03/15/2018: Body completed; Now onto the legs

03/15/2018: Body completed; Now onto the legs

Zongxi Huang

This week, I was able to complete the final touches to the design of the new and lighter body. After making some inspection on the quality of the new pieces and adding some final touches to it, I proceeded to print out these components. Then, I moved on to the assembly step, which went rather smoothly despite the fact that I was initially worried about the complexity of the new design. Even with a lighter body, however, it seemed as if the legs were still unable to walk.; whenever I powered the motors, the legs would only make half of the walking motion and then bug down when they came into contact with the ground. From my observations, I concluded that the problem laid in the fact that the walking motion created by my leg design contained many flaws. For instance, when the motor is rotating, only a small portion of the each revolution is allocated to the part where the leg was to propel the walker forward. Furthermore, the motion created by the leg was one which involved pushing the robot upwards. Considering the minimum weight of the walker, the motors I am using would never provide enough power to lift the robot upwards even if I was to make it lighter still. Hence, I decided to use the theo jansen leg design instead, for it provided a much more perfected walking motion than my design. To do so, I would also have to rework the leg compartment and to make new leg pieces. And unfortunately, my computer broke down, and I was unable to make much progress pass the development stage of the new legs. Next week, I plan in printing out the first leg and to test its functionality and effectiveness. Then, if all goes well, I will move on to print out and assemble all 4 legs onto my walker.