Robotic iguanodon ref.

["Adrian Thomas" <adrian.thomas@zoology.oxford.ac.uk>]

FWIW 

TI: Control of a robot dinosaur
      AU: Papantoniou_V, Avlakiotis_P, Alexander_RM
      NA: EUROPEAN ASSOC RES LEGGED ROBOT,RUE LIMAUGE 13,B-1050 
          BRUSSELS,BELGIUM
          UNIV LEEDS,SCH BIOL,LEEDS LS2 9JT,W YORKSHIRE,ENGLAND
      JN: PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 
          SERIES B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 1999, Vol.354, No.1385, pp.863-
          868
      IS: 0962-8436
      DT: Article
      AB: The Palaiomation Consortium, supported by the European 
          Commission, is building a robot Iguanodon atherfieldensis for 
          museum display that is much more sophisticated than existing 
          animatronic exhibits. The current half-size (2.5 m) prototype 
          is fully autonomous, carrying its own computer and batteries. 
          It walks around the room, choosing its own path and avoiding 
          obstacles. A bigger version with a larger repertoire of 
          behaviours is planned.
          Many design problems have had to be overcome. A real dinosaur 
          would have had hundreds of muscles, and we have had to devise 
          means of achieving life-like movement with a much smaller 
          number of motors; we have limited ourselves to 20, to keep the 
          control problems manageable. Realistic stance requires a 
          narrower trackway and a higher centre of mass than in previous 
          (often spider-like) legged robots, making it more difficult to 
          maintain stability. Other important differences from previous 
          walking robots are that the forelegs have to be shorter than 
          the hind, and the machinery has had to be designed to fit 
          inside a realistically shaped body shell. Battery life is about
          one hour, but to achieve this we have had to design the robot 
          to have very low power consumption. Currently, this limits it 
          to unrealistically slow movement. The control system includes a
          high-level instructions processor, a gait generator, a motion-
          coordination generator, and a kinematic model.
      KP: MAMMALS
      WA: robot, dinosaur, walking, quadrupedal locomotion

Not lego.

Cheers,
Adrian