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From: |
sasquevaneach-at-aim.com |
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Subject: |
Bring on the infantry [TANKS] |
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Date: |
Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:39:18 -0500 |
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Reply-To: |
tanks-at-rctankcombat.com |
After a marathon session last night the "little man"'s legs have been finished and it works, after a fashion.
What you are looking at is the lower half of the robot. The bit that looks like a shoulder is in fact its waist. The shoulders will come above the maximum extent of the legs (the brass bit) so that they will be concealed within the chest cavity. This also leaves room for the throwing mechnism (overarm, naturally)! The model's motor is omitted (it goes down the middle) as I still trying to sort out graunches.
This is a good moment for reflection. The design brief as it were was to build a 1/6th scale robot which could walk, on grass, reasonably fast, throw a paintball, be remote controlled, and cheap enough to duplicate so one could operate 3 or 4. Quite a challenge, bearing in mind that Robot Wars never produced a walking robot which was anything other than a joke (that I can remember) and this one will ahve to mix it with tanks.
The purpose of the knee mechanism is to keep the foot flat at all times. The leg (in brass) is on a cam which provides forward movement. The advantage of the knee is that the robot moves forward over the feet as the legs advance. It's difficult to explain but if I can put it like this: If you have a fixed foot on the leg as all toys using this system do, you end up with a stride of about 2cm. This one has a stride of 13cm. That means that it has a theoretical speed of about 0.4mph as opposed to "hardly moving".
The weapon system was intended to be a paintball on a spring-loaded arm. Control system is a "crook",a long stick with a hook on the end. Press one switch (the left arm) and it starts or stops. Press another (backpack or helmet top) and he fires.
Steering: The robot has a 10 cm string attached (bootlace?) to the back of the foot. Press on the left bootlace with the crook when he is moving,and he'll turn left. Possibly without falling over.
I should be able to get this thing walking on carpet. However it has 16 moving parts (apart from the motor and gears) and clearly is not robust enough for battles. So, on went the thinking cap and produced this:
View full size
This hasn't come out very well as a scan, but what you have is 2 equal-sized wheels each side, operating a leg which remains vertical at all times. An arm is attached to each "shoulder" wheel, with a paintball in each hand. The robot simply walks forward and slaps a paintball on an enemy (tank/gun/infantryman). Not very authentic looking, but should be very robust and fun to operate. Stride would be about 5cm, but can be faster than the other one (technically it is running not walking) and one can put one behind the other to increase stability and perhaps create a bazooka team.Most important is that there are only 5 moving parts (7 if you include the arms) and they can be solid stuff like plywood.
I might even put the lower wheel at ground level so that it is actually running on wheels not feet.