The FireAnt hexapod robot

February 3 2013 by Zenta in A-Pod |2 Comments

A couple of months ago I got the FireAnt kit from Orion Robotics. The FireAnt is based on my A-Pod design and made from red anodized aluminium. My first impression was very good, all parts have a great quality with a fine brushed finish. Assembling the robot was an easy task when following their very detailed assembly guide. One of the major modification I did to the FireAnt was to make a new 2DOF joint for the abdomen (tail). The reasons for doing this was to make the abdomen work as a battery holder and for making the 2 DOF joint more compact and similar to how I did it on my original A-Pod. By comparing these pictures you'll see that the modification only involve one custom made part:

Orion Robotics FireAnt:

fireant_iso_twist_small800600

The modified FireAnt abdomen 2DOF joint:

FireAnt004

Compared to the original A-pod:

A-Pod

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Initially, the 2S 2200 mAh LiPo battery was ment to be placed under the mcu boards inside the main body. When it comes to LiPo batteries I like to charge them in a safe area. This mean that it should be easy to replace the battery. By placing the battery inside the abdomen, replacing the battery isn't a problem anymore and you get more free space under the mcu boards for servo wires etc. I've also used some shorter standoffs for lowering the boards. The new digital HV-220 servos are fitted with a very long servo wire and thats a relief when it comes to the tibia servos. That also makes it easy to guide the wires without the need for extending the wires.

I'll take some better pictures of it when I've uploaded and tested the software. I'll post more information about the mcu boards and the servos later.

FireAnt002  

As you can see I'm using two power switches; the rear switch is the main switch for both electronics and servos, the front switch is for the servos. Personally I prefer having a separate powerswitch for the servos.

The mcu boards are programmed through an USB cable, unfortunately the usb port on the DaVinci main board is a bit hard to reach every time you need to update the software. I solved this by using a mini USB roll-up cable that is permanently connected to the board. I placed the roll-up holder inside the abdomen as well:

FireAnt003

FireAnt005

Like I said, I'll give you some updates when I've tested the software for the FireAnt.

Morphex III Becomes Boca Bearing Company’s Innovation Contest Winner

January 2 2013 by Zenta in MorpHex, a morphing hexapod |17 Comments

MorpHex

A few days ago I got the great news from the Boca Bearings company that my contest entry won their grand prize! More information about the contest results can be found here. I do feel very honored for getting a prize like this. I'm also very humble thinking of all the other great projects that was submitted to contest. One of my favorite projects was the human powered helicopter, a very impressive achievement indeed.

As you may have noticed I've not had much time for updating my blog lately, its mostly caused by little free time. When it comes to the MorpHex project I've done some progress on the next version of MorpHex, called MorpHex MK2. Or maybe I should call it Mark 3.. You see, I've had a few setbacks lately. I earlier mentioned that I would try to go for a fully symmetric version and using a completely different leg design. I did some progress on that attempt, but after a while I realized that it wouldn't work under one critical condition; transforming from ball to hex. Here is a rather low quality picture of a very different coxa with dual femurs I made under this attempt:

MorpHexMkII_02

After a lot of thinking I came to a decision of going for an asymmetric design again. To be honest I don't think a symmetric version of MorpHex would be very appealing. You see, a symmetric design mean that the upper and lower leg sections share the same coxa servo. So when walking the upper sections always need to follow the lower legs. An asymmetric design where the upper section can keep the half sphere shape is something I really liked with the first version. So this time the I'm going for an upper section with 2 DOF. I do hope this will work better.

So far I'm still working on assembling the lower leg sections. I'm using a slightly different coxa design (don't have any pictures ready for that yet) and a tibia bracket that are going to make the sphere sections much stronger. A picture of some the new brackets here:

MorpHexMkII_04

There are still a lot of work left when it comes to hardware assembling, calibration and programming.

Again, I want to thank Boca Bearing for the very generous prize! Hopefully many more robots come in the future.

-Zenta, "Having fun with robots".

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