that the neural network is really much more powerful than humans."

Just as Wang Yinan watched the humanoid robot in the screen stumble and maintain his balance under the impetus of external forces, the distant Scandinavia, Nordic countries, Sweden, and the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Five members of the Nobel Prize Committee in Physics are discussing the candidates for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics in a remote office, these five members are all members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and they have selected a large number of researchers from all over the world, mainly Nobel laureates, well-known academicians of national academies of sciences, and senior professors of famous universities.

The committee then sends out an invitation to these researchers, inviting them to nominate candidates for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

After collecting enough Nobel Prize nominations in physics, they will decide on this year's Nobel Prize winner in physics after several discussions.

Don't get me wrong, the committee does not have the right to decide who will win the prize, what they can do is to submit the list of winners they think should be awarded, usually two or three (this list can be very long, given the possibility of co-awarding), to the full membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for consideration.

Don't think that the first-ranked candidate will definitely win the prize, the review committee formed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has not shot the first-ranked candidate once or twice.

This year's work of the committee is relatively easy, and in the field of physics this year, the past achievements are the high-temperature superconductivity of Wang Yinan and Li Wenjing, and the discovery of new particles by the large collider at the Europa Nuclear Research Center.

Although there was some inexplicable noise, clamoring that the Nobel Prize should not be awarded to their Oriental counterparts, the basic ethics of scientists still led the committee to a unanimous conclusion.

Generally, the award committee will first consider the latest physics achievements of the year, if there is the best, directly as a candidate, if not, it will be a lot of trouble, you need to consider the achievements that should have won awards in the past years but have not yet won awards, to consider the importance of the results, but also to consider the age of the candidate, if you are old, it will definitely be given priority.

Of course, it's not okay to be too old, otherwise you won't wait for the award to hang up, that's not a smile and generosity, the Nobel Prize will never be awarded to people who are not alive.

What the five-member committee did not expect was that not far from the place where they were meeting and discussing, in another conference room of the headquarters of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, five equally respected academicians of chemistry of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were also discussing the list of candidates for this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

After many discussions, among the final three people screened out, the first place was Wang Yinan and Li Wenjing's molecular weaving machines.

There has never been a precedent in history for a scientist to win both a prize in physics and a prize in chemistry. 8)