Completed: April 2018
This project was in my second year design course. The goal of the project was to design a moving robot that didn’t use wheels. The movement would be driven by motors but we had to create an alternative mechanism for the robot to move. The robot would also have to be able to walk over an obstacle of unknown height.
My group decided to use a gear train with rotating legs to allow the robot to move. Most of the components were created using arcylic, and then wooden dowel was used for the axles.
The robot did not work. It had a variety of issues but they are all important learning lessons. We decided to make the front legs move slower than the rear two. In our minds, this would make the front legs have a higher torque than the rest of the legs, which would allow the robot to climb objects better. However, we forgot one crucial detail. All the legs are on the same gear train transmission. In reality, all the slower legs did was put the robot out of balance and cause it to fall over. We would have been better off making all the legs move at the same speed. Our design didn’t consider how the electronics would be secured and we just let them sit freely in the box, looking back, this a poor design choice. The robot design could have also been designed better for assembly. I still didn’t understand the concept of set screws which this design also needed.