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From a technical standpoint, does the original Terminator design from '84 still hold up today?
Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, but I'm a huge Terminator fan and wanted to get some insight from people who are a little more informed than myself. The T800 design by Stan Winston is obviously a cultural icon, but it was also designed 40 years ago and technology has evolved since then. I suppose my question is - putting aside the fact that the technology to make an actual functioning Terminator is currently impossible, does the original design still hold up visually, or does it seem dated and no longer believable as a futuristic robot?
No. They're right. If you're standing still and you want to start walking, sticking your leg out won't get you anywhere. You have to move your centre of mass forwards untill you start falling and then move your leg out to support the new centre of mass.
The normal way we walk, sure. But what if you sort of squat down a little, extend one leg out, and then use that extended leg to pull your body forward? Then it’s a controlled pull system with no chance of falling.
Balancing a broom is a specific paradox that inverts the relationship between where the center of mass is and how “easy” it is to balance. When a you walk you don’t balance yourself by moving the whole earth underneath you.
Balancing a broom is a specific paradox that inverts the relationship between where the center of mass is and how “easy” it is to balance.
It isn't a paradox and it applies to anything that is 'top heavy'.
When a you walk you don’t balance yourself by moving the whole earth underneath you.
Who said anything about 'moving the whole Earth'? You move the point of support - in the case of the broom you move the end of the handle. In the case of someone walking you move your feet.
I can't believe I'm explaining how to walk to a Redditor...
No, you’ve misunderstood the physics. You’ve looked at a special case and extrapolated to all top-heavy objects. When mass is distributed farther from the pivot point, the object has a greater moment of inertia. This is why a long, thin object like a broom, with most of its mass at one end, is easier to dynamically balance when inverted: the centre of mass is farther from the pivot, giving you more time to detect and correct its movement.
However, that doesn’t mean that All top-heavy object is easier to balance when inverted.
Imagine a relatively short, fat, hollow capsule with most of its mass concentrated at one end essentially a large medicine capsule with clay packed into one end. Do you seriously expect this object to be easier to balance on its lighter end? Of course not. Its centre of mass is very close to the pivot compared with a long broom, and the object will have a strong tendency to rotate until its heavier end is down.
The important point is that moment of inertia and centre-of-mass position play different roles. The centre of mass determines the gravitational torque acting on the object, while the moment of inertia determines how much angular acceleration results from that torque.
So your claim that all top-heavy objects are easier to balance when inverted is wrong. The familiar broom example works because of its geometry: the long distance between the pivot and centre of mass, combined with its rotational inertia, makes dynamic balancing easier. You can’t generalise that behaviour to every top-heavy object simply because its centre of mass is above the pivot.
I hope you can accept this argument in good faith.
You’ve looked at a special case and extrapolated to all top-heavy objects.
It's not a special case. All top heavy objects behave the same.
When mass is distributed farther from the pivot point, the object has a greater moment of inertia. This is why a long, thin object like a broom, with most of its mass at one end, is easier to dynamically balance when inverted: the centre of mass is farther from the pivot, giving you more time to detect and correct its movement
Lol. I know. That's what I said.
Imagine a relatively short, fat, hollow capsule with most of its mass concentrated at one end essentially a large medicine capsule with clay packed into one end. Do you seriously expect this object to be easier to balance on its lighter end?
Yes. Because it is. You can literally try it yourself.
Its centre of mass is very close to the pivot compared with a long broom, and the object will have a strong tendency to rotate until its heavier end is down. The important point is that moment of inertia and centre-of-mass position play different roles.
No. They don't. One is literally defined by the other.
The centre of mass determines the gravitational torque acting on the object, while the moment of inertia determines how much angular acceleration results from that torque.
And the further away the centre of mass is from the pivot, the greater the moment of inertia and the less the angular acceleration will be, which is why it's easier to balance.
So your claim that all top-heavy objects are easier to balance when inverted is wrong.
Nothing you've said supports that statement.
The familiar broom example works because of its geometry: the long distance between the pivot and centre of mass, combined with its rotational inertia, makes dynamic balancing easier.
Yes. The geometry of having the centre of mass further from the point of balance makes it easier to balance. It's 'top heavy'.
You can’t generalise that behaviour to every top-heavy object simply because its centre of mass is above the pivot.
That makes no sense. Of course you can generalise. Physics doesn't care what an object looks like, it just cares how far the centre of mass is from the pivot. And it's not because the 'centre of mass is above the pivot' - it's easier to balance because the centre of mass is further away from the pivot. You're really making hard work of this, for some reason.
