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Subject: 
Re: New Years Resolution Runner
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.technic
Date: 
Mon, 1 Dec 2003 03:42:50 GMT
Viewed: 
2777 times
  
In lugnet.technic, James Loewen wrote:
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



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. I'll post
some more info and pictures if I'm successful.

-James



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: New Years Resolution Runner
 
(...) 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 (...) (21 years ago, 27-Nov-03, to lugnet.technic)

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