So we were talking about This Post at craft night and i realized that i have a lot more to say on the matter despite NOT being a robot fucker (or much of an anything fucker for that matter ⬛⬜🟪). we're all on tumblr. we know how it goes with a mutual getting a special interest for a few weeks and now its on your dash. i just think the people who write/draw robot smut could stand to be a bit more creative then replacing ropes with Ethernet cables and the like. we'll get to the Estop button, but theres so many other ways you can dom your robot.
Anyone who has worked with setting up industrial robots knows that there is a teach/hand locate mode. you plug in a pendant, change a few settings, and now the robot is basically weightless. you can grab any of its joints and BY HAND, move it around. the robot will not resist - can not resist. all it can do is fight gravity. you typically do this to move all the joints of a robot into position for the next step which is
locking everything in place. now that you have positioned your robot how you want it, you need to keep it there while you set up other things. this is where the motor lock comes in. this enables when you exit hand locate mode. THIS is how you keep a robot in place. not with rope. nothing is going to make this robot move now. those joints are locked in place by the full might of electric motors, which by the way, have the MOST torque at low/0 rpm
if you do need to make it move while locked, you can enter jog mode and dial into a specific motor and slowly have it step forward or backward in small amounts. the position feedback on these joints is fed into a PID loop so that motion is not jerky or over/undershooting. so unless you go in and de-tune the PID control loop, your robot is not going to shiver or shudder in place
and lastly, the estop. this kills all power to all motors. if you hit this then gravity wins and your robot will collapse to the ground in a heap (and probably leave a pretty good dent in the floor)
now could i write smut where you hand locate a robot into a compromising position, lock in in place, aimlessly twiddle its PID values until its a shaky mess, fuck it senseless, and then hit the estop on the way out leaving on the ground in a crumpled heap?
eh probably not. this isnt my thing. I just work with robots. we keep it professional. except for that one time i had to spoon a massive 5 axis arm to get to one of its fasteners. but i did use protection (full body clean room suit). i'll leave the spicy stuff as an exercise for the class