Fractal robot web site moving
Joe
to http://www.fractal-robots.com temporarily.
Extra space available there so some video clips are now available again.
Space page has a satellite capture / rescue animation.
Fractal robots cover everything from space exploration,
genesis device, terraforming, top down nanotechnology,
automated construction, mine clearance, holodeck, etc.
Mike Combs
Back in 1997, when talking of your fractal mech tech, you said, "...in
less than a year it will be erecting girders, bolting them up and
wrapping sheet metal around them under total automation, with self
repair".
I filed your prediction away for a year and then asked you if you had
successfully met that goal. I don't recall you saying in your reply
that you had met all the requirements of your prediction per se, but
hinted that there were some construction companies very interested in
use of fractal mechs for totally automated bridge-building. I was
wondering in the 4 years since then where you were at with regard to
either the original prediction, or totally automated bridge-building.
--
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Grinch: One man's toxic sludge is another man's potpourri!
Max: Woof woof?
Grinch: I don't know! It's some kind of soup.
Joe
news:3C9B76B6...@nospam.comchgnospam2ti...
> Hi, Joe.
>
> Back in 1997, when talking of your fractal mech tech, you said, "...in
> less than a year it will be erecting girders, bolting them up and
> wrapping sheet metal around them under total automation, with self
> repair".
>
> I filed your prediction away for a year and then asked you if you had
> successfully met that goal. I don't recall you saying in your reply
> that you had met all the requirements of your prediction per se, but
> hinted that there were some construction companies very interested in
> use of fractal mechs for totally automated bridge-building. I was
> wondering in the 4 years since then where you were at with regard to
> either the original prediction, or totally automated bridge-building.
Mike, what I didn't know at the time was that while I was
having a lot of fun doing my own things in a care free way,
thinking funding was around the corner,
there were people close to me working behind my back
spending serious amount of money fradulently developing
my machines and also new class of weapon systems using
my technology.
You search www.google.com on terms like modular and reconfigurable
robots to see who has building some of the duplicate
cubic robots.
It appears they had not explained to US government officials
that there are patents on this technology,
and have obtained vast amounts of money through deception
and fraud trying to build and deliver crippled versions
of my machines. Also they were writing academic papers
stealing my material without acknowledgement,
bringing reputable journals into disrepute.
With paperwork I had recovered later, it was also
discovered that these academics were intercepting
my academic work that were destined for publication
and trashing it. The UK publishing houses were illegally
sending material to USA which were then being
reviewed by the same researchers who had obtained
illegal funding. To me, passing papers outside of one's
own country is espionage and all these publishing
houses and their directors should be investigated.
Furthermore, I recovered more paperwork that showed
material was being passed from UK auditing and
accounting companies directly into USA
without permission, and once again, this information
was also being handed to the academics.
I got really annoyed, and published all the details.
Shortly after that, everthing stopped.
And it will continue to get exposed if these guys
bring their nasty habbits into my radar.
What they instead need to do is put some distance
between myself and themselves;
ideally not get roped into anything
stupid ever again involving these researchers.
These big auditing companies and accounting
companies worked for our government as well and if they
were passing information as freely as they were doing
to foreign governments, then they are directly
involved in espionage
and their directors would be treated as spies.
What none of them realized in time was that all
information was tagged after I discovered a break-in
into one of my web sites; so that I can monitor
how information was flowing between myself and what
I considered were my friends, who turned out to
be not my friends at all.
My greatest desire is to be associated with
all the big universities in the USA and I have
worked hard for it travelling to one university
3 times all the way from UK to over there, but the
guys who got the funding have spoiled it for
all, bringing their universities and government
departs into disrepute.
Naturally, everything is now being dealt with
through lawyers as some universities and researchers are
now all too aware as the price for their
foolishness and selfishness.
What really astonishes me is the amount of money
being spent. From CBD, it looks like $4m chunks
were being allocated at a time.
Many of these look like classified work,
and I can't understand why anyone in government
would go to such great lengths listening
to all these researchers saying hoo-haa
when I've got legitmate USA licensees doing things
in a very open way without the hoo-haa.
The world is a very changed place since the days
of internet and everything is done in the open.
Why steal from existing USA licensees and what
happens when they assert their rights
and take these researchers, their companies
and government officials to court for stealing
from their mouth? What happens when committees
hold hearings on this scandal and subpoena all the
paperwork? Who takes the blame?
The career minded government officials or the long
gone professors?
