Skippybot

Skippybot named for its two Skippy peanut butter jar lid feet. I was motivated to build this by John W. Jameson's Gyro Walker but decided to use three servos instead of a gyroscope to make it move. I have since added sonar to it but am working through some false signals so am just posting its first walking steps.

Uses three microservos, Arduino Uno, 9 volt battery, 6 volt AAA battery pack, a cardboard body reinforced with some fishing pole sections and two Skippy caps.

Robot doesn't do a lot but its motion is a little entertaining. I could see someone doing a Silent Running drone (Huey - Duey - Luey) but I'm not much a model making. Gotta watch that movie again.

 

The feet servos are angled out from the body with a couple additional pieces of cardboard and

held onto the body with hotglue and 3 zip ties. (These photos don't show the third zip tie which

is lateral to hold the top of the servo to the body - since my hotglue came loose).

 

Servo swings neck counterweight (battery) back and forth.

 

AAA battery pack suspended below body to keep center of gravity low. Also

added paper clip to act as front leg to keep robot from falling foward. Also can

use one on back side to keep from falling backward.

rotates on its feet and waddles side to side to move

  • Actuators / output devices: 3 9g servos
  • CPU: arduino uno
  • Target environment: Smooth Surface

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/skippybot

Skippy

You certainly have a fascination with moving necks and waddling gaits.

Inverted Pendulum

You might try a suspended pendulum instead so the motion is less “violent”. Nice variation on motion. You could potentially even simplify the setup by using one drive motor connected to each circle using gears.

Yeah, somewhat fixated at

Yeah, somewhat fixated at this point.

3-servo-walker master!

You are the master of 3-servo walkers! Very cool! You are inspiring us, man!

Things like this make LMR a great place!

Yes it is kind of violent

Yes it is kind of violent and I would like to try your idea just to see if it behaves any differently than with an inverted pendulum swing. I slowed down the servo movement and it doesnt rock quite so badly.

Thank you man, that means a

Thank you man, that means a lot coming from you and the others who build quality robots here at LMR - I just wish LMR had a trophy for ugly, I’m pretty sure my bots would win.