Veteran robot features eight legs and BeagleBoard

posted Feb 11th 2010 10:31am by
filed under: robots hacks

This spider-bot was built by [Zhanx] during his deployment in Iraq. He didn’t have prior hardware building experience and started out on this project when he received an Arduino to play with in September. Must be a fast learner! The parts are laser-cut from ABS plastic and connected to 24 servos. He sourced an SSC-32 serial servo control board to take care of the motor connections.

[Zhanx] has since migrated from the Arduino to a BeagleBoard which you can see perched atop the body in the video after the break. This should give him plenty of speed and power to improve the movement routines. There’s some nice work here but adding rubber feet, like on yesterday’s hexapod, wouldn’t hurt.



18 Responses to Veteran robot features eight legs and BeagleBoard

  • McSquid says:

    For someone with no prior experience…..wow. that’s good.

  • Asuraku says:

    Awww, poor thing needs some traction.

  • ArduinoOs says:

    Now a fleet of those outta scare the crap outta some terrorists. Seriously the army should give him a scholarship for engineering school.

  • Mark says:

    This guy was laser cutting ABS plastic in IRAQ?!

  • andrew says:

    Yea, seriously. Did he send the plans to the US to have them cut and have them ship the parts back to Iraq?

  • charliex says:

    It’s the camel spider!

  • Knowledgegranted says:

    “It’s the camel spider!”

    -I lol’ed at that in the middle of the library.

    This project is pretty damn good, I wouldn’t expect that from a first timer.

  • nes says:

    “This guy was laser cutting ABS plastic in IRAQ?!”

    Well he presumably sourced the servos locally.

    What do you think civilization just ceased when we invaded? I should imagine if anything (barring the language barrier) it’d be easier and certainly cheaper getting this sort of thing done in a machine shop there than here.

  • Mike says:

    He said earlier today that he got his laser cutting done with Pololu.

  • PSN Cards says:

    Is it standing on a CD container?

  • jeditalian says:

    standing on a cd container? lol you could stand a cd container on top of it. you must not have watched the video

  • jeditalian says:

    oh yeah damn i just saw the cd container it is on top of a cd container in the pic

  • Chas says:

    Cool bot, but why does everyone have to include a loud, annoying soundtrack. I would actually like to hear the robot as well.

  • poslathian says:

    Looks awesome! Great job zhanx! Ive been keeping up with zhanx’s progress over IRC. I have to point out though, hes not using a beagle board! Thats a LeafLabs Maple! (full disclosure, Im from leaflabs ;)

  • How come I still see stuff I saw 20 years ago at the MIT AI labs? Pretending that using an atom to make some balancing calculations is a big deal, getting a hexapod to walk? This si Rondey Brooks stuff from 1991. Start being more abitious guys..

  • zhanx says:

    i ordered all the laser cutting from the us. to answer that one.

    @Heliostat hippy, what getting 8 legs to walk without using someone’s else work ain’t enough for a first? guess i will just have to do better for the next one.

    http://www.zhanx.net and the beagle board is in

  • Reggie says:

    @Heliostat hippy ‘How come I still see stuff I saw 20 years ago at the MIT AI labs? ‘

    I’m guessing theres not much call for MIT grade research facilities/grants in Iraq….

  • googfan says:

    where did he laser-cut abs in iraq?

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