The Pololu 3 servo hexapod

posted Jan 18th 2010 12:15pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: robots hacks

Here’s a great tutorial on how to make a tiny hexapod walker. While this was written specifically for a kit that is sold by pololu, we like the simple layout. You could implement your own electronics if you prefer something else. If you want to follow along with their components, you’ll end up with a fairly small and decently agile hexapod. Sure the legs aren’t articulated at every joint, but the effect is workable. This is probably the first 3 servo walking hexapod we’ve encountered and we’ve seen a pretty decent amount of hexapods.

[Via HackedGadgets]

Comments [13]

tagged: hexapod, polulu

13 Responses to The Pololu 3 servo hexapod

Addictronics says:

January 18, 2010 at 12:55 pm

Ingenious! I’ve always wanted to build a hexapod but the cost of the required servos kept me away. This really is a fantastic idea for swarm bots. etc..

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Richardf says:

January 18, 2010 at 1:00 pm

OH great idea! Time to go build one this way out of lego.

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tehgringe says:

January 18, 2010 at 1:06 pm

Nice…

I hate to do this but: would ‘implement’ read better than implant?

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Caleb Kraft says:

January 18, 2010 at 1:22 pm

@tehgringe,
Not only would it work better, it is what I meant to type. I don’t know where implant came from. Maybe spell check got me on a typo.

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Ryan says:

January 18, 2010 at 1:39 pm

Come on guys, it’s Pololu not Polulu.

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Caleb Kraft says:

January 18, 2010 at 1:42 pm

@Ryan,
indeed it is. it would seem I am on a roll.

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tehgringe says:

January 18, 2010 at 3:13 pm

That’ll be the side effects then…
http://hackaday.com/2010/01/09/ces-caleb-gets-tased/

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geeklord says:

January 18, 2010 at 3:32 pm

Sweet! I want to make one now, but I think I have enough parts already (minus the servos). Is there any simple way to have three servos controlled by an Attiny24v? It only has one 16-bit timer with two PWM channels, so I don’t know what to do.

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thethirdmoose says:

January 18, 2010 at 8:27 pm

geeklord,
Let’s say your servo requires a pulse every 20 ms. Set a timer to trigger an interrupt every 20 ms. When that interrupt triggers, start the pulse to each servo. Now, you have three events that you want to trigger – let’s say the first happens in x ms, the next in y ms, the last in z ms. Set the timer interrupt to trigger in x ms. When that triggers, set the next one to trigger in y-x ms. When that triggers, set the next one to trigger in z-y-x ms. When each one triggers, end the pulse to that servo.

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Jim Foster says:

January 18, 2010 at 8:34 pm

Not bad, but is a commercial product really a hack? Check out mine if you want -

http://jscook55.webs.com/hexapod.htm

I got the idea from some pics on the internet, but other than that it was programmed and machined by myself.

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Fwirt says:

January 20, 2010 at 7:05 pm

Is it just me, or could this be done with 2 servos? It seems like 2 of the servos mirror each other, would it be much more inefficient to just attach four of the legs to one servo?

I gotta try this when my AVR ICSP gets here…

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Paul says:

January 30, 2010 at 7:04 pm

Fwirt, look carefully at how it turns – the servos do not mirror each other. With only 2 I think you could go forward, but you would not be able to turn much, if at all.

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Paul says:

January 30, 2010 at 7:34 pm

Jim, does it not count as a hack because I did it at work? Pololu sells most of the parts, but the hexapod itself is not one of our products. Yours is pretty nice, by the way – a much more advanced project than mine.

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