Don't ad-block us - support your favorite websites. We have safe, unobstrusive, robotics related ads that you actually want to see - see here for more.
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Crunchy,I agree with you on study nature, but disagree about your thought process. I don't mean that your thought process is wrong for you, just that I want to go at it from a different one :*) So here's mine:If you wanted to design a leg, how long would each section between joints be? Does it matter? What about the sweep of the joint, how does it effect the design? What are my design goals? Do I want the completed system to be fast, smooth, efficient? I choose efficiency, specifically energy(electrical), and then asked myself efficient at what, standing, walking or running? My assumption is that different leg designs are efficient at different things. I believe humans are very efficient walkers, we can walk all day and burn very little calories (I read this somewhere, no data of my own to support it.) I wonder if birds are maybe efficient at standing? They seem to do a lot of it, on wires, tree branches, even foraging for food on the ground they hop from one standing position to another, but that's just a guess.Next I asked myself: How do we determine efficiency? I know we can do it once we build something, adjust its gait and we can directly measure how much energy it is using. If we did this long enough we might be able to build up enough data to start making assumptions about how various design choices effect efficiency, but as I don't have access to that data is there another option? Maybe I can try to use math and physics to predetermine the data before I build something.If I do this correctly I might be able to create a template for designing legs/bi-ped systems that would give me the data I am looking for as well as the ability to test additional designs with out having to build them. This also gives me something to work on as I slowly acquire the parts to start building :*)I haven't read anywhere that folks have even looked at the energy draw of their bot's as they walk, but it would be some interesting data to see. I believe we would need the robot's design, the gait it was performing and the energy used. If the data was specific enough to show how the energy draw changed over time that would be even better as I imagine different points in the gait require significantly different amounts of energy.I am close to being able to drive my AX-12's, as soon as I can command them through some basic positions I plan to start testing them to determine current draw vs. load. This way I am creating some good data while improving my programing skills with Adrunio and AX-12's. I plan to upload the data here afterwords to see what everyone thinks :*)Cheers,Scott