Subject:
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Re: New Years Resolution Runner
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.technic
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Date:
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Thu, 27 Nov 2003 00:57:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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2449 times
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In lugnet.technic, Mark Tarrabain wrote:
>
> Anyways, each "step" of a dog's run is evidentally a very long and very
> shallow jump. The key seems to be in the strength of the rear legs,
> which provides a sudden and powerful lift. The front legs seem to act
> as a brake of sorts, allowing the dog to catch himself from falling nose
> first into the dirt. Each jump is extremely shallow, so the animal is
> able to level himself off with its front legs as he quickly draws them
> back. At the same time, the rear legs have moved forward and the animal
> again makes another leap, bending its front legs so as not to interfere
> with the motion and then quickly pulling them forward again to catch
> itself at the end of its next "step". The overall effect is actually
> quite graceful.
>
> I don't think you'd be able to do this with LEGO. You might be able to
> duplicate the motion, but you'd need enough strength in the legs to
> actually *FORCE* the whole model into the air for some discernable
> distance, and I can't see LEGO pneumatics being strong enough to
> accomplish that.
>
> Then again, I'd be impressed as heck to be proven wrong. Before the hot
> air baloon was discovered, it was impossible for man to fly.
>
> > > Mark
I've just built a prototype motorized quadraped as a design study to see how
feasible a design like this is. It uses rubber bands on the legs to give some
spring, and its motion is a bit like a bucking bronco, with both the front and
rear legs leaving the ground at different points of its stride. I think that a
running quadraped is possible, but a running biped would be very difficult
because of balance issues.
-James
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New Years Resolution Runner
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| (...) Update: I've improved my quad design, and now it bounces off of all four legs and leaves the ground for short periods of time. The downside is that it's pretty erratic, but with some tweaking, I might be able to get a decent bounding gait. (...) (21 years ago, 1-Dec-03, to lugnet.technic)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: New Years Resolution Runner
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| (...) Well by that defintion, simply flipping one of your many walkers upsidedown would make it "running" :) I actually studied quadraped running back in 1981 when I was writing a game on an Apple ][+ for a graphic dog-racing simulation/game. I (...) (21 years ago, 26-Nov-03, to lugnet.technic)
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