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We want the grounded joint positions on each side to change in alternate directions along the arc as seen on the right. This will give us a long stride length on one side and a short stride length on the other.
Ty, transition this into the functional design, material choices, and packaging.
Paragraph from poster: We designed this robot to be fabricated nearly entirely out of mostly from 3mm acrylic to make save machining and printing time through use of the time-friendly laser cutter. The frame had joinery teeth to facilitate bonding the panels together with epoxy, and the walls of the frame were braced with internal gussets. The drive motor is coupled to all six legs via three D-shafts, timing belts, and pulleys. The driving links of each leg have alternating D-profile holes to make the phases of each leg in line for proper walking. The two six-bars reside inside the robot's chassis and a steering system is made with a servo, hollow aluminum shaft, some laser-cut acrylic actuation arms, and ball joints . The use of the shaft and a total of four ball joint connections is a design change that we had to make do to the lack of rigidity in the six-bar mechanism. There are absolutely no ball-for connecting links. To save on cost and weight, there are no ball bearings used in this design. All ; all joints were made with only bolts, low-friction PTFE washers, and machined Delrin spacers, with the exception of some bronze bushings used for shaft bearings. For frequently-rotating parts of the assembly–such as the D shaft seats in the frame and the servo shaft–we did make use of dry-running bushings. Rubber washers were added to the feet to increase traction. The motor and servo will be controlled via a microcontroller and transmitter/receiver system.Here is some renders of the final CAD.