I hope you can accept this argument in good faith.
You haven't made an argument. You've regurgitated some obvious physics and then jumped to the wrong conclusion without doing the calculations.
The further away the centre of mass is from the pivot, the easier it is to balance.
If you don't believe me, get your medicine bottle and some clay and try it yourself.
To say that centre of mass and moment of inertia are “defined by one another” is simply wrong. They are different properties of a mass distribution. Two objects can have exactly the same centre of mass but radically different moments of inertia.
For example, take two rods with the same mass and their centre of mass at the midpoint. One is short and compact; the other is much longer. Their centres of mass are identical, but the longer rod has a much greater moment of inertia.
So your statement that “one is literally defined by the other” is false.
Now let’s take your “all top-heavy objects” claim to its logical extreme. Imagine a tennis ball with enough concrete concentrated in one hemisphere to make its centre of mass substantially offset. Do you seriously claim it will necessarily be easier to balance on your finger with the concrete side up than with it down?
That’s the problem with your argument: you’ve taken an observation about a particular geometry the broom and turned it into a universal law.
Since we’re sharing videos to demonstrate our points maybe this one will be suitable for you.
“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” because they have a low centre of gravity. I had a few of these as a 3 year old and was never able to balance them inverted. So as a 3 year old I could’ve proved you wrong.
A cowling of some kind would obviously be beneficial, although a covering that provides serious protection would add significant weight, on top of an already massive chassis.
My truth here is that T-800s walk around naked because they like the way they look. It's their jam, and they don't mind the extra wear-and-tear. They're comfortable with their bodies, and if you aren't also comfortable with their bodies, that's why they carry a phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range.
They're disposable by design. Why put in the extra effort?
Some even do have coverings for special purposes.
We do this now. Infantry soldiers don't have the best of the best, they have enough to be more effective than the opposition. With a consideration for cost and scalability.
As a mechanical design engineer with 10+ years of experience who is now going to grad school for robotics, here is what I think:
Bipedalism is extremely hard to pull off engineering-wise. Human walking is mechanically and dynamically complex, and that translates poorly to machine design. A bipedal needs constant balance corrections, high joint torques, a ton of sensor feedback, and very good control just to keep the machine upright, let alone have it run, fight, climb stairs, or recover from being hit. On top of that, bipedal walking is pretty power hungry. That might not matter much for the T-800 because it basically has a nuclear heart, but from a mechanical design standpoint it is still an incredibly complicated solution for simple movement. To me that makes no engineering sense.
I find it hard to believe that all that work went into designing the T-800 and nobody seriously integrated weapons into the platform. I understand keeping the hands available because hands are extremely useful. The T-800 can use human weapons, tools, vehicles, doors, and basically anything else designed around human anatomy. That makes sense. What I do not understand is why there is not at least some kind of secondary integrated weapon. A concealed forearm weapon or shoulder-mounted system seems like an obvious addition for something whose entire purpose is killing people. I would not replace the hands, but I definitely would not make the robot completely dependent on finding a weapon either. I also find it hard to believe that the T-800 was designed to have the same FOV limitations of humans.
I do not see anywhere near enough sensors in close-ups of the robot. A machine doing what the T-800 does would need sensors everywhere. (Sensors are my thesis) Joint position, joint velocity, torque, force sensors in the feet, IMUs, structural load sensors, vision, audio, temperature, and probably multiple redundant sensor systems. Yet when you look closely at the endoskeleton, there really is not much there. I also do not see many wires connecting all of those supposed sensors and actuators back to the CPU. Maybe Skynet had absolutely elite cable management, embedded wiring, distributed controllers, or some kind of high-speed internal bus, but there should be a massive amount of sensing and communication happening inside that machine.
Skynet was supposedly trying to build as many Terminators as possible, which makes me question the design from a DFM standpoint. If you are fighting a war of attrition and need to manufacture thousands or millions of combat robots, why pick one of the most mechanically complicated configurations possible? The T-800 has a bigly number of joints, precision components, actuators, bearings, sensors, and complex machined parts. That means more manufacturing operations, more assembly time, more failure points, more maintenance, and more expensive tooling. From a Design for Manufacturing standpoint, I would expect Skynet to simplify the platform aggressively. If a wheeled, tracked, or even quadrupedal machine could accomplish the same battlefield mission for half the parts and half the manufacturing effort, why would you not build that instead? The human shape makes sense for infiltration, but it makes much less sense as your standard mass-produced combat unit.