Worse still, for all that money they haven't done
anything because they sigularly failed to understand
half the technology.
I bet half of the research staff roped into doing
this dirty work know they are morally wrong
but are faced with no choice but work
for their employer. These students can
get sued by the licensees years from now - oh yes!
These students are having their lives blighted
by really stupid professors who should know better.
My advise to these students is to get yourself
a good lawyer and make sure the university
and professors are not forcing you into
doing illegal work for which you can get sued later.
Or you can settle directly with the licensees
but you will still need a good lawyer.
So all this underhanded stuff has resulted in
a whole bunch of traumatized people
unable to do proper research because
some idiotic academics can't share academic
work or give credit to the original inventor.
I've had one university do all the right things
and 4 of their students built working demo
machines and all got good 2.1. If ordinary
students can do it, then why can't these big
universities do it?
If they had involved me from the beginning,
then everything would have been alright
and we could all have been building billion dollar
businesses. Instead now, my understanding with government
department that previously funded work is that
they will look into patenting issues to avoid
violation of federal contracting laws before money
can be given - which is a lose lose situation
for everybody because no one has approached me
for a license, and even if they did, it will now
have to go through lawyers.
To answer you question Mike, I had expected
a lot of funding from different sources.
But since its all been tied up in knots by the
situation in USA which I was unaware of,
my predictions were wrong.
Hopefully someone reading all this will
think of rectifying the situation and do
things properly and above board. If new people
want to come on board, then I would very
much welcome it as I have had to dump
the vast majority of the previous batch of
people. Each application can generate billions
in revenue and I hold the USA patent.
The outlay is between $10,000 and $100,000
to get first set of machines built using CNCs.
To go into production, you can get venture
capital from Menlow Park in California.
I've divided the project into non-competing sectors.
So one set of guys will build bridges, another
will build buildings, another the holodecks, yet
another the tunnelling machines, yet another space
technologies etc.
I'm an ultra-techie so if you build robots and
want to expand it into multi-national businesses, then
I'm probably your kind of friend.
-Joe-
http://www.fractal-robots.com
Alan Kilian
Joe,
You said "Each application can generate billions
in revenue and I hold the USA patent."
When I search the US Patent office's database
for "Joe" AND "Michael" in the inventor field, I
get lots and lots of hits, but I can't find any
fractal robots.
Could you please post the patent numbers?
-Alan
--
- Alan Kilian <kilian(at)bobodyne.com>
BoboDyne 763-449-7622 (Voice)
2320 Urbandale Ln North Plymouth, MN 55447
Joe
news:lMMm8.1211$K13.3...@typhoon.mn.ipsvc.net...
>
> Joe,
>
> You said "Each application can generate billions
> in revenue and I hold the USA patent."
>
> When I search the US Patent office's database
> for "Joe" AND "Michael" in the inventor field, I
> get lots and lots of hits, but I can't find any
> fractal robots.
>
> Could you please post the patent numbers?
Well Alan, if you are referring to my USA pat no. then it
is No. 6, 157, 872.
I'd share it with any decent person that wants to get
this technology off the ground.
Andrew Case
>Mike, what I didn't know at the time was that while I was
>having a lot of fun doing my own things in a care free way,
>thinking funding was around the corner,
>there were people close to me working behind my back
>spending serious amount of money fradulently developing
>my machines and also new class of weapon systems using
>my technology.
These are very serious allegations. Do you have evidence that
the researchers in question did not independently come up with
the reconfigurable robot idea? It's not as wild a possibility
as you might think - For example I came up with a reconfigurable
robot concept based on octet trusses long before I heard of
your fractal robots. I note also that some of the papers on
reconfigurable robots go back to 1994, which means that they
were probably based on work going back at least a year before
that. When did you first go public with fractal robots?
>The outlay is between $10,000 and $100,000
>to get first set of machines built using CNCs.
This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
fundraising.
......Andrew
--
--
Andrew Case |
ac...@plasma.umd.edu |
Rand Simberg
ac...@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:
>This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
>patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
>of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
>sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
>Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
>fundraising.
If you were familiar with his postings from past years, you'd know
that that's not the only thing that makes him look like a loon.
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Replace first . with @ and throw out the "@trash." to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: postm...@fbi.gov
Joe
news:a7gd2o$b...@poynting.umd.edu...
