178
The Last Resource
duty, the dangers of operating in highly radioactive areas and the
sheer weight of the protective shielding needed by its crew members
led to a preference for the cheaper and expendable remote—con—
trolled machines. Some, for example the Mhzotaur, -hang above the
test beds of nuclear and other engines ready to sweep down to carry
out the commands of their human master. The Minotaur has ve
articulated limbs protruding from a ball—like body: three of the
arms carry television ‘eyes’ and the other two end in a ‘hand’. Other
telechirics, such as Muscat, look more like science ction robots.
Paired television cameras provide the operator with stereoscopic
vision and two arms, controlled by moving an identical master pair,
hang from the ‘shoulder’ of the free—roving machine. Both types of
telechiric—the bottom crawler and the kind operating in three
dimensions—are represented underwater, although as yet none
match the more sophisticated machines which are to be found on
the land.
One of the earliest bottom crawlers was the Rum (remote under—
Water manipulator) used for a time by the Scripps Institution at La
_Îolla, California. It was a converted weapons—carrier which had
been tted with television cameras and a mechanical arm. The
operator controlled the machine from a shore—based caravan and an
umbilical cable, ve miles long, carried both the communication
signals and the power. The Scripps scientists had hoped that the
Rum might be used to maintain instrumented automatic stations set
up on the sea oor but the machine was defeated by an inability to
negotiate minor obstacles, a tendency to become bogged down in
soft sea bottoms, and ‘bleary vision’ caused by the sediment raised
by its movement. Not all of these bottom—moving machines have
been quite so disappointing, but they have failed to gain the
acceptance enjoyed by the ‘free swimming’ telechirics such as
Télé7mute which can work away from the sea oor. The Téle'naute,
used by the Institut Français du Pétrole, can move in all directions
at depths down to 3,200 feet, and carries an arm which can handle
leads of up to 540 pounds. Behind it the machine trails a neutrally
buoyant cable which links up with the control console on the
attendant surface vessel.
In 1966, both telechirics and manned submersibles were to be put
through a test on which the attention of people all over the world was
focused—the retrieval of a H—bomb lost in the sea off the coast of
Spain. The story started on January 17 when a B—52 bomber collided
The Last Resource
duty, the dangers of operating in highly radioactive areas and the
sheer weight of the protective shielding needed by its crew members
led to a preference for the cheaper and expendable remote—con—
trolled machines. Some, for example the Mhzotaur, -hang above the
test beds of nuclear and other engines ready to sweep down to carry
out the commands of their human master. The Minotaur has ve
articulated limbs protruding from a ball—like body: three of the
arms carry television ‘eyes’ and the other two end in a ‘hand’. Other
telechirics, such as Muscat, look more like science ction robots.
Paired television cameras provide the operator with stereoscopic
vision and two arms, controlled by moving an identical master pair,
hang from the ‘shoulder’ of the free—roving machine. Both types of
telechiric—the bottom crawler and the kind operating in three
dimensions—are represented underwater, although as yet none
match the more sophisticated machines which are to be found on
the land.
One of the earliest bottom crawlers was the Rum (remote under—
Water manipulator) used for a time by the Scripps Institution at La
_Îolla, California. It was a converted weapons—carrier which had
been tted with television cameras and a mechanical arm. The
operator controlled the machine from a shore—based caravan and an
umbilical cable, ve miles long, carried both the communication
signals and the power. The Scripps scientists had hoped that the
Rum might be used to maintain instrumented automatic stations set
up on the sea oor but the machine was defeated by an inability to
negotiate minor obstacles, a tendency to become bogged down in
soft sea bottoms, and ‘bleary vision’ caused by the sediment raised
by its movement. Not all of these bottom—moving machines have
been quite so disappointing, but they have failed to gain the
acceptance enjoyed by the ‘free swimming’ telechirics such as
Télé7mute which can work away from the sea oor. The Téle'naute,
used by the Institut Français du Pétrole, can move in all directions
at depths down to 3,200 feet, and carries an arm which can handle
leads of up to 540 pounds. Behind it the machine trails a neutrally
buoyant cable which links up with the control console on the
attendant surface vessel.
In 1966, both telechirics and manned submersibles were to be put
through a test on which the attention of people all over the world was
focused—the retrieval of a H—bomb lost in the sea off the coast of
Spain. The story started on January 17 when a B—52 bomber collided