[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. Â As you can see in the video after the break, his design gets around fairly well. Â His cost for the whole thing, including the 3 servos, the basic stamp hobby board, the recycled batteries, and the frame, was under $100.
This is a great system to start with, though he unfairly compares the cost to the dancing ones he had seen in the past. C’mon, your bot ain’t no [Lou Vega]. It is still pretty cool though.
Very nice, i like the clever geometry of the legs that allows the feet to move in a straight forward line. The offset of the swing axes. Reminds me of automobile suspension. I wonder how much computer assisted design was used.
Finally a hexapod that’s not just an annoying mountain of expensive servos with arduino on top. A really awesome build! And a great video too. Hell, I’d consider buying a kit like this :)
Ive seen a ride-able hexapod that uses the same arm system as this, at The University of Cape Town. It uses two levers for your hands the control the left/right legs and two connected foot pedals for the raising and lowering of the legs. Im thinking of making my own to roam the neighborhood in :)
Clever. Seems like a good middle point between a 2-servos-per-leg hexapod and a “forward or back up and turn” system like a Hexbug.
Oh also the warmup routine reminds me of the little dance that stickbugs do LOL :)
Very nice build, ingenius in it’s simplicity…but when you say it’s different i am expecting something different other than the generic hexapod platform, no matter the complexity of the framework and just because it has three servo motors does not a different hexapod make…efficient and cost effective yes, ironically, when considering the same differences in hexapods it just harkens back to: A wheel is a wheel is a wheel. Yet, still really cool.