We are waiting on receipt of a new bracket (ASB-21) that will make some pretty cool things possible, such as this hexapod. This could possibly be the most bug like creature I have ever created. 
Just a little something I made during our 1 week vacation. Let me know what you thinkā¦ 
I love the joints. Its strage looking to see the knee joins without a bulky servo near by. Well done. 
Looks nice ā¦
I would have looked for something like this if I didnt want the knee to move on mine.
So if your making robot bugs on your vacation is it really a vacation?
Umā¦ the knee does move. I mean it is a fully articulated leg, itās a parallelogram. The leg stays vertical as it moves up and down. There is a ādog boneā on the back of the leg assembly.
If you enjoy doing it, I guess soā¦ I know, I know, Iām hoplessā¦
Jim, does reducing the mass at the knee speed up the forward/backwards movement of the legs at all?
Technically I think it has to, but Iām not sure of itās enough to really notice. However these legs are really long, so each step is more productive. This is a really fast hexapod. I built this using HS-422 servos because I wanted to see what could be done with cheap servos. It works very well. I did see something Iāve never seen before. The horizontal throw servos oscillate due to the long length and low power of the servos. This cuases them to hunt. Hunting is when the servo tries to get to position, but the mass on the output causes overshoot, and when it tries to correct, it overshoots in the opposite direction. So mechanical damping is required to calm things down. I havenāt tested it yet, but Iām pretty sure a more powerful servo such as the HS-475 will not have this problem.
Looks good Jim.
Do you have any videos of this critter in action that you could post?
Can we get a shot video of it ā¦ even if its just moving one leg?
thats ok ā¦ I only take a vacation at the most once every other year. I use most of my time off to work on projects - when your on a roll you dont want to stop. 
Very, very, neat looking.
The only thing that bugs (no pun intended) me about the 2DOF design is that they canāt flap their āwingsā and āflyā.
Took me a while but here it is. Itās a conservative gait. It will move much faster of course, but I only programmed the Atom with a single serout command to setup and initiate walking. 
Video answered my questions on what the leg movement looks like.
there are times I wish I had access to more of the peices you have Jim so I can play with the different designs.
Wow!! Fast and smooth!
Did you mean to imply that there are times you donāt wish you had access to all of Jimās goodies?
I said it right ā¦ I wish I had all of the Robotic toys in my house right now so I could just try different thingsā¦ Since I am a working fool. I have to save up
Any I eas o modification for radial hexapod applications? I like the look of no servos out there but the parraleelogram style movement doesnāt really make it happenā¦
Adding a third joint to the leg should do it. That would look a bit awkward though.
A pseudo-round appearance could be obtained by using longer center legs and shorter forward/backward legs. Of course you wouldnāt have omnidirectionality.