> Joe <pr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Mike, what I didn't know at the time was that while I was
> >having a lot of fun doing my own things in a care free way,
> >thinking funding was around the corner,
> >there were people close to me working behind my back
> >spending serious amount of money fradulently developing
> >my machines and also new class of weapon systems using
> >my technology.
>
> These are very serious allegations. Do you have evidence that
> the researchers in question did not independently come up with
> the reconfigurable robot idea? It's not as wild a possibility
> as you might think - For example I came up with a reconfigurable
> robot concept based on octet trusses long before I heard of
> your fractal robots. I note also that some of the papers on
> reconfigurable robots go back to 1994, which means that they
> were probably based on work going back at least a year before
> that. When did you first go public with fractal robots?
They were around in early 80's and called parallel robots.
However, they were just curiosities and no real progress
had been made until I filed for patent in 1994 and released
all the information in 1995. Some researches began back tracking
trying fit their work into the same framework shortly
afterwords. In effect they had 1981-1995 to do it but did not know or
understand how to do those things. Instead of swallowing their
pride and getting down to business with collaboration, they
singularly went out of their way to copy what I had using material
I had posted to my web site but since they
didn't understand patent, or the invention, they ended up
infringing it as they started copying. In the end they couldn't
deliver either after years of fruitless research and years of
copying because they weren't working under my supervision or
guidance, relying instead on stealing information.
You see all sorts of stuff but nothing working properly
or as advanced as my $2000 prototype.
Thats what happens when government interferes in
what should have been private business ventures.
Makes a lot of work for lawyers.
> >The outlay is between $10,000 and $100,000
> >to get first set of machines built using CNCs.
>
> This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
> patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
> of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
> sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
> Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
> fundraising.
>
> ......Andrew
Investors are not the wimps you make them out to be.
They tend to be extraordinarily tuned in to their business
criteria above anything else.
In any case, what I need are fearless techies
to build the next generation of machines
and not look to what happened in the past.
I like openness and freedom to build and do things.
I don't like these researchers or their closed doors
secretive approach that excludes ordinary robotics engineers
from sharing funding, scrutinizing their every activity
or participating.
Joe
news:3ca7bb2e....@nntp.ix.netcom.com...
> On 22 Mar 2002 18:00:40 -0500, in a place far, far away,
> ac...@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
> in such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
> >patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
> >of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
> >sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
> >Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
> >fundraising.
>
> If you were familiar with his postings from past years, you'd know
> that that's not the only thing that makes him look like a loon.
Give it a rest Mr. Simberg, and look to the future.
I live a carefree existence and I don't subscribe to seriousness as you do.
Rand Simberg
<pr...@hotmail.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:
>Give it a rest Mr. Simberg, and look to the future.
>I live a carefree existence and I don't subscribe to seriousness as you do.
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
I guess "subscribing to seriousness" means finding juvenile insults
regarding genitalia and vegetables humorous. My humor tends to be a
little more sophisticated.
John Savard
part:
>while I was
>having a lot of fun doing my own things in a care free way,
What we remember is your posts saying that if we're interested in
space, fractal robots are the only way.
In general, that sort of thing does not inspire people to take you
seriously.
The idea of nanotechnology was around before you came along, too.
John Savard
http://members.shaw.ca/quadibloc/index.html
Robert Lynn
>
> Hi, Joe.
>
> Back in 1997, when talking of your fractal mech tech, you said, "...in
> less than a year it will be erecting girders, bolting them up and
> wrapping sheet metal around them under total automation, with self
> repair".
>
> I filed your prediction away for a year and then asked you if you had
> successfully met that goal. I don't recall you saying in your reply
> that you had met all the requirements of your prediction per se, but
> hinted that there were some construction companies very interested in
> use of fractal mechs for totally automated bridge-building. I was
> wondering in the 4 years since then where you were at with regard to
> either the original prediction, or totally automated bridge-building.
For all our sake's Mike, don't poke the beast!
Joe
news:3C9C9CCA...@peterlynnkites.com...
I'm not a beast.
I'm me.
I do a lot of advanced technology and understanding it all
is a challenge for anyone.
Joe
news:3c9c8a82...@news.ed.shawcable.net...
Well John, I wouldn't force anyone to do anything they did not want to do.
The net is a wonderful place for displaying bragging rights.
Its still down to you as an individual to study with what you
see and join the party and/or brag in unison if you want to.
-Joe-
http://www.fractal-robots.com
Andrew Case
>> This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
>> patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
>> of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
>> sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
>> Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
>> fundraising.
