What’s more awesome than a normal hexapod robot? What about a MEGA hexapod?
Max the Megapod, a six-legged 3D-printed walking robot, is an open source, Arduino-based, Bluetooth controlled, Scratch programmable creation made possible by [Steven Pendergrast]. The design for Max was based on a previous hexapod project, Vorpal the Hexapod, which has since been built at hundreds of schools worldwide.
Max clocks in at two feet in diameter, expanding to three when sprawled out on the ground. In addition, the hexapod is able to dance, walk, and run as fast as the smaller version, covering ground at twice the speed due to its size.
The scaling for the project – about 200% from the original hexapod – required some creativity, as the goal was for the components to be printed on a modest-sized printer with an 8 inch cube bed. In addition, since Max weighs 9 pounds on average, real bearings (608 Skate bearings) needed to be used for the servo mounts.
The electrical system had to be changed to account for the larger currents drawn by the larger servos (MG958s). and the power distribution harness needed to be redesigned. The current harness take about two hours to build for the larger hexapod, compared to 15 minutes for the original design.
The results are both hilarious and adorable, especially given the endless modifications made to give Max a unique flair. Perhaps a GIGApod could be coming up next?
Meanwhile, someone out there is having a Doom flashback….
Two legs too much… but it gave me shivers down my spine when I saw it.
“What better than a hexapod?” or
“What’s better than a hexapod”?
IDK, an iPod?
:o)
“What’s better than a hexapod”?
An autonomous hexapod with a machine gun?
I built one of these, it’s pretty jank :) They really need to add a proper kinematics system instead of just hard-coding leg movements.
I was thinking that while watching them walk in the demo video. If the feet on the ground slip that’s something that needs fixing.
I built the vorpal version and I can second that. The movement is not very fluid, but it works.
A way it could be drastically improved is to drop the arduino + bluetooth module in favor for a pair of ESP8266 or ESP32’s in both the robot and remote. It would be cheaper and easier to built and have way more processing power available.
I have not played with the ESP chips, but the ESP8266 does not have enough I/O for vorpal, which requires 18 just for servos. The ESP32 has enough but costs about the same as an arduino mega according to banggood. Given the simple computational requirements of a hexapod, I can’t see the benefit.
Uses 16ch pwm board. PCA9685 -I2C. Servos for legs take 12 of 16.
Just replace ‘they’ with ‘you’. I’m sure you could do this yourself and add value to the Vorpal community.