Fall 2011
Inspired by videos of dancing hexapod competitions, I built an 18-servo hexapod and programmed it by myself. It was made of ABS plastic, 18 servos, an Arduino nano, and a Pololu serial servo controller. With Prof. Dan Frey’s permission, I substited this independent project for the normal coursework for Design and Manufacturing I. The hexapod used the tripod gait to walk and turn around.
What I did: This project was my own design, fabrication, and programming.
A video of it walking (recommend muting due to background noise)
Circular Hexapod – Walking around from nouyang on Vimeo.
I wrote an Instructables about it which was featured and received over 44,000 views: Simple 18dof Hexapod, Arduino nano (optionally with pololu maestro).
The code may be found on Github.
An album of build pictures: 2.007 Hexapod (Spring 2011)
A picture of one of the first prototypes:
A video I made about the design process:
Prototyping and Design Process – Hexapods from nouyang on Vimeo.