We’ve mounted Stairbot in a hanging position so we could perform some testing on its legs. We’ve discovered some issues with our servos, and we keep blowing some of them up. We’re not sure if it’s an issue with the design, or if the servos are bad.
A video of the legs cycling through some motions:
We also have some pictures of the hanging setup:
Friday afternoon we were able to complete the first of four legs of Stairbot. We were hoping to complete more than that, but, we currently only have enough servos for one leg and we’re waiting on the rest to arrive. However, in the meantime, we will work on being able to control this one leg so when we add more, it will be easy to develop gaits. To control Stairbot, we’re going to be tethering an Arduino to a computer for extra computational power, to allow us to perform inverse kinematic calculations.
More updates to follow as more parts come in.
Stairbot is getting closer and closer to completion. The above render is what the final version should look like. We’ve decided to laser cut a lot of acrylic to build most of the leg and body structure.
We’ve ordered all of our electronics, and we should be receiving them soon. Then we can start actually programming and getting gaits set up. Our goal is to have the construction mostly completed by the end of the month, and start working on some basic motion control.
Below are some images from the build process.
Earlier this evening the Stairbot Team (a CMU Robotics Club project I head) began construction of our robot. Thus far we have only done initial part sizing (machining stock down to the size we will need for the part). Below are pictures of the machined parts and the schematic for them. The schematic was created by Mike Ornstein who has done all of the CAD work for Stairbot thus far. Our grant submission can be found on his site: here.
I’ll follow up with more details about Stairbot later this week.
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