>Investors are not the wimps you make them out to be.
>They tend to be extraordinarily tuned in to their business
>criteria above anything else.
I'm not making anybody out to be a wimp. If you can convince
a forward thinking person with sufficient money that you are not
a loon and that your patent will stand up in court, then you
will not have difficulty raising the money. The basic idea isn't
too far-fetched, and could probably find markets if the technology
can be made to work. Investors will understand this. They only
need reassurance that *you* are the person who can deliver.
>In any case, what I need are fearless techies
>to build the next generation of machines
>and not look to what happened in the past.
No. You need investors with money, and you need the skills to turn
that money into a product that people will pay for. People aren't
going to leap to develop your idea just because it's cool. They
want to be paid for their time and effort. The part you've already
done is actually relatively easy. Turning concept into delivered
product is the hard part, and it's not going to happen for free
just because it's cool.
Eric Paillet
By posting such comments YOU are playing the beast. In his present
'reincarnation' he seems reasonable enough. Let him say what he has to
say.
Andrew Case
>If you were familiar with his postings from past years, you'd know
>that that's not the only thing that makes him look like a loon.
I know, but I rather like the idea, truth be told. It needs lots of
refinement and it's most likely never going to get past the curiosity
stage, but it's cool. I've had similar notions in the past which I
never pursued (due in large part to a realistic appreciation of
the difficulty of making them work).
Gerry Schneider
Share what? The patent refers to a hopelessly complicated structural
technique that will always produce a device 100 times bulkier and 100
times less robust than any specifically-built product. Your abstract
blithely describes methods that require hundreds or thousands of
different surface sliding operations without once mentioning the effects
of dust, grit, water and other contaminants on the reliability of the
operation. There are lots of other reliability-reducing operations, such
as the connector mating and un-mating inherent in such a design, that
would be apparent to any reasonable person. Imagine a hammer whose
striking face contains a couple of processors, some electric motors and
actuators, communications and control cable, a power supply, etc. What a
ridiculously complicated approach to a specific task.! Now scale this up
to a Moon or Martian crawler, a submarine or an airplane. The designs
for these struggle with specific problems, but have nicely solved the
basic structure, thank you very much. Your approach would still be
trying to get the thing put together in the presence of surface ice,
expansion or contraction of mating surfaces due to tremendous heat or
cold, high-pressure water penetration of seals, etc. while the
specifically built machine is off doing its work. Compare a rolling
wheel using an electric motor, a gear train and a sealed bearing to a
machine that loops around by coupling and un-coupling elements at the
rate of millions of operations per mile. Hmm... wonder which one's going
to break down first? Fault tolerance doesn't do much good when you run
out of spares a few million miles from home. The whole concept is
ridiculous except under the most narrow applications. You'll also have
noticed that the applications being done by others and that you claim
are "yours" couple elements at a much higher level. They don't build
I-beams by making the "I" out of little cubes, or wheels by rolling
little cubes up in a circle.
Gerry
Joe
> Joe <pr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Andrew Case <ac...@Glue.umd.edu> wrote in message
>
> >> This is a trivial amount of money to raise if you have
> >> patent protection for your idea. Unfortunately your talk
> >> of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas makes you
> >> sound like a bit of a loon, which scares investors away.
> >> Tone it down a bit and you may have better luck with
> >> fundraising.
>
> >Investors are not the wimps you make them out to be.
> >They tend to be extraordinarily tuned in to their business
> >criteria above anything else.
>
> I'm not making anybody out to be a wimp. If you can convince
> a forward thinking person with sufficient money that you are not
> a loon and that your patent will stand up in court, then you
> will not have difficulty raising the money. The basic idea isn't
> too far-fetched, and could probably find markets if the technology
> can be made to work. Investors will understand this. They only
> need reassurance that *you* are the person who can deliver.
Well Andrew, investors have never questioned my abilities.
A small number of private investors have pushed the project
forward considerably. Completion is being held back by
a raft of technical problems that are being studied.
Scott Lowther
> Well Andrew, investors have never questioned my abilities.
What's that P.T. Barnum quote...?
Joe
news:3C9D41B7...@sympatico.ca...
Gerry, the patent document is just abstraction. Seeing beyond it requires
visiting web site http://www.fractal-robots.com
In abstract the patent document specifies a few designs
for cubes and the patent claims are over common elements between designs.
Thus variants will use most if not all common features.
