#
#
#
  • #
  • #


Genghis

Genghis was a six-legged robot built by Rodney Brooks at MIT in the 1980s. It demonstrated how complex behaviors such as crawling can emerge from a network of simple, decentralized controllers.

FEATURES

Equipped with modular subsystems and a subsumption architecture (a control approach linking limited, task-specific perception directly to action).

HEIGHT

N/A cm | N/A in

LENGTH

35 cm | 13.8 in

WIDTH

25 cm | 9.8 in

WEIGHT

1 kg | 2.2 lb

SPEED

N/A km/h | N/A mph

SENSORS

12 force sensors, six pyroelectric infrared sensors, two inclinometers, two touch-sensitive whiskers.

ACTUATORS

12 model airplane position-controllable servomotors

POWER

Three silver-zinc batteries

COMPUTING

Four on-board 8-bit microprocessors linked by a 62.5 kilobaud token ring. Total memory of 1 KB of RAM and 10 KB of EPROM.

SOFTWARE

Distributed control system with incremental software layers (for controlling different behaviors).

DEGREES OF FREEDOM (DOF)

12

MATERIALS

N/A

COST

N/A

STATUS

Discontinued

WEBSITE

http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/genghis/



CREATOR

MIT

COUNTRY

United States

Year

1989

Type

Research

RATINGS

How do you like this robot?




Would you want to have this robot?

YES NO

DID YO KNOW?



The motors that power Genghis's legs are model airplane servos.

Rodoney Brooks and his students completed the robot just 12 weeks after initial conception.

HISTORY



Rodney Brooks started the Genghis project in 1988 in response to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory workshop on micro spacecraft. One of the goals was to use the robot as a test bed to explore a new control approach Brooks had conceived, the subsumption architecture. His idea was that complex behavior such as crawling and climbing over obstacles didn't require a central control system but could emerge instead from simple, distributed controllers. Based on his experience with Genghis and other robots, Brooks proposed that exploration of the solar system should rely on cheap, fast missions using large numbers of mass-produced autonomous robots rather than more complex and costly spacecraft. Brooks and Anita M. Flynn described that idea in a 1989 paper entitled "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System." Genghis would later reside at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.