Walky the Biped Robot - WalkyII gets his legs

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Previous post in the sequence:

Walky the Biped Robot - The prequel

Walky the Biped Robot - Power pack

Walky the Biped Robot - Oops, Walky has an accident!

Walky the Biped Robot - A new hope (actually a new body and battery)

Walky the Biped Robot - WalkyII gets some eyes.

Today the 3D printathon has ended.  I finally have some peace and quiet at my desk.  At 2:00 PM, the final piece of WalkyII was printed (final for now?).  After a bit of assembly, WalkyII can now stand on his own.  Things went pretty well.  I needed to clean-up a few holes, tighten this, loosen that...... But in the end, it looks exactly like what I planned.

Once I assembled him, I decided to see how well he could walk.  I powered the 'original' controller board from the new power pack and hit the switch.  WalkyII did not do too well.  He toddled around like a drunken sailor and would tip over after each step (if not for my helping hand).  I appears that the center of gravity has shifted a bit from the original Walky.  Also some of the joints were a little loose, mostly the 'ankles'.  I did a little rework on the 'ankles' and adjusted the servo linkages a bit to shift feet a little further back.  I also adjusted the front linkages to get the feet a little flatter to the table (the above pictures are post reworks).  I still need to do something to move the feet a little further apart, maybe a slider positioned between the legs and the body, along the bottom edge, to spread the legs out a bit.

I did capture a few short clips of WalkyII walking.  While he is not exactly graceful, he can now toddle about without falling over.  I will need to fine tune his gait some, as he has a tendency to walk in circles.  This is all stuff that I can address when I start coding his new controller board.

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Walky the Biped Robot - WalkyII gets his legs

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Here are some of the 3D views of his legs, feet and ankles:

All of the pivot points on the legs are done using pressed in nylon shoulder spacer, in an attempt to have a free movement with a minimal amount of wobble.  The majority of the hardware to bolt everything together is 2-56 screws.  On the pivoting leg joints I used nylock nuts to lock the nuts on, without over tightening the joint.

So far, so good.  But I do see a lot of work coming up writing the firmware for the controller and finishing up the firmware on the power pack.  (not to mention that I am currently juggling three consulting gigs).

Thanks for reading along.  More to come.

Gene