Spooder 🕷 Octopod Robot 1.0

Step 1 — Project Overview

My friend and I made an 8-legged spider 🕷 robot named Spooder about two years ago as a high school senior project.

Here are the specs of Spooder:

BeagleBone Blue(BBB) board with Debian 10 onboard.
24 Lynxmotion Smart Servos daisy-chained and sharing a single UART port.
Controlled through WiFi with an iOS app my friend made.
1. It has UDP live feed from Spooder’s perspective. See the demo videos for more details.
All CAD parts are designed on Tinkercad and printed with Carbon Fiber Filled PLA filaments.
Programmed in Python.

Step 2 — Cute Pics of Spooder

*the antenna is for a GPS unit that was not installed during the photo shoot.
*the camera was also not installed because I’m getting a new camera for it. (waiting for my OAK-D)

Step 3 — Demo Video - Movement

Spooder walking. The trajectory-control algorithm is to be improved.

Step 4 — Demo Video - Testing out UDP Streaming & Control App

My iOS App developer friend made this app.

Step 5 — Demo Video - Testing out Push-ups

A demo video during early development

Step 6 — CAD Parts on Tinkercad

I made all the parts on Tinkercad

Step 7 — Assembly & Soldering

I used a drone PDB to deliver power to all 24 Lynxmotion Smart Servos.
TTL logic level converter to bridge the BBB’s 3.3V UART port with LSS’s 5V(I think?) logic level.
The 11.1V lipo battery is strapped under the robot.

Step 8 — Website

The Spooder project is also up on my personal website, here is a link to Spooder. Spooder is actually my second spider robot build. If you are interested in an 8-legged Arduino Spider robot that I made in 10th grade, check out Spidy. Spidy is based on an Arduino Mega and 24 cheap PWM servos.

Here is the Github Repo to Spooder.