Its a misunderstanding to say cubes roll up into a circle to make a wheel
or anything else.
The simplest alternative is to tool the cubes.
A large cube can be fitted with an electric wheel for instance.
Four of these wheels can be shuffled out to the edges of a machine
to transform the machine into a drivable vehicle.
Then you can travel the mile on the martian surface
without coupling or uncoupling any elements. If you have a break down
and carry a spare wheel unit, then you can shuffle the cubes around to
change the wheel without calling for help.
If you come across a steep vertical, then
you can change shape, climb the vertical, and then convert back
into a wheeled vehicle. The design doesn't struggle with new
challenges of terrain because it is not a fixed geometry vehicle.
All cubes can carry tools inside such as antenna, batteries,
solar panels, drilling equipment etc. and deploy them
as and when needed in different configurations.
For example in drilling, you put away the wheels and change
shape to have sturdy legs whilst drilling. If you carried steel
tubes and girders then articulate those
steel tubes and girders and join them together to make a base
for the drilling machine.
As for dust and dirt or hostile environments, do what
CD-ROM do every minute of every day - use flaps that keep out dust.
Alternatively, the machines can shuffle plate elements on
themselves to keep themselves safe in a dust storm.
The possibilities are endless depending on how many tools
have been fitted along with software to deploy it - which
is where all the hard work comes in. Its made easier
in that cubes can be mostly empty inside and since different
sizes of cubes are present in a fractal machine, any existing
tool will have a size of cube that could take it. So it
just becomes a customization operation to fit tool into cube
and then pull out interface wires to the connectors
so that the tools can be software controlled.
To make wheel unit for example requires a wheel, washing machine motor
a gear box and electronic control circuits.
Once built, 3 more copies can be made. Then it can
be attached together into a wheeled vehicle.
Simple as Lego, but letting
the computer do the shuffling of the bricks.
-Joe-
http://www.fractal-robots.com
Jonathan Kirwan
>Well Andrew, investors have never questioned my abilities.
Interesting group you have.
I've secured various kinds of financing in my sordid past. I've never
known a 3rd party seed investor (or one who stayed viable for long)
who didn't make everyone concerned feel like their abilities were
being questioned.
Jon
bo...@nospam.net
> Rand Simberg <simberg.i...@trash.org> wrote
> > ac...@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) wrote:
> >
> > > Unfortunately your talk of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas
> > > makes you sound like a bit of a loon <snip>
> >
> > If you were familiar with his postings from past years, you'd know
> > that that's not the only thing that makes him look like a loon.
That's the most polite thing I've ever heard anyone say about Joe. :-)
Too bad he finally changed his ISP. That bypasses all the kill filters
I had set up for his posts, but that's fixed now.
> Give it a rest Mr. Simberg, and look to the future.
> I live a carefree existence and I don't subscribe to seriousness
> as you do.
::choke:: He lives a "carefree existence". Yes, I believe that.
I've never been able to decide whether I should view Joes antics as
quirky entertainment, or a depressing indictment of the 20th-century
mental health care system.
lyndon
<pr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> considerably. Completion is being held back by a raft of technical
> problems that are being studied.
Funny, that's what they said about lightspeed warp drives!
Joe
news:00hr9u0bucal139in...@news.easynews.com...
> "Joe" <pr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Rand Simberg <simberg.i...@trash.org> wrote
> > > ac...@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) wrote:
> > >
> > > > Unfortunately your talk of conspiracies and the theft of your ideas
> > > > makes you sound like a bit of a loon <snip>
> > >
> > > If you were familiar with his postings from past years, you'd know
> > > that that's not the only thing that makes him look like a loon.
>
> That's the most polite thing I've ever heard anyone say about Joe. :-)
Give it a rest whoever you are posting anonymously.
I am not a loon.
I am Joe.
I do very advanced technology and that can create a gulf.
Its not for you to bridge that gulf by referring to loons.
> Too bad he finally changed his ISP. That bypasses all the kill filters
> I had set up for his posts, but that's fixed now.
You are posting anonymously - how can this be verified?
> > Give it a rest Mr. Simberg, and look to the future.
> > I live a carefree existence and I don't subscribe to seriousness
> > as you do.
>
> ::choke:: He lives a "carefree existence". Yes, I believe that.
>
> I've never been able to decide whether I should view Joes antics as
> quirky entertainment, or a depressing indictment of the 20th-century
> mental health care system.
See my earlier statement.