A bunch of people have built these. After my having seen them I had to make one too! :-)
Spidy is a Start Here type robot. Otherwise known as an object avoider. It uses 2 spider chassis from DF Robot snapped together into one. Then it uses my favorite Freescale micro controller and a Sharp IR sensor for object detection.
UPDATE
I have been asked numerous times on how to build this chassis after posting it on here.
Directions: You simply buy 2 of these kits, then build one with left legs only, then build the other with right legs only, then slightly trim the X members on the end between the 2 leg halfs, then snap them together to make 1 chassis. The image of the robots underside shows all you need to know. Because when you have the kits in hand you will see that they literally snap together. So making this chassis out of 2 of them is VERY common sense, and easy.
Very amazing concept but I beleive the main question is how did you do it? I am a big fan of the stratta beast and I wouldn’t mind seeing a tutorial for this.
There are 3-4 of these that have been built on this forum. These are $5 (USD) kits from DF Robot. You buy 2 and simply stick 2 of them together to make one walking kit. There’s no need for a tutorial as they are literally made this way to snap together. The picture above showing the bottom of the robot shows you all you need to know as the “X” braces need a slight trim for this to work as I described. If you have any questions I will be happy to answer them. But this build is so simple its not tutorial worthy.
I’m just throwing 5v into these which is tecnically over volting them. But if you build one you can swap these for 5v motors cheaply. I think Solarbotics sells direct replacement motors.
Thanks. I went with three 1.25V AAA recharagables and a 3.3V Sparkfun Pro. The range of PWM pulses is very limitted, almost full on, but it does move. Have not hooked up IR yet and sonor most likely will require 5V. The hardest part was cutting the yoke!!!.
I would buy a couple IR led emitter/receiver pairs and simply make beam break sensors on an inside leg for step feedback. It would be easy to make a white spot on the leg, then everytime it breaks the light beam, its one step in distance, or one unit of time.
My other idea would be to make an encoder disc on the two inside middle axle shafts with the same concept. But I prefer the leg feedback over the encoder disc idea for the simple reason of it being leg feedback.
I’ve also built a similar robot, using 3xAA Batteries and an adafruit motorshield and a standard arduino, all attached to the legged chassis. My bot however has trouble moving as brisk as does yours. I’ve bought 6V motors for it, thinking that would solve my problem. This required me to add batteries and thus weight.
I have to ask, which position did you put your legs? There are 2 possible positions for the leg step length. So if you put yours on the short step position then that could be your problem. (its just a guess)
