cool!
If your joints aren't constrained properly, youll get unpredictable results from a genetic algorithm doing locomotion. then if the physics is wrong on top of that, it might end looking like its fighting against a strong magnetic force, and its no fault of the a.i. unit running it, its just its world and body is off kilter.
Crab -> Dog -> Biped, its in order of difficulty of moving around. (but once the crab grew a brain evolutionarily, its brain could definitely already be a biped if it had a body transfer, but I think when the creatures were all simple, the crab was the first form with legs (back when it was but an early plankton), because if it falls over, it usually is a safe fall it can recover from, not like a human, for example.) And Boston Dynamics are amazing... getting the dog to walk is more advanced than the crab is, just the way im looking at it right now. But could be wrong.
Air muscles I hear!!!! Sounds good! the guy that made the Strand-Beast definitely had the beautiful wind power in mind for his units.
You could use air muscles with the pully tendons - in a duo - but if it were purely air muscles, if you pushed on both left and right, the leg would expand out straight, and sucked back on both, the leg would detract like a snail. would be funny if you let the robot feel around to do it if it needed to.
Ive got a tip from thinking just today about wind power, but its only a speculative one, that if you connect syringes to each other, skinny to fattest, itll actually be like cogs, and if you had wind pumping the first syringe at a low psi, it might be able to push the fattest syringe at a higher psi - to try and compress into a battery to make it last longer, and give you more strength. But im not totally sure, I have to build the bastard to find out. It sorta fits in a box type shape in a sparse way, because it gets shorter every time it has to get fatter, and it just fits in a cube, so its not much space taken up - for the wind charga! But if it turns out im wrong, ill just have to be a bit sheepish later about typing this right now.
It only works well if volume counts as watts - then the thru coordinate counts as volts, and the radius coordinates count as amps. but I could definitely be wrong, as im only beginner at bringing maths to reality, not just staying inside the computer which is a lot easier and more can be simply supposed... in life it has to actually be the truth.
Heres a concept page of what im doin atm
Air circuitry - 5 layers of lazer cut plastic sheetings?? (balloon powered.) - but its only going through keyframes, no brain yet, need to get the body plumbin' workin first, then I can get on with the amazing stuff later.
Its a bit like explorers if it works.. but... the syringe to syringe transmission idea-> (definitely looks cool...)