Looks cool, Moves badly

top? front? side?
Keith Rowell Design

This robot configuration called "Non Articulated" has no front or back or top so to speak. It's sort of a molecular or cellular design. View the movies to see some strange motions. It motivates along, but I wouldn't want to ride it. It's very awkward and jerky. They use pneumatics mostly it seems.

Visually, I like the "no eyes, impersonal, ameoba" affect but I would prefer a more fluid motion.

Doorway Configuration

Tight Squeeze
Keith Rowell Design

One requirement of the bot is that it be able to pass through doors to get into classrooms and show halls and such. (Stuart brought this up at lunch today).
This robot configuration mimicks a crab to accomplish this task. In this scenario, the body section is the part that must dimensionally fit through the door (26"-34"), the legs can reconfigure to "crab" through then go back to whatever shape.

The other point we discussed was that the maximum stored and folded size needs to fit into the back of an average pickup truck. Stuart and Bob will measure their trucks and we'll take the smaller of the two as the maximum. Stuart's truck will hold a 4'x6' sheet of plywood, but it has to sit above the wheel wells. I'll post a cad file of the shape when we get futher dimensions.

Looks like a beer glass with legs
Keith Rowell Design

Actuator Parts

Hydraulic Scissors
Keith Rowell Design
Hydraulic
I just came across this Scissor Jack in my email. $37. Remove the hand pump and plubm with hydraulic and you have an actuator for a leg or arm. A case of these might be less than $1000. If the group agrees, I'll get one of these for testing.

Power Plant Options

Surplus Military Engines
Keith Rowell Design

The small homebuilt airplane crowd are fond of this engine because it's aircooled among other things ( details ). It's $800, I think a better choice would be a motorcycle engine. I'm sure we an find something suitable for less. But I think we should definitely have an electric starter.

A 10 to 20hp motor for lawnmowers and such are very heavy compared to the same hp motorcycle engine. There's a motorcycle salvage yard in Tifton Ga. that claims to be the world's largest. http://www.stevescyclesalvage.com/index.html

I'm thinking an ATV or small street bike motor would be ideal.

Reference Material

The Land Walker seems to personify many of the objectives we are shooting for. Be sure to check out the movies. This amazing walking bot even has pneumatic cannons that fire rubber balls.

Some of our objectives not addressed by Land Walker are:

1. Originality. We'ld like to break new ground artistically. (Not rely on previous science fiction and 3D games such as "Mech Warrior" or "Star Wars").

2. Very compelling motion. ( The Land Walker's motion is very clever and seemingly pretty stable, but it doesn't pick up it's feet, it "shuffles" instead. It does the job, but is somehow less than satisfying).

3. Transportability. ( It's not obvious that there's a convenient way to put this in a truck and take it to an event ).

Some of our objectives that are addressed by Land Walker are:

1. Large size. (10 feet is a good size, very impressive presence. The larger the better.)

2. Passenger carrying. ( We would like to have the option to carry one or more passengers)

3. Self contained power. ( There are no cables hanging from the bot leading to power supplies. You can hear a motor running in the videos. We too will probably use gasoline motors ).

Units are in mm. approximately 10' tall
Keith Rowell Design

Land Walker is an impressive machine
Keith Rowell Design