Here is another use for a robust crawler:
therawfeed.com/2008/10/plant … -room.html
This would be fun to make.
Enjoy, -Migs
Looks like it’s using the same dead-centering leg lift mechanism that was used on the old 2DOF legs (though a bit chunkier, in wood), so it can effectively ‘lock’ the legs in the bottom position and drastically reduce power consumption when it’s in its parked configuration, without having to rest the body on the ground to do so. Good design there.
I wonder if it can really walk though. It looks very heavy and I don’t see how it can shift the COG between 3 of the legs…
But looks cool for sure!
Xan
The old Lynx quads with two DOF per leg were capable of walking without any provision for shifting their mass, other than positioning the legs and those two degrees of freedom. It perhaps wasn’t the most smooth and elegant gait, but they did get around. I can’t seem to find them at the moment, but I do recall seeing one of the old (sintra chassis) 2DOF quads demonstrating static and dynamic gaits before, and it did a pretty good job of it for only having two axes and a rigid chassis.
I can envision a type of robotics contest where the crawlers are placed in a dark room with a slowly moving light beam projected on the floor, and they would have to do their best to follow it around. Kind of like line following but for “spiders”. -Migs
That sort of scenario is fairly common among BEAM builders. Various designs that run on solar power seek out optimal position in a “light pool” through a combination of mechanical and electronic design. It’s interesting to watch the various designs and approaches in action, if somewhat slow, due to the “store and dump” nature of their circuitry. Time-lapse video helps a lot.
I have a long way to go. I guess sometimes it is best not to know just how difficult the journey will be or we would never begin it. Such is my case. -Migs