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Spider Bot

Reversible walking robot

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This was done by Out-of-Plane Labs as a demo project for our Pegasus servo controller (you can just barely see the board underneath the mass of cables in the top center of the picture). The Pegasus provided commands to the 8 servos making up the legs (2 each) and was connected to an Xbee wireless module for communication with the user controller. The second picture is all of the spider's body pieces pre-assembly. All of the design and manufacturing was done by Out-of-Plane Labs.

One of the eventual goals for this project was to add an accelerometer for gravity sensing - if the spider was flipped on it's back, it should be able to sense that and flip the legs down in order to continue moving.

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raps500 wrote 04/29/2015 at 06:36 point

This looks like a very nice design: 8 servos and 4 legs, meaning not that many pieces, well fixing every servo needs... 4 pieces ?. I couple more close-up photos would help to with building :). A draw of the pieces would be great. I mean, I'm looking to build one 4 or 6 pod, but reinventing the leg :), seems not the best. Keep up the good work ! Thanks for posting.

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james.moran wrote 04/30/2015 at 02:27 point

I can try to dig up our CAD files if that'll help. Haven't needed them in years so hopefully they haven't vanished into the ether...

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Duane Degn wrote 04/30/2015 at 03:50 point

For $4 more than the price of the servos, you could purchase one of ICStation's hexapods.
https://hackaday.io/project/3217-hexapod4-spider-robot-instruction-manual
I just received one myself. You'll need extra nuts and bolts to build it but it seems pretty light weight which is really important with 9g servo hexapods.
I'm not sure if the ICStation bot is any good or not but there's not much to lose since you can reuse the servos in your own design.
It's pretty important to make each of the leg sections short. As I mentioned in another post on this project, my first hexapod didn't work very well.
http://letsmakerobots.com/node/36513
I think James may have made some of the same mistakes I made, by building some of the leg segments too long and heavy. James' bot looks cool (an important consideration) but as he mentioned elsewhere it didn't work as well as he had hoped.

If you use the same design, I suggest using lighter material and shorten some of the pieces.

I also think LiPo batteries offer a benefit in hexapods by reducing the weight from batteries. My first hex (the Popsicle stick one) had to be powered with a tether since it couldn't support the added weight of the batteries.

Edit: BTW, hexapods are easier to program than quadrupeds. Quadrupeds have a complicated gait since they have to shift the center of mass as they walk. Hexapods being easier to program is a bit counterintuitive since hexapods have more servos but hexapods can walk with a simpler gait. IMO, it would be easier to start with a hexapod than starting with a quadruped.

Sorry for hijacking your project James. As I mentioned, I'm building the ICStation bot which will be my fourth hexapod build (one of which (the Popsicle stick hex) is no longer with us) and I have hexapods on my mind right now.

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Duane Degn wrote 01/24/2015 at 20:58 point

Those bolts sure look big compared to the servos.

I made my first walking robot much too heavy and I'm afraid you're on your way to making a similar mistake.

Good luck, I hope you prove me wrong and your robot is able to successfuly walk.

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james.moran wrote 01/25/2015 at 02:24 point

Last time we worked on this we did have some issues - at the time we were thinking the servos were just crappy. Moving each joint individually works fine but it had trouble keeping itself upright when actually trying to walk.

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james.moran wrote 07/16/2014 at 02:28 point
Wow, actually got a few people following this! Didn't see that coming... guess that means I need to get off my ass and finish the write up.

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