This is a small project that I spent some time with during the second half of 2015. Now, after letting it rest for six months, I started looking into it again. The current setup is a SSC-32U that is remotely cotrolled from an Arduino (tested to operate with both push buttons and analog inputs from a joystick (my second Youtube clip).
The SSC was very powerful indeed but I am looking after less expensive solutions for theon board electronics. I have tested using an Adafruit servo control card and a Pro Trinket, both still fed by the onboard 6Vbattery package. The setup has been tested with some simple sketches to see that there is enough power to operate this configuration (no "brown outs" in the Trinket when the servos move). Well, it seems there is but in the process I damaged one of the legs.
Since it is damaged anyway I will probably move on with 3D printing new parts with better "looks" and higher precision. Don't expect too much to happen in the nearest future.
I also publish a small paper I wrote about the theory behind the robot. I soon realised that a key to success is to understand the maths and Inverse Kinematics behind and being a Mechanical Engineer I felt that this was one fun part of my project (beside cutting, gluing and coding). I have no code to publish (in fact there is plenty but I don't feel that any of it is mature enough).
I added a picture, two Youtube clips and a paper I wrote about the robot six months ago. Of some reason these attachments were dropped when I submitted my project last Friday. The current status does not differ that much other than that I replaced the SSC-32U with a breadboard with a Trinket Pro and a Adafruit Servo Driver.
I have two directions in the future:
1) A better looking robot with 3D printed parts. Basically the same measures but details manufactired with higher presision. This requires access to a working 3D printer and some CAD design work (I am a mechanical Engineer so it isn’t that much of an uphill struggle, only time consuming)
2) The opposite, a smaller and simpler robot. Looking at another interesting robot, https://tote.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html, that I found while browsing through LMR gave my some ideas. By using a breadboard as base and the servos and horns as strucutral elements a very neat design can be achieved without any other material than what is provided with the parts plus some glue. If I have any success there might be a “KITtyBot micro” coming soon.
I haven’t been active here in LMR recently ut I did publish a complete (sort off) instruction with 3D files and code on Arduino Project Hub. It is for the robot I call KITtyBot2 (also here in LMR).
