Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #03168



To: Dennison dennlill@buffnet.net
From: Chiu-Yuan Fang chiumanfu@home.com
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 19:47:36 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Incapable robots-Give 'em feet.


I soldered washers to the feet of one of my walker (similar to Walker ver 2.2).
It performed very well on short grass, long carpet, loose sand and piles of
dirty clothes on my bedroom floor. The trick is to design and balance your
walker so that it never drags it's rear legs...no easy task but it is possible.

Chiu

> Dennison wrote:
>
> You know, I was playing with another walker today, and I contemplated how
> fragile and incapable this walking robot really was. Think about it. Our two
> motor, and even five motor walkers work just fine on a nice smooth surface,
> even better on a slightly texturized rubber one, but they can't really perform
> that well anywhere else. Sure a walker can strut down the driveway, but can it
> walk through your grass? I think not.
>
> Think about it, our bot's are more or less built from insect designs, and as a
> result work great. But there are no insects the size of our walkers. Insect
> locomotion stops being a very effective method of locomotion when you get to
> squirrl size. We of course run into the time old problem of volume being a
> cubic function, and lets face it, legs don't exaclty 'drag' well in the grass.
>
> To this I have a few suggestions for building more capable robots. Make them
> larger. With this increased size they will have greater weight (A nessesity
> for nagivating grass and stuff). Give them Paws. All our robots are these
> things balanced on the ends of wire. Thats no good. These things need some
> feet. With feet they wouldn't get so bogged down in Grass or sand. With feet
> they are better balanced. The robot can stand on top of more stuff. (kinda
> like snow shoes) and the legs won't get caught so much in every little nook
> and cranny.
>
> Dennison

--
Chiu-Yuan Fang
chiumanfu@home.com
ICQ=5614919
http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/6897/beam2.html

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