So this is Algebrio, it have 6 legs, 2 DOF each and is controlled by Arduino. Each joint contains an micro servo-motor controlled by Arduino Servo library. It's programmed by choosing the right angles sequency that make it walk properly. It is an Hexapod robot built for stimulate high school students and freshmen engineering students to research and study more matrix algebra, analytic geometry, trigonometry, simetry, kinematics and other related ares of mathematics. We intend to apply it in a MakerFaire-like course program so that these students can have a first contact with math applications in technology and study the disciplines listed before to solve the problem of modelling and building and hexapod like Algebrio.
The goal is to select some high school students that never have contact with robotics before. First these students would have lessons of math that they will need to know for building the robot (they will learn about vectors, matrixes, linear systems, linear transformations, trigonometry, inverse kinematics and forward kinematics). The second step, with the help of engineering students (that will also participate of the project), they will simulate the robot in MatLab as a vector structure, and they will make this structure move itself by applying the math concepts learned, so they can understand how these studied disciplines work in technology applications. The last step is to build and hexapod like Algebrio using the same concepts they studied and simulated before. We hope that the project increase the interest of the students, improving they knowledge and also their grades.
[UPDATE 10/05/2015] So I added a video of the first MatLab modeling developed for the Algebrio Hexapod. The algorithm is basically a pure FK program focusing on vectors and matrixes to show the students how algebra can be applied in robotics. We also have confirmed the first class of our educational robotics course, that will happen in Oct/16/2015. I will post the results soon.
I hope you like the project. Feel free for asking anything.
Navigate around controlled via notebook
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/algebrio-hexapod-for-math-learning-stimulation