If you have a Hexapod can you try this for me?

Hi everyone,

      I was wondering if you guys think it would work to make sox for a hexapod so it can wax the top of a car? Or cut up and zip tie one of those "california car dusters" to the feet so it can dust your car for you. Do you guys think this would work? I'd try it myself but I don't have a hexapod. I already tried to use a roomba to do this, my car isn't flat enough for that to work.

I think it wold work to some degree but keeping it from falling off the edges is a challenge, as well as battery power, unless a wall adaptor is used.

You could do this but then the quality might be a little shabby. Your car could end up with swerls all over the place. How do you spell swerl?

Oh, I was wondering what the hexapod did when it went to a cliff. Falls off I guess. What happens when it hits a wall? Will it go in another random direction like a roomba? I don’t think I’m worried about battery power, If thats a problem I’ll just run a curly Q cable from the garage ceiling to the hexapod.

Well you can have it avoid edges or walls using sensors. Like the PING as an example, also known as sonar range finders can detect objects a certain distance away. The program that you write will control the bot based off what the sensors are reading and react to that input.

What I meant bay saying it would fall off, even with the most robust sensors and programs is the slick angles of the car would cause the bot to slip and continue to slip regardless of what the sensors are doing. The momentum would be enough to resist any counter movement.

Yeah there are places where it looks like it might have that problem, but surely it would do better than a roomba right? WHat if you attach magnets to its feet? That should give it more traction, do you think it has enough power to pull off the magnet each step?

If you were interested, you could do some experiments with various surface gripping ideas such as suction cups and breakaway magnets.

I was thinking about using electric magnets that turn on when the foot is down and off just before the foot is raised but I don’t know how difficult it would be to get the servo board to turn them on and off.

Just make a transistor switch like below.

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