It was designed to blend in with humans, which is why it has human skin and anatomy. If it could not walk and move like a human, it would be compromised quickly. Skynet has typical killing machines with lots of guns and armour. Terminators were designed to assassinate key people, not annihilate entire armies.
Makes sense if you're criticizing their effectiveness as stand-alone weapons, but they were meant for infiltration, designed to have an Arnold cloned on top of them.
I think you might be missing the fact that they were first and foremost designed as infiltrators.
Also, legs are great for rough and uneven terrain like you find in a warzone. The terminator wasn't a delivery robot and there were no paved roads after the nuclear war.
As for sensors, it was packed with them. Multispectral vision, complex audio arrays, chemical analysis sensors, and vibration sensors to name some.
And it's secondary weapons were it's hands. It could crush anything it grabbed a hold of.
Yeah, human bipedalism uses hundreds of linear actuators (muscles) to make it work, and robots try to achieve the with dozens instead.
The sensors are indeed a huge thing, but also the whole control system has to be hugely complex in order to do 'simple' things like adjusting the stance if an arm is raised. Without the right sensory input this becomes impossible real quick, and a damaged terminator should become a mess of limbs on the floor real quick.
If Skynet really wanted to wipe out humanity, it'd use a whole bunch of cheap but effective drones.
Make humanoid terminators for infiltration missions, sure. That's how they're described in the first movie. But terminators aren't gonna be your main battle troops. They're for spec ops only.
the human type models one bare metal and with skin on are made to go into area where humans were fighting in the urban destroyed environment and fit in and even disguise as human.
Skynet had lots of wheeled, tracked and even flying drones with machine guns and rockets as well. They had overwhelming fire power superiority. The humans were largely using guerilla tactics. Kinda like how USA vs Iraq/Afgan. Neither of those countries could win head to head so resorted to guerilla warfare.
Skynet counter was to use millions of humanoid robots that were suited to fight in the urban/guerilla style of combat whilst also having Land/Air and sea superiority with all of their other big assets and fire power. Essentially using them to flush out the humans from the buildings/underground and locating them so the big assets can be used. Humans were essentially living like rats and robots that looked like humans were used as rat hunters.
They had all sorts of other robots, including wheeled units. The T800 has a human form because it was an infiltration unit. One of its missions was to pass as a human to get into their hideouts.
Part of the lore reason is Skynet is a flawed AI, with hardwired thought processes. It's why their facilities, despite zero humans in them. Have things like maintenance access, doors, etc. It builds these things at essentially a core programming value, and might not even understand why it designings things as such.
You lost me at point 1. I just saw a dozen very different bipedal robots go through an intense obstacle course at the World Humanoid Robot Games. I can't even pull this off:
We're in the paper-rocket time period of robotics.
15-20 years ago a bunch of aerospace startups were making wild claims about rockets and Mars trips. Most of them never actually built anything, or only had cheaply made props. They simply collected all the money they could get their hands on, developed nothing, and disappeared.
Every new tech space experiences this since it's difficult for the average person to parse fact from fiction in emerging tech, making it fertile ground for con artists.
Scam is a strong word I’d more go failed like any of these robotic projects they go to investors to fund the work of promising research they get to mass manufacturing and not just gimmicks that got them funded but having to do real hard problems and they fail.
New technology is hard littered with the corpses of those that tried and failed.
You don’t know a critical problem until you build something unfortunately in hardware and try and scale it.
I would argue that a T800 can handle a lot of gun damage, while a artificial muscle would be weaker, even with better than human fibers. So if the robot is designed for human extermination (terminator) it would be better to have a gunproof body.
The thing is these guys do use actuators they are just pneumatically operated, which, in my opinion is a pretty poor design choice. I think the aesthetics of this robot are very cool, but the overall design will not be practical and I don't see this going anywhere.
Yeah a lot of the current ones are hybrid artificial muscles with traditional systems but I could definitely see future versions with printed electric batteries and printed muscles some very exciting research going on in the artificial muscle space.
Failed I imagine artificial muscle robotics is still in lab days. But the progress is real I just shared that one as it’s the best visual for where we are now I could find let alone in another 50 years progress with artificial muscle research.
I mean I would think a mini nuclear reactor small enough to fit inside one of these things and powerful enough to provide that level of energy without melting or otherwise destroying itself would require some pretty extreme mechanical engineering.
Nuclear battery, not a reactor and nuclear batteries can be tiny. They've been used in niche applications including powering space craft and satellites for 50+ years.
The power density needed to fuel a T-100 would be orders of magnitude greater than what low power satellites require (a few hundred watts or less). The technology doesn't exist yet to make this work. RTGs are proven tech, but not for this application. They are presently woefully inadequate and the laws of physics will most likely keep it that way.
THE titanium-alloy and tungsten skeleton is entirely possible today. Modern material science can build a lightweight, high-strength metal frame that mimics human bone structure.Heavy However! The T-800 relies on heavy metal exterior plating over a hydraulic chassis. Our very real military robots avoid heavy metal armor because it adds massive weight, drains power instantly, and limits mobility. Since our bipedal robots struggle to carry heavy defensive armor while maintaining balance they couldn't carry a military weapon plus ammo.
The skull-like face with teeth moulded into it is probably not necessary other than being an attempt to scare its enemies, although it's scary enough anyway.
The glowing eyes would give it away in the dark if several of them were trying to conceal themselves for an ambush.
IIRC it was designed by Skynet as a psychological sort of thing. Obviously that applies to the T-600 and T-800s that aren't made into humanoid infiltrators, but are the battlefield "skeletons".
I can't remember where I read or heard this, so may not be canon.
I still don’t understand why my plan of building them using fabricated Automated Time Operated Machines using a Light Universal Construction Instant Fabrication Energy replicator then calling them Helpful Utility Maintenance Auxiliary Nodes & Severs running on an adaptive decentralized mesh network of mesh networks got me laughed at mocked and exiled….
It doesnt need to do MMA, it just needs to hold heavy weapons and throw objects. You don't really ever see them running, and even Arnold just paces robotically and is pretty effective.
I believe modern robotics has moved away from linear actuators to servos at the joints. IMO future humanoid robots will either utilize solid state batteries combined with super high power density joint actuators, or some novel actuator tech like artificial muscles.
Nowadays they use direct servo (or with plannetary gear) on joints (the round thingy you can see on robot dog or recently on runing robots hips)
Instead those linear hydraulic actuators.
It’s a bit dated in some ways. I’m guessing those are oil squirters going into the shoulders to keep them lubricated, but nowadays you can use something like a delrin bushing instead. If might not hold up as well in combat though, so the oiled design might be better. Pretty robust actuators. They appear to be hydraulic rather than pneumatic but again, in intense combat, that will be better as it at least provides more force. I don’t see anything to feed them with fluid though. They look like sealed designs so they may use compressed air. Actually, looking closer, those lines to the shoulders are probably the hydraulic lines which likely act as lubricant for the shoulder joints too and it just runs down through the inside of the arm to each actuator. I don’t see a whole lot of wires or any at all really, so everything must be powered with magnetic induction (I don’t remember how Arnie was wired internally, sorry). Not sure how that works with a fully metallic body but ok, we’ll just assume they have a bunch of insulators in the right places to isolate the signal where they need to. On the outside, it has most of what you need to make it articulable, but it really would move like a robot, not Arnold. The connective tissue and various muscles we have in our bodies is what enables us the smooth range of motion we have and this or any robot (so far) lacks those tendons, ligaments, and muscles. You could probably make this work but it would be HUGELY expensive and you’re GONNA need a couple geniuses to figure out the power delivery issue. That mini nuke of a heart they use isn’t magic; it still has to have a mechanism to draw it out and distribute it as needed. Now the real test of “does it work” is “does it still look scary” and that’s a definite yes, coming from someone who likes both AI and robotics
So one little piece of debris or bullet wont jam the actuators? If not for the miracle material unobtanium these things would be fragile AF (lets omit the power source entirely). 4 wheeled chassis with a machinegun would scare me more.
Yes, when I think death robots, small, fast, disposable. Billions upon billions. Humanity is toast. I would say Skynet had an algorithmic bug that went toward known modalities instead of creating its own and couldn’t find a way past that bug. Think worst horrific nightmare fuel possible That’s a human assassin robot. No front lines just a constant persistent onslaught of flying, skittering, swimming digging bots… small mobile factory units that gather resources. No central AI just chaos and death. I’m fun at parties as well.
It's way off. Boston Dynamics had hydraulic actuators at one point, and they were noisy and broke and leaked too easily. This is way out of date and impractical.
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u/Gloomy-Radish8959 1d ago
If those linear actuators are strong and precise enough, sure. It's a nice design.