Mechanical Engineering Student
Zhe Yi Soo
Bio-inspired robot
In this project, a bio inspired robot was built. The idea for the robot has to be inspired and innovated by nature. Bio-inspired design was learning
from nature and making a mechanism which is simpler and more effective since nature doesnt always use the simplest and most efficient way to the result. The challenge for this project was letting the robot to move independently in
a straight line after being turned on. A robot with legs were required for this project, wheels were not allowed to be used as moving mechanism. Materials that were being provided in this project are screws, inch MDF board, 1/8 inch MDF board, AA sized battery pack, an Arduino board, and Hitec-425BB servo motors. Other materials were allowed to be used if needed.
Design 2 was inspired by a water strider which moves all its six legs at once to push itself forward. A sprawled leg design was used in this robot. However, a four leg robot design had been made instead a six legs design because it might need to use 12 servo motors and was not desirable. The movement of the robot was lifting one leg up and moved the leg forward then put it down. All the other legs followed the same movement and only one leg was moving at once. After four of the legs had been placed forward, four of the legs would be moving backwards at the same time and leading to the whole body to move forward
Static Analysis
A of Hildebrand gait plot (See Fig. 4) was drawn to see
the interval time of the legs contacting with the floor. The plot showed that at least three legs were contacted with the floor while moving. A set of convex contact polygon plots was drawn according to the Hildebrand gait plot to illustrate the movement of the robot. We have to make sure that the center of mass falls inside the convex contact polygon so that it wouldnt fall. From the convex contact polygon plots, it was proved that the robot was statically stable since the centre of mass laid inside the convex contact polygon in every movement.
To see this project in a more detailed repot form,