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Subject: 
Re: I was thinking about bipedal walkers this morning and....
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Thu, 18 Dec 2003 21:10:02 GMT
Original-From: 
Andy Gombos <gombos_2000@earthlink.%saynotospam%net>
Viewed: 
2695 times
  
Yes, I did a prototype using pneumatics as muscles.  It worked semi-well
- the thing walked somewhat, although in a very stiff gate.  The main
problem came from using pneumatics.  I couldn't keep the pressure high
enough to swing the legs back out before the walker fell on itself.
Also keeping the thing balanced was a problem, as the legs were only one
beam thick and a RCX was placed on a movable carriage on top. Using
motors was impractical due to the increased weight and lack of precise
control (easily).

I think it would be possible using wider legs - that prototype is half
done, but I ran out of really long (14 stud?) beams (~16 for each leg,
~10 for the body), as well as shorter 6 stud ones for the knee joint.

There are videos on the internet of passive-kinetic machines that can
walk using this basic technique, Google can find some links.  If anyone
wants, I'll see about finding some webspace to host the videos (~500k
each, fairly poor quality).

Andy



Mark Tarrabain wrote:

> Consider the way we walk... we start by effectively starting to lean
> slightly forward, and we swing a leg some distance in front of ourselves
> to stop from falling.  We then start to bring the other leg forward as
> we reupright ourselves and repeat the process, each time stopping
> ourselves from falling with a leg that we bring forward.   If we
> alternate legs, it is called walking and if we use the same leg each
> time, it is called limping.
> 
> Has anyone ever tried to build or design a bipedal walker that imitates
> this form of motion?  I'm thinking that it probably wouldn't even be
> possible to do without flexible knees.  Is this level of sophistication
> even implementable in LEGO to the point that it's genuinely useful and
> not just a proof-of-concept?
> 
> > > Mark
> 



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