Hello, I am planning, after some trial and error, to build a perfect hexapod handyman robot. I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions as I am really amateur at this stuff. I am well aware that I would not be able to complete something as complex from the first try so I definetely deserve being shouted at to do something simpler instead and I shall. But in the mean time, please say something about this design.
The design:
-A hexapod robot with 3 walking legs and 3 hands capable of using tools or grippers.
Why:
When traveling off-road, with lots of obstacles, or climbing, legs are better than wheels. Three legs are enough to be stable on a surface. One more leg is needed to walk because I am not a god of unbalanced walking. Two more legs (hands) are needed to hold two objects. The fourth walking leg is not needed when standing still so it could be used to perform some action between these two objects - cutting, welding, soldering, duck-taping, whatever.
- Preferably somewhere the size of a laptop if you look from above.
- The group of 3 legs should alone be able to lift the body plus 3kg of payload, and so should be the group of 3 hands.
- Hands should have 6 DOF and be able to use interchangable tools (custom saw, gripper, sensor, and other kinds of modules)
- Should have enough battery power to perform work for one hour without recharging.
Programming tasks ( at least I can handle those =/ )
- Uses machine vision to detect shape of terrain and obstacles to adjust it's gait for either fastest travel, or most energy-efficient.
- Also uses machine vision for orienting in space, and to make sure the tools accurately follow the working plan;
- Radio-controllable
- Limited autonomy (returning to where a radio signal was lost, returning to recharge station when power is low, doing work in a defined space without supervision)
Kind of work it could perform:
- Getting coke from the fridge.
- Mawing the lawn.
- Woodwork, cutting planks to certain length, sanding them etc.
- Assembly-disassembly of random stuff held together with screws.
- Soldering and assembly of electronic things from components and PCB's.
- Washing the floor.
- Finding salvageble electronics in junkyards.
- Scouting (mapping of areas).
Okay now the question time:
1) 3*3 DOF + 3*6 DOF = 27 DOF. If I use, say, 4.8-6 V servos like
this one, would that mean I need 168 Volts from my power source or should I go back to school and learn Ohm's law? (also where would I get such voltage without a wall plug?)
2) Should I use DC motors, stepper motors, servos or pneumatics for this?
3) Should it look like a spider or like centaur? Question of hands easily reaching the object while legs not stretching to far for balance.
4) Where should a camera go for a good field of view and actually seeing what the hands are doing?
Thanks in advance.