Introduction: Simple Quadruped Robot
This instructable was created in fulfillment of the project requirement of the Makecourse at the University of South Florida (www.makecourse.com)
Over the past year and a half, I have been working on designing a new quadruped robot for the MECH Club at USF. I decided to take the Make Course class at USF during the Fall 2017 semester to build a prototype of my most recent design. I went into this class only really understanding the mechanical design of the robot, and had no clue how to wire it up and program it. This class taught me the necessary skills in order to figure it out on my own and finally make my prototype design come to life. This Instructable will show you all of the different components to this design and how to make it on your own. It isn't perfect, and there are better quadruped designs out there, but this is only a prototype and I plan on using the things I learn from this design to modify and make a new design that is even more awesome than this one.
This Instructable will be split into three parts:
Mechanical Design: All 3D printed parts will be uploaded in solidworks part file format and the list of parts will be included in this section as well as photos for how the robot was put together.
Electrical Design: A drawing of the electrical system will be included as well as photos of the system inside it's container.
Program: This section will include my Arduino sketch as well as links to information on the servo driver board I used for this project.
Step 1: Mechanical Design
Parts List:
3D Printed Parts:
1 Base
1 Cover
4 Leg Boxes
4 Leg 1s
4 Leg 2s
4 Leg 3s
4 Toes
12 Buttons
1 Electrical Box
Purchased Parts:
8 Servos
8 Servo connectors (comes with the servo)
56 Screws (Diameter 0.107 in or smaller)
52 Nuts
1 Arduino Uno
1 16 channel 12-bit pwm servo driver board
1 IR reciever
1 IR remote
1 small bread board power rail
Various bread board wires
1 Four AA Battery bank (to power the servos)
1 9v Battery (to power Arduino)
1 9v Power Cable (for Arduino)
Attachments
Step 2: Electrical Design
The diagram photos represent the wiring for the IR sensor and the wiring for the servo driver separately. To combine these, wire 5v and GND to the positive and negative lines of the bread board power rail respectively, and then hook up the positive and negative leads for both the IR sensor and the servo driver board into the power rail. That will supply 5v to both of the components and they will work properly after that. There are photos of how this looks on the prototype.
https://learn.adafruit.com/16-channel-pwm-servo-driver/hooking-it-up
Step 3: Program
Attached is the Arduino sketch I made to use this robot. You might have to adjust various parameters such as the pulse length positions of the servos to calibrate them correctly or the servo channels and the IR receive data pin if you used a different digital port for the data line. I had to do this due to one set of the legs not lining up correctly in the neutral position.
Information on the servo driver board, including explanations on the code as well as a download for the library can be found here: https://learn.adafruit.com/16-channel-pwm-servo-dr...
