Building a 7ft tachikoma quadruped

[S9//Batou]

Hi Guys,

Awsome forum you have here, Im loving all these fascinating projects everywhere, great food for thought!

Now, onto the 7ft tachikoma quadruped, aka
[youtube]lL3Ow4oSxww[/youtube]

Im wondering, with say a budget of around $30,000.00, would such a quadruped robot even be possible? Im not talking about active camo, the web slinging, or crazy jumping/wall crawling ability, im talking about the durability, mobility, speed, some jumping ability and navigation controls.

And if so, where would some one begin on embarking on such a project? should I contact private robotics professionals, or attempt to construct this myself?

You all may be wondering why I wish to build a military-grade, high mobility quadruped, well its simple, 1) its awsome 2) its a challange 3) who knows maby the military/private investors/security sector may be intrested in the prototype.

[S9//Batou]

How do I post pictures? 

[S9//Batou]

Ive read the Beginners Section, youtube videos were a sinch, but the eluding 'how to post pictures' post seems slightly obscure.

[S9//Batou]

Design:

Tachikoma are as large as an average sedan, are painted blue and have four "eyes" fitted on the surface of their bodies. Three are on the "head" and one is beneath the abdomen. Each eye has three pinholes, possibly for triangulation. These eyes sometimes become expressive in the typical anime style. Tachikoma are controlled by individual AIs, are capable of speech and generally exhibit a childish, curious, joyful and active personality, although they are consummate professionals in the field. They normally operate as independent units and receive orders from human agents, but they can also be directly piloted from a cockpit in their abdomen.

Tachikoma have four legs and two arms. They can move by walking, or they can drive at high speed by using the wheeled footpads on each of their four legs. They are apparently street-legal (presuming no legal exemption for Section 9). Each wheel appears to be angled and omnidirectional, allowing the Tachikomas to move in any direction with their holonomic drive system. Other abilities of the Tachikoma include jumping great distances, sticking to vertical or inverted surfaces, engaging a thermoptic camouflage mechanism, and grappling/rappelling using their adhesive string launchers. Tachikoma maintain control of their legs while using wheels to drive down a road, and shift their weight around turns. They can also roll briefly on to two legs while driving to avoid an obstacle or pass through a narrow space. To make balance easier, they can move their heavy abdomens with a ball joint. Their movements when walking and jumping were modelled on a jumping spider. Almost all of the Tachikomas' physical abilities are showcased in Episode 2 of Stand Alone Complex, "Runaway Evidence – Testation".

Standard Tachikoma equipment includes a 7.62x51mm light machine gun mounted in the right arm, a secondary weapon hardpoint in the "snout" (usually a 50mm grenade launcher, capable of launching both explosive and gas grenades, but which can be replaced by a six-barrelled 12.7x99mm Gatling gun), a universal cybernetic connector on an extensible, prehensile cable in the left arm, and a built-in thermoptic camouflage system

[youtube]Vkf_mXuNFJc[/youtube]

[airman00]

http://tech.commongate.com/post/John_Deere_s_Giant_Spiderbot/

[S9//Batou]

Cool link, problem is, that spider robot like all the others (Mondo Spider etc..) are way, way! to slow, dont have omnidirectional wheels to skate around - basically, the advancements in robotics in the last 20 years have been great, but the mobility in every largescale robot I have ever seen is absolutly terrible. The only walking robot's of reasionable size to ever come close to competance, would have to be the Quadruped called big dog or Rex Jameson's military Exoskelaton.

Quadrupod
[youtube]Ck0HN2HRNwM[/youtube]

Exoskelaton
[youtube]h2jlIRKswnQ[/youtube]

I believe its totally possible to build a Quadrupod similar to the aforementioned fictional Tachikoma, within the budget of $30,000.00 - $45,000.00, that isnt a total piece of junk like some of the slothbots I've seen getting praise everywhere. Just need to be pointed in the right direction... hmmm maby an engineering professional can help, anyways cheers for the link airman00.

[airman00]

well you would need the following

Motorized wheels for each leg.
Each leg is turned by a mechanism similar to this one - instead of two legs you have four :  http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=3602.0

Make a small scale version first. It's not that difficult small scale but when you scale up it gets a bit difficult.

You can probably build this yourself - depending on your experience

[Admin]

with say a budget of around $30,000.00 . . . You all may be wondering why I wish to build a military-grade, high mobility quadruped . . .

Are you saying you have $30k to drop on your robot?


The problem with very large robots is that the forces are really high. You will also have high stress bending, fatigue, high vibration fracturing, material creep, etc. If you don't do your force calculations accurately, you can expect to spend more time repairing failures then actually running the robot . . .

On that note, I could build that for $30k, minus these features :

active camo, the web slinging, or crazy jumping/wall crawling ability

Oh and to upload a pic, at the bottom of the enter text window, push the 'Additional Options...' link, then 'Browse...'.