Conclusions:
We accomplished our goal of creating two identical, working Theo-Jansen legs that had the desired motion on the foot joint. We were also able to motorize the design and move the legs properly without having to turn anything by hand, using
Design with two Jansen legs coupled with the attachment of stepper motors that drives the motion worked as intended. The resulting motion is similar to our analysis for a forward motion, and the simplicity of using dowels instead of screws helped with less friction in the joints. This idea was a great decision because the motion was better than using the screws.
However, we conclude that our design is not robust for fast motions, and the areas for improvement are:
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using a DC motor with an encoder and planetary gearbox. We were able to connect all of the joints and links smoothly using purely press fits, bearings, and wooden dowels. This helped with reducing the amount of friction experienced on each joint and increased the robustness of the entire mechanism
Future Work:
We could not build a robot with four working legs and include the coding for it to be able to turn in different directions and have line following capabilities
Areas for improvement are:
- Increasing the number of legs
- Fabricate a body to fit two motors and all of the wirings for L298n Motor Driver
- Code the motors to sync up when walking/turning
- Use photoresistors and PID control to produce line following capabilities