Brighton Robotics - Bill Bigge - What's wrong with Servos August 27, 2009

Servos are great for building robots aren't they? You can make all kinds of things with them, legs, arms, grippers, even hack them to turn wheels, but they were never really designed for robots. Even some of the new 'robot servos' you can get just do the same thing, maybe with some added feedback for measuring angles.

When Bill first began trying to build robots he realised that none of the adaptive, dynamic and just generally cool behaviour that he wanted to produce was possible using servos. In this talk he'll explain exactly why servos are bad and talk about his Ph.D. research project which has revolved around developing an alternative to the servo - the Programmable Spring.

Bill Bigge is a phd researcher at Sussex University and the go to guy for robotics at CCNR (Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics).

Official Website: http://robotbrighton.ning.com/events/bill-bigge-whats-wrong-with