Robot's cunstruction

17 Oct 2012

Finally I have finished the construction of my 5-legged walking robot. It is 30 cm height and weights 2.1 kg.

In the picture bellow, there is a set of parts before assembling:

And a result after assembling:

Robot's control system is based on the STM32F4 microcontroller. It is equipped with a rich set of sensors, shown on the diagram below. Robot is controlled from a PC through Bluetooth interface.

The robot is powered from a Li-pol battery (2100 mAh, 11.1 V). On the PCB there is an integrated charging and balancing system for the battery. There is also a buck converter to power all 15 servomotors from a voltage of 6 V.

The main objective of this project was to create a five legged vehicle and to evaluate its walking abilities. The secondary goal was to obtain an affordable robotic platform, which will facilitate further research.

In the future I will place here a video of working robot.

Top Comments

DAB over 10 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

I stand corrected, your five legged robot does fine over all kinds of terrain.

Since it only moves two legs at once you get a nice stable position with just three legs, it should indeed be a versatile platform for further experiments.

Well done.

DAB
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balearicdynamics over 10 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

Interesting video. it seems that there is again something to arrange in the movements fluidity. IMHO it seems that there is a sort of short stop point everytime the movement kind changes.

BTW, the problem of the number of legs is not strictly related to the kind of movement, 5 legs may work with the same performances than a corresponding six-legged robot. The real key point is the movement mathematic model that is applied to the robot.

Enrico
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e14 Contributor over 10 years ago in reply to balearicdynamics

There are a lot of 6 legged robots and it is a well known subject. I wanted to built something less common and test it. The gait of this 5 legged robot is stable and can change its direction of movement without a rotation. Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZT97AHL5o
In nature there are also some animals with 5 legs: a starfish

https://www.element14.com/community/blogs/pentopiliones
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balearicdynamics over 10 years ago

I am interested to the software that control the movement, and the kind of simulation movement (and the speed reachable too).
Looking forward for this nice project evolution

Enrico
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jw0752 over 10 years ago

Hi Mark,
This looks like it was a fun project. Any chance you can post a video of it walking?
John
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