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Stompy, The Rideable Hexapod
Using a 135 horsepower Toyota forklift engine, a group of people from Artistan’s Asylum in Somerville Massachusetts are creating a 2500 pound rideable hexapod robot.
Fifteen students signed up for a 4 month class taught by Gui Cavalcanti, James Whong, and Dan Cody. The three teachers are all real roboticists with real life experience in building robots.
The center of the middle legs are 17 feet wide and the bottom of the undercarriage is 6 feet high.
Stompy will be very big.
The class description states:
All students will, obviously, be trained and experienced robot riders by the end of class.
The class is scheduled to finish at the end of July, so we expect to see photos of Stompy riding around Somerville in August.
Good luck Stompy makers.
Link via (Artistan’s Asylum)
Asterix, Omni Directional Hexapod
A hexapod robot from Osaka University named Asterix can do many things. The six legged robot can climb over objects, squeeze under them and even cartwheel thanks to Professor Arai and his team at Osaka University.
Asterix has 6 legs, spaced 60 degrees apart. The robot is the same on the top or the bottom, so that if it were to be flipped over, it could continue like nothing had happened. The legs are also agile enough that they can pick be used to up objects or climb up a wall with a wire grid on it.
ASTERISK has the following 6 kinds of sensors.
- Pressure sensors on the tips of all of the limbs, which can detect whether they are being pushed or pulled.
- Infrared sensors on the tips of 3 of the limbs.
- A gyro sensor and an acceleration sensor on the body.
- Wireless cameras on the tips of 3 limbs and 3 CCD cameras on the body.
Click through for a video from DigInfo TV.
Link via (DigInfo TV)
Prospero Robotic Farmer
Prospero is a project by David Dorhout for a SchmartBoard contest. The idea here is for a swarm of hexapods to do all your planting and crop tending for you. The project write up states:
Prospero is the working prototype of an Autonomous Micro Planter (AMP) that uses a combination of swarm and game theory and is the first of four steps. It is meant to be deployed as a group or “swarm”. The other three steps involve autonomous robots that tend the crops, harvest them, and finally one robot that can plant, tend, and harvest–autonomously transitioning from one phase to another.
Prospero has several steps. It checks to see if a seed has been planted and if not, plants when and then marks it with a biodegradable paint spot. Then it moves on to another spot, all the while signaling the other hexapods it’s status.
The signals to the other hexapods is done by infrared signal. This is currently shown via LEDS. Green LEDS signal the other robots to come closer as seeds need to be planted. Red LEDS signal the other robots to stay away as seeds have already been planted.
Link to Prospero project write up (pdf file).
See more about the contest at SchmartBoard or click through for a movie of the hexapod Prospero in action.
Amazing project David!
Hexapod Walker
Pololu has a great little tutorial on how to make the hexapod walker shown here.
Pololu is an electronics company started by 3 former MIT students and based in Las Vegas. For about $70 in parts that are sold by Pololu, you can build yourself this fun hexapod robot.
Six-legged locomotion is a simple, robust system of walking that is very popular both in the animal kingdom and among robotics hobbyists. Robot hexapods range from simple one-motor toys to advanced platforms with 18 or more servos. This tutorial shows you how to build a very simple autonomous hexapod robot using just three servos. The 2″-high hexapod is capable of walking forward and backward, and can turn left and right. Two forward-looking distance sensors provide obstacle avoidance. The brain of the hexapod is the Pololu Micro Maestro, a 6-servo controller that can read inputs and play motion sequences in a stored script.
Click through for a video.
Link via (Robots.net)