(And the first person who smiles at the phrase “segmentation violation || core dump” gets a virtual beer – and should stop thinking about 8088’s!)
I’m contemplating building a polypod, prolly a hexapod. I guess you’d call it the symmetrical style (i.e. the BH3, legs in a line, and not the hexagonal style e.g. BH3-R.) Actually, I’m sort of torn between the two, as the symmetrical style is more aesthetically pleasing to me but seems more artificial, somehow. I s’pose the round style makes more sense for eight legs like a spider, but I digress 
Anyway, the BIG question is whether to break up the body at the junctions of head to thorax and/or thorax to abdomen. In the Discontinued kits photos there’s a polypod with up to ten legs (lynxmotion.com/images/html/gexpoly.htm ) but the segmentation seems to be purely hinged (as opposed to motorized), and only in the horizontal orientation, i.e. 1 DOF.
To my admittedly inexpert eye, that would seem the least useful rotation, as left-to-right rotation can easily be handled with suitable legs, and trying to control the segments’ rotations with just hip movements would be difficult.
With (a) large enough servo(s), one could presumably motorize these junctions – though I hurt my brain thinking about SES parts to do it 
The ability to rotate torsionally (i.e. around the longitudinal axis) would allow greater ability to clear obstacles, though I doubt more than 10* or 20* side-to-side would be useful. Any more than that and the poor 'pod would end up twisted like my cat gets in the sun.
I would think the ability to rotate the segments vertically (e.g. “bend” in the Z-axis) could prove useful. The ability to raise the head, say, could be very handy for climbing even stairs. (And face it, stairs are a robot’s worst enemy – consider the Daleks!) There are issues, of course, with COG and balance, lifting one segment whilst the other two stay level is tricky.
Anybody done anything like this, successfully or otherwise? Am I over-analyzing this, and all motion should be handled in the legs, rather than the body? Other thoughts?
– A