Polymorph Caterpillar Resurrected

Let's Make Robots Robots
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This one was on the pipeline for a long time and I've been building it for some time now. It´s my small tribute to Oddbot's Polimorph Caterpillar. Loved the mechanics of it and I'm still struggling with it. Lets see if I can make it walk, as for now it only twitches in the same place. Perhaps it's from the legs, couldn't find anything appropriate to use so I improvised with some bathroom foam :) but it is hard to shape so i t could be holding it back... I don't Know... It uses 8 micro servos, 1 Arduino nano from China :), 1 HC-SR04, 4x1,5V batteries and it will use one 9V for the Arduino (for now it is USB powered) and lots of Polymorph that took forever to shape... :) I hope I'll post another video as soon as I can make it run forward...

 

 

Navigate around via ultrasound

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/polymorph-caterpillar-resurrected
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Feet material

Rubber has more grip on floor!  You can try to make feet more pointy ( like V ) and then glue on some rubber. Or just use pencil rubber but it’s heavier. Rubber bands are also good.

Caterpillars move by using two group of gripping feet and a retractable body in the middle. It grab terrain with head feets, lose grip on tail feet, retracts body, grip with tail feet, lose grip head feet, expand body and repeat. You could try using some kind of artificial muscle like a linear actuator or a material that contracts on eletricity:)

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**Hello there Silux

Thanks a**
Hello there Silux

Thanks a lot for the tips.
I especially liked the rubber band tip. They are easy to come by and are easley exchanged.
I will definitely look at the walking algorithm.

Best regards.