The BEAM PDF Library
Getting Acrobatic...

Writings from "on high" -- must-read material for BEAMers

Living Machines (Hasslacher & Tilden)

The Design of "Living" Biomech Machines: How low can one go? (Tilden; 1997)

Controller for a four legged walking machine (Still, Tilden; 1997)

Autonomous Biomorphic Robots as Platforms for Sensors (Tilden, Hasslacher, Mainieri, Moses; 1996)

Yuma Proving Grounds Automatic UXO Detection Using Biomorphic Robots (Tilden; 1996)

 

Good additional BEAM reference material

On the Reliability of the Nervous (Nv) Nets (Beiu, Frigo, Moore; 1999)

Analog Neural Network Control Method Proposed for Use in a Backup Satellite Control Mode (Frigo, Tilden; 1997)

A Novel Microsatellite Control System (Moore, Frigo, Tilden; 1998)

Wouter Brok on the Suspended Bicore

Wouter Brok on Coupled Bicores

Stepper Motor Basics (Ericsson) -- an excellent writeup on stepper motors, their construction, and operation

Stepper Motor Drive Circuit Basics (Ericsson) -- not even vaguely BEAM, but this gives you more background on stepper motor interfaces

 

Not BEAM, but good reading for roboticists

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System (Brooks, Flynn) -- Rod Brooks' theories play a big role in the inspiration for, and history of, BEAM. This also gives a good overview of the subsumption architecture. Speaking of which, "Edge" has a good interview with Rod Brooks here.

Battling Reality (Flynn, Brooks) -- another good Rod Brooks paper.

A Minimally Actuated Hopping Rover for Exploration of Celestial Bodies (Hale, et al) -- a good writeup on a robotic "hopper" that can control its hopping, as well as its "targeting" with but a single motor (but a whole lot of gears!).

Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot (Dowling) -- 1997 Doctoral thesis, describes the design and control of a 20 degree-of-freedom snake-like robot.

Earthwormlike Exploratory Robots (Fukunaga, et al.) -- 1998 brief but interesting description of potential earthworm-like 'bots.

Development of Small, Mobile, Special-Purpose Robots (Thakoor) -- 1998 NASA Tech Brief proposing use of flocks of small robots (rather than single large robots) for exploratory tasks

Biomorphic Explorers (Stoics, Thakoor) -- 1998 NASA Tech Brief proposing insect-like robots for exploratory tasks.

Insectile and Vermiform Exploratory Robots (Thakoor, Kennedy, Thakoor) -- 1999 NASA Tech Brief further developing insect-like robotic ideas

 

 

Just cool stuff

LANL poster for the Los Alamos National Labs' Biomorphics group -- this has a really nice picture of a 5-motor walker.

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