The Walking Robot Project
The benefits of this design over traditional walking robot designs
First I will talk about what a machine has to accomplish in order to walk.
In order for a robot to walk it must accomplish the following goals:
1. It must be able to handle terrain at a changing distance between the ground and itself, while maintaining some level of ground clearance.
2. At least 2, 3, 4, or 6 collective leg groups (depending on number of legs a robot will have) must be on the ground at all times (except in complex jumping maneuvers).
3. Each collective leg group must cooperate their individual movements to achieve forward, backward, left, and right movment.
4. The robot must bear the weight of the unused legs while they move into position to carry load.
These above listed goals leads to:
Each leg must have a minimum of 3 Degrees-of-Freedom, (or "DOF"): One translation (Fwd/Rev), one for lifting the feet in a verticle direction, and one coupled to the tranlsation to achieve some type of stearing. This would lead some walking robot builders to assign a motor for each DOF. This would then lead to:
For a two legged robot:
2 (legs) x 3 (motors/DOF's)= 6 motors + (some specialized ballance controls)
For a four legged robot:
4 (legs) x 3 (motors/DOF's)= 12 motors + (some specialized ballance controls)
For a six legged robot:
6 (legs) x 3 (motors/DOF's)= 18 motors - with at least 3 legs on the ground no ballance control is needed.
It is true that you can couple some of the leg movements together (i.e. build a single Fwd/Rev motor powering one leg group in one phase and have the same motor power another leg group in a different, shifted phase). This would reduce the number of motors necessary to make a robot walk. But for most instances, walking robots consist of multiple motors, several encoder-wheel position sensors, an on-board computer, and software in that computer to calculate the position of the legs and control the apropriate motors for movement.
I neither have many motors, position sensing equipment, or the understanding of how to program computer code..
So, I designed a mechanical walking system that uses a minimal number of motors, a minimal amount of control systems, and achieves all the goals of a walking robot with what I believe will be a higher degree of effeciency than other walking robot designs. Also, due to the fact that this design uses a small amount of simply controlled motors, the size of the framework is not a consideration in how it functions. It can be as big as a house, still work, and be able to run off a motor the size of an portable electric screw driver. Or, it can be as small as a gerbal.