Chillout Zone
Let's Make Robots!
Home

Gain control over your legs movements!

, ,
Tip/walkthrough
 
fritsl's picture
By fritsl
@ February 5, 2008

If you are building a walking Robot, you will pull out your hair when trying to optimize the leg's movements.

I had this idea; I had a digital camera, I strapped on a LED with a rubber band to the tip of the foot, made the robot do the walking-movement I thought was right, while long-time-exposing it with the camera!

Resoult; Yellow stribes showed the path. I could now much, much cleareer get a picture of weather the foot was actually lifting up before moving back etc etc.

Really fast and effective :) Also one can see where the foot is stopping (the LED is showing in full), and if you let the Microcontroller turn on and off (perhaps a second) LED, you can match this with the code you upload, and this way tune in to the rigth moves.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
By OddBot
@ Sun, 2009-09-27 02:09
OddBot's picture
I should have done something like that with the caterpillar, it took 2.5days just to work out the basic moves and they still need work. I decided to leave move optimisation to the customer.
By jklug80
@ Mon, 2009-09-28 00:39
jklug80's picture
The Microsoft approach! Release it nearly done and let the consumer help finish it ;)
By fritsl
@ Mon, 2009-09-28 22:07
fritsl's picture
Heeeyyyy .. Time warp; Old gang commenting on old post :D
By rik
@ Tue, 2009-09-29 23:28
rik's picture
I was browsing the good ol' stuff while researching the pulse. I believe there are some real treasures hidden around there. That's how I discovered this one and decided to respond.
By fritsl
@ Wed, 2009-09-30 22:49
fritsl's picture

TWSS

(all of the above!)

By rik
@ Sat, 2009-09-26 21:21
rik's picture

tj-pt10_four_traces_500.jpg

here

By robologist
@ Sun, 2008-10-19 08:44
robologist's picture
This is a great idea of debugging legs, awesome! Thanks Fritsl
By fritsl
@ Tue, 2008-03-18 20:12
fritsl's picture

What is to be a triangle?

If you are thinking about the shape the Yellow LED makes, no :)

This was a walker on four legs (one of the hardest to do, always balance on 2 legs while moving 2 other) - And it shows how a leg is moved down, back, swept up while the other 2 legs go down .. forward without touching ground.. and again :)

I may actually have a video of that walker somewhere, I had forgot.. Hmm other computer, maby later..

/ Frits 

By fritsl
@ Sun, 2008-10-19 09:15
fritsl's picture

Found the old video: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/2497

Still I know there is a better video of it somewhere, one where it shows that it actually could walk pretty well.. Will find it one day :)

By Fredrik Andersson
@ Sat, 2008-03-15 16:45
Fredrik Andersson's picture

I did a similar thing when i tested the legs for my hexapod - i attached a pen to it. I never thought about this method and it probably works a lot better (you need to have a bit pressure to the paper with the pen, which affects the movements a bit).

Thanks, i may as well use it sometime!

 BTW, is that supposed to be a triangle? :P It looked similarily skew with squares for me.