Sensors for a clockwork/fluidic robot?

So, mechanical computers are a thing, as are pneumatic and hydraulic actuators.

Combining those ideas, it's not that hard to design simple purely-pneumatic/hydraulic robots--provide them with a source of compressed fluid, and they just go (and that includes performing middling-complex mechanical calculations, e.g. to coordinate the motions of hexapod legs entirely via fluidic switching--not just, say, powering a turbine to spin wheels).

Building more complex control "circuits" to make a fluidic robot do more than justy move straight forward is obviously possible, with the proviso that they are likely to be much larger than electronically-controlled robots, since miniaturizing fluidic and mechanical components is difficult. But that's not very useful unless the control system actually has some input to act on.

So: what kinds of sensors would be feasible for a purely mechanical/fluidic robot, which can feed directly into a mechanical computer via mechanical or fluid linkages without any intermediate electrical stage?

posted almost 5 years ago

Logan R. Kearsley‭

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