Hi everyone! I’ve pretty much finished with my other robot project (Nexus - The Spider Robot) for the time being (but I’m still making small tweaks here and there) so I thought that I might as well move onto a new robot and this time I’m going to (attempt to) build a “Praying Mantis Robot”!
I’ve got exams during most of the second half of January so I won’t really be making anything at the moment but after these exams, I’ll have a lot of spare time for about 3-4 months so the building (and prototyping) will begin after Jan. 25th. I’ll upload some designs for the robot over the next few days/weeks to let everyone see what it’ll sort of look like. (My CAD skills are terrible so it would probably take me a while to draw up nice looking 3D models of the robot so for the time being you’ll have to put up with my rough drawings - sorry ).
Hi everyone! I had some spare time so I’ve whipped together this design for the bottom half of the praying mantis robot - I’m still working on the torso, the arms and the head. Sorry about the colour in the photo but my CAD package didn’t want to export in a photographic format so I had to export it as a different CAD file and then open it up in eDrawings Viewer and then save it as a .png from that!
Anyway, ENJOY! I’ll post some more designs and stuff soon (just 1 more week of exams and then freedom for a few months). :mrgreen:
OK! Here we go!
I’ve finally managed to get all the leg brackets cut out and I’m working on a really awesome looking body (for the robot of course ). I’m currently not sure if I should convert from Praying Mantis to some kind of Mech but I’ll have to see as I go along :mrgreen:. Here are some photos showing the new feet and leg design - ENJOY!
Again nice work with the acrylic. it would be cool if you could cut parts to replicate the leg like this?
you could use the Tarsus to give you feedback control for terrain adaptive response.
I’m not professional enough to attempt a 5 D.O.F leg style robot and it would cost a fair amount of money for servos - but why not, I’ll try with two for the back legs; should be very interesting! :mrgreen:
The leg i posted is one of two front legs or arms.
As this is a hexapod you could design the rear and middle legs as 3dof and keeping in style of the legs you have already made, and by having the electronics in the back like Zenta’s A-Pod you could allow the two front arms to hang off the ground as shown. mantis’s do also use their front legs for walking so getting it to walk wouldnt be a problem.
you could also make it a 3dof by combining some of the segments. and just used the picture as a template to work from? just an idea.
Thanks for interesting info. I’m sorry about thinking the arms were legs . That clarification has given me some more ideas! :mrgreen:
By keeping the legs the same (3 D.O.F) adding the arms (with 5 D.O.F) should be fine because they were going to have 4 D.O.F anyway - I thought that the image was of a leg and that put me off making 4 5 D.O.F legs as well as arms. :mrgreen:
The video is perfect for modelling the motion - thanks again!
This has given me some more designs to work on which I’ll post this afternoon/evening. 8)
Sorry about not posting the designs - I haven’t had much time to actually do them.
However, I managed to make my PCB for the Atom Pro 40 which I have using the good old-fashioned way - photo-resist board, developer solution and etching tank!
Also I would just like to say that the photos of the photo-resist board, developing solution and etching tank were taken off Google images and I would also like to share the name of the PCB - I call it the B.A.O.U.S Board :mrgreen: (sorry Lynxmotion for stealing the name idea):
No, sorry - I should have been clearer.
I made my own circuit board for an Atom Pro 40 pin which I have and I forgot to take pictures of the photo-resist board, developing solution and etching tank; all that stuff is at my college so I just found some photos on Google images to represent each thing.
Hi everyone! Sorry about not updating but I’ve been pretty busy (university interviews and stuff :mrgreen:) but I have made a new B.A.O.U.S Board - I realised that V1.0 was printed on backwards so it wouldn’t have worked .
Anyways, the new board is all nice and proper and I’ve finished drilling the holes and I’m soldering the components as we speak - here are some photos of the new board (it’s smaller than the other one as well; measures about 8.3x5.3cm). Enjoy! :mrgreen:
I’ve finished all the soldering for the board and I think it looks pretty decent :mrgreen: - I’ll upload a photo of it in a bit but at the moment I’m having an aesthetics problem:
What kind of colours should I use for the Mantis robot? The current colour scheme for the legs is BLACK/RED so I need something that goes well with both and I would love to have some opinions about this. The colours I can choose from are yellow, red, black, blue, green. Here’s a photo of the pieces of plastic:
).
). I’m currently not sure if I should convert from Praying Mantis to some kind of Mech but I’ll have to see as I go along :mrgreen:. Here are some photos showing the new feet and leg design - ENJOY!
. That clarification has given me some more ideas! :mrgreen:
