All controls are handlebar mounted, including speed, pitch, turning, vertical and horizontal travel.I read about a vehicle they made that was designed to go over obstacles, clutter, up stairs, not be blocked by the
things that wheeled vehicles would be blocked by. It had legs, eight I think. And controls for all of them. There were
so many
degrees of freedom in the control system (imagine trying to coordinate the movement of eight fully articulated
legs) that nobody could drive the thing. This was over 30 years ago, and it was a student's robotics
thesis paper I was proof reading (I was helping a Chinese student write less crazy english, I didn't know anything about
robotics). The paper talked about how a computer controlled interface could be developed, so
that the driver just had to indicate stop and go and direction, and the legs just did their thing come what may, all coordinated
by the computers.
If they want me to ride that fan thing, they need to ditch all those handlebar controls and put a joy-stick on it
-Mike
