Hey,
Great to hear your interested in a robotics project.
First off, a quick summary of what Chunga said…
The rover I believe has lower power consumption (the servos can be power hungry), rovers can carry a higher load. The rover might be a bit more expandable since it can hold more weight, however if you look at the projects gallary there have been a number of bad ass looking pod projects. And I would have to disagree with Chunga on this one. I would think that a pod could cover more terrains. In the video section of the site, theres a few videos of the hexapods crossing water and different terrains and even going uphill. Because the pods can get a few inches off the ground, they can cross water and other rocky terrain easily. Where a rover would get water in their main body and start smoking, or get stuck on a rock.
A hexapod can clime stairs, sure. Just define stairs. If you mean human stairs then its possible but you will need a lot of work. You might, like you said, need to add 2 legs at the back at a 30 degree angle or something to use as support. If your talking about specially made stairs that are an inch tall then sure it can.
Not sure what this all means:
but as far as I can tell your going to control the SSC-32 via a java based micro.
Avoid Li-po batteries. They go poof and burn a lot. Stick with NiMh is my suggestion. Cheap and good quality (especially lynxmotion batteries.) I would suggest using a 7.2v battery for both a hex or a rover.
ItalianGuy’s project is a rover with a 6DOF SES arm on it with 2 cameras. Contact him or wait for his reply for more questions about rover’s with arms.
If you want my opinion. I would say that rovers are boring. They aren’t very good platforms for being autonomous unless you want it to drive around until it finds someone or something like that. pods are also not so good for being autonomous though they are a lot more work and fun to build and get working. A rover you just put motors in the lexan and your done. Then you just RC them. So I guess I lied… rovers might be a bit better for wandering around by themselves than a pod. Pods are generally a bit slow, however its fun to control them and watch them walk (especially the 3-R.) I never seen a project yet with a polypod. That should be cool to try.
Well, either way best of luck. Hope my ramble helped or at least didn’t leave you any more confused than you might be before reading it. In which case then just ignore it