Cheap wooden hexapod frame greatly reduces cost

[Balline] really wanted to play with a hexapod but found the cost to be prohibitive. Being a mechanical engineer, he was able to fairly quickly come up with a stable 3 servo design that would allow him to experiment with the platform. He chose to use wood as the construction material to help reduce costs even more.  As you can … Read the rest

[Jaimie's] Giant Hexapod project

Warning, this may be a duplicate post. We all agree we’ve seen this before, but can’t find it in our archive. If it is, sorry. If it isn’t enjoy one of the most awesome projects we’ve seen in a long time.

Meet [Jaimie Mantzel] an eccentric, and very hyper, individual. He’s done many projects, but this one in particular stands … Read the rest

Meet Stompy, your new robotic overlord

In case you weren’t already depressed about not starting a summer project already, a couple of guys are building a gigantic rideable hexapod they call Stompy.

The project leaders, [Gui Cavalcanti], [Dan Cody], and [James Whong] have worked on a few crazy robotics projects before like PETMAN and BigDog. Stompy won’t be a military-backed project like the others (we … Read the rest

Cardboard hexapod gets around with three motors

Here’s a lesson in doing a lot with very little. [Oldrobot] built this hexapod using cardboard for most of the pieces. He still had the box from his vacuum clear and it just happened to have a large black area the makes the top of the beetle look like it’s been painted.

The control board is from an old radio … Read the rest

Hackaday Links April 5, 2012

A Remote Sphero-Control Trackball

sphero drives car

Sphero is a cool little ball that can roll around under the control of a smartphone.  Although super-cool by itself, in this application it’s been hacked into a sort of trackball to drive a remote control car!

Arduino Voice Control

Arduino voice control

[Sebastian] Wrote in to tell us about this article about using the Arduino EasyVR shield … Read the rest

Sphere morphing hexabot now rolls around

[Zenta] has been building his MorpHex rolling hexapod for nearly a year now, and good things come to those who wait. After a ton of development and fabrication, [Zenta] finally has his mechanical jellyfish robot rolling and walking around.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Zenta]‘s MorpHex robot in action. A year ago, we saw the beginnings of Read the rest

Sphere morphing hexabot is a mechanical jellyfish

Once again, we’re wowed over [Zenta]‘s robotic skill. A few months ago, [Zenta] posted a video of his MorpHex hexapod spherebot that left us awed. After a few long months, more bits of MorpHex have made it onto the chassis. [Zenta] says his project isn’t done but it’s still enough to knock our socks off.

Going through the [Zenta] … Read the rest