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[cowofdoom78963]

You know, we've used tanks for almost a century now, and I don't know of anyone who's said "This is so unintuitive!  We need to give our tanks arms and legs!"

Except in WWI when they were first used.

Mechs wont be useful for anything until they find a reliable power source, and if they are created their probably going to be piloted by a crew.

Unless your just thinking of putting a gyroscope and legs on a truck or something. I dont see how that would be so hard.

[Virex]

Unless your just thinking of putting a gyroscope and legs on a truck or something. I dont see how that would be so hard.

Putting the legs on a truck isn't hard, but getting the legs to work ina  reliable and usefull way is

[cowofdoom78963]

Unless your just thinking of putting a gyroscope and legs on a truck or something. I dont see how that would be so hard.

Putting the legs on a truck isn't hard, but getting the legs to work ina  reliable and usefull way is

People can make working legs, getting the power to run them seems to be the problem.

[Chutney]

Giant robots really are a terrible idea (citation: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquareCubeLaw).
We'll need some damn powerful metals to make them humanoid, I think our best chance is for a)powersuits or b) 'mechs that are just slightly bigger than say, a garbage truck.

[cowofdoom78963]

Why would you need anything larger then a garbage truck?

[Leafsnail]

Unless your just thinking of putting a gyroscope and legs on a truck or something. I dont see how that would be so hard.

Putting the legs on a truck isn't hard, but getting the legs to work ina  reliable and usefull way is

People can make working legs, getting the power to run them seems to be the problem.

Not even that - even the most advanced humanoid robots can't run very well, and none can walk far on anything other than flat ground.  You can't guarentee any battlefield is going to be perfectly smooth.

I think the most likely development will be "drone" tanks, which could be controlled remotely.  They already use drone aircraft, and there's no reason why one person couldn't remotely control a drone tank.  A drone tank would have the same amount of weak spots as a normal tank - few - and has the added advantage of not putting its occupants at risk from the dreaded anti tank rounds.  They could also be smaller and lighter, and possibly faster.

They are also making bomb disposal bots, to keep bomb disposal experts out of harms way.  Most are reluctant to use robots as killing machines though - although drones are already doing just that.

[cowofdoom78963]

Unless your just thinking of putting a gyroscope and legs on a truck or something. I dont see how that would be so hard.

Putting the legs on a truck isn't hard, but getting the legs to work ina  reliable and usefull way is

People can make working legs, getting the power to run them seems to be the problem.

Not even that - even the most advanced humanoid robots can't run very well, and none can walk far on anything other than flat ground.  You can't guarentee any battlefield is going to be perfectly smooth.

Yes, but those are todays primitive robots.

[Leafsnail]

Yes, but those are todays primitive robots.

But even as they get better, what is the advantage of a giant mech?  A low slung tank with a big gun won't have the vulnerable joints, won't be prone to falling over when hit by a rocket launcher round and won't give away your position.  Even miniature mechs have the same problem; why not just have a small tank with a gatling gun on one side and something explosive on the other?

[Captain Hat]

If we gave our soldiers massive pauldrons, nothing could stop them

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I mean hell, look at those? Do you think anything could defeat them?

[Lear]

My bet would be on armor piercing rounds.

Sad as I am to say it, I doubt future warfare will involve anything larger than tanks/exoskeletal suits. And that's only when long range weapons aren't in use.

=\

[cowofdoom78963]

Yes, but those are todays primitive robots.

But even as they get better, what is the advantage of a giant mech?  A low slung tank with a big gun won't have the vulnerable joints, won't be prone to falling over when hit by a rocket launcher round and won't give away your position.  Even miniature mechs have the same problem; why not just have a small tank with a gatling gun on one side and something explosive on the other?

Well think about it, why do people even bother to put legs on robots today?

[Luke_Prowler]

If we gave our soldiers massive pauldrons, nothing could stop them

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I mean hell, look at those? Do you think anything could defeat them?

you sir, have my respect

[Aqizzar]

And the pilot himself provides balancing, no need for a super-powerful gyro. It's still needed for basic balancing, but most of the really complex stuff is handled by the pilot's brain.

No such technology exists.  No such technology is even on the theoretical horizon.  FASA came up with that crappy explanation twenty years ago, and it doesn't make any more sense now than it did then.  How is the pilot's brain supposed to make a machine balance?  Hook wires to his ears and use his cochleae as processor cores?

A limbic reaction doesn't work too well when the muscles it's trying to autonomously control are replaced with a giant mass hydraulics that flexes nothing like a human body.  And you'd still need loads of gyroscopic sensors and processing just to give the brain something to interpret.  Add in the likely phenomenal cost of getting intelligible information into and out of the nervous system, and the humongous flaw of a critical stabilizing system that can be fouled by a strong cup of coffee, and you'd be far better off just using mechanical gyroscopes.

[bjlong]

The problem with treads and wheels are that they have trouble with going over rubble. Legs, on the other hand, can go over lots of things a lot easier. There's some back-of-the-napkin physics we could go over, but simple experience works just as well.

That said, I doubt we'll have anything more interesting looking than spider-tanks for a long, long time. (In fact, insects are made of linear motors and armor plates. A few design tweaks to add guns and such would be relatively easy, though the movement system would be difficult to come up with.)

And yes, Aqizzar, that's a big problem. Actually, that's my problem with any prediction of a singularity event anytime within the next hundred years. On top of that, we take about 5 years learning how to use our body. What makes us think that we can just plug in to a new one, even if the architecture is there?

[Sean Mirrsen]

One problem. If it runs on gyros, it's entirely computer-controlled. Then, no point in trying to make it versatile, or pilot-controlled.

Think about how a human is able to balance himself while using any mechanical contraption. Be it a unicycle, a column of unstable objects, or a car. The human body is able to interpret very tiny changes in its position.

We don't have gyros in each of our limbs, just one in the head. That's as much as a mech needs. Using that, the information on relative limb position, and a way to subtly transmit it all into the brain of the pilot, you can have the pilot act as the supercomputer and operate the mech as an extension of his body. I mean, ffs, there are already devices that can make the blind see with a head-mounted camera and a neuro-implant. Given military budget and a few years, a mech control system based on that principle could become very advanced.

Any hiccup in the operation can be circumvented - for example, there's no need to override the pilot's own balance input, a signal that produces an effect interpretable by the pilot is all that's required. Having an interpretable signal, the pilot can train to understand it, and control the mech accordingly. There's even no need for precise movement implementation, a few collective sticks to alter the angle/applied force of the limbs will suffice for things like walking over rough terrain.

ninja edit: well, there would always be computer-assisted routines for the routine stuff the pilot doesn't want to do. Standind still or walking along could be entirely computer-controlled.