Our biggest update from this week is that we’ve just been sponsored by Tompkins Industries! Literally 15 seconds before we were about to place a giant order for hoses and fittings to finish our power unit, Tompkins Industries showed up and asked how they can help. Tompkins is a global suppliers of hydraulic adapters and fittings (among many other components) with 99% same-day fulfillment from stock, and are the perfect partners to work with for this phase of the project. Thanks Tompkins!

We worked with Tompkins Industries to get hydraulic fittings and hoses in-house to complete the power unit, and spent our week doing hydraulic assembly. In this update, we’ll show you our progress so far, explain a little bit more about the hydraulic system, and teach you how to assemble hydraulic fittings into a working system. Check it all out here:

Next week, we’ll be working on finishing some modifications to the structure of the power unit to attach batteries, accumulator mounting brackets, and lift points, and we’ll also be testing the prototype leg with the new orifice-reduction fittings James mentioned in his last post. We’re now waiting on some specialty hydraulic parts to finish off the power unit, but once those parts arrive, we’ll be ready to test the unit for the first time!

-Gui

Man, what a week! After much toil and effort, the Torchmate 2 computer-controlled plasma cutter is up and running. We’re now putting it through its paces, setting accelerations correctly, tuning cutting power, and figuring out how to transfer files through the two or three pieces of software that control the unit. In the next week, we’ll be adding water to our home-built water table in order to reduce the smoke and particulates and give us cleaner cuts.

We also continued working on the control systems for the leg and the hydraulic power unit. In order to develop code faster, we went ahead and concentrated on updating our simulation to reflect the mechanical realities of the leg – specifically, we added backlash and quirky valve response to the simulation, in the hopes that we can iterate much faster on the control system at home (instead of on-robot). James will have a long, in-depth control systems update soon about this.

The hydraulic power unit is coming along – we’ve mounted all our components, and we’re now working on connecting them together. This week, we’ll show you some of the mounting and fitting assembly work we’ve been doing, and we’re going to take the time to step you all through how the hydraulic power unit works. Let us know if anything was unclear!

Tune in next week for more work on the power unit, and updates on some interesting control systems we’ve been working on to address our mechanical and hydraulic issues on the prototype leg.

-Gui

This update took us a little longer to get out than usual. We had hoped to finish building a computer-controlled plasma cutter and present it to you all in one update but unfortunately, the manufacturer didn’t ship us all the parts we needed to finish the thing. Oops. We’ll now be getting back to our regularly-scheduled once-a-week updates.

In this update, we cover the building of a Torchmate 2 computer-controlled plasma cutter with a custom-built water table, the continuing development of the hydraulic power unit, and continued testing and debugging of the prototype leg. Check it all out here:

This coming week we’ll be working a lot more on the powerplant – we have a hydraulic heat exchanger coming in that we need to mount (and that we’ll talk more about), and we’ll be starting work on connecting all of our components hydraulically. We’ll also continue development work on the leg, and figure out what courses of action (both mechanically and in control system development) we need to take to reduce the leg judder that you see in many of our videos.

-Gui

It’s time for the weekly update! The big news this week is that we finally got the prototype leg under closed-loop control – woohoo! We also continued work on the hydraulic power unit frame, made spacers for the powertrain, and started the final round of design on the chassis and leg based on lessons learned from the prototype leg. Check it all out in the video below:

In this coming week, we’ll be doing a lot of tuning of the control loops that govern the leg’s motion, continuing the final design process for the legs, and pushing ahead with the hydraulic power unit integration. Stay tuned – we’re starting to pick up some serious speed!

-Gui

In our previous update, we mentioned that we had to switch columns within Artisan’s Asylum. We didn’t mention HOW we switched columns. We’d like to take a moment to amuse you with the rather ridiculous, 20-30 minute process we used to get a stuck base mount off the column… set to the Benny Hill theme.

 

Hello everyone!

We have come to realize that a) we are bad at this continuing-to-write-blog-posts thing, and b) even so, we really need to be documenting this process for the world to see. Thus, we’ve decided to change gears a bit and offer weekly video updates instead of blog posts. Check out our first update below!

Let us know what you think, and if you have anything you’d like to learn more about!

-Gui

So we just wrapped our Swag Design Contest up, and we’re proud to present the winners. If you read our previous post, you know that we were looking for entries for a Bumper Sticker, Supporter T-Shirt, and Team T-Shirt. These items are destined to become swag offered in our upcoming Kickstarter campaign, coming up next week!

We ended up with 37 submissions in the contest, and the team voted over the course of the past weekend on which designs they liked the best. Without further ado, we give you…

 

The Bumper Sticker:

Continue reading →

So we have this swag design contest going right now, ending next Friday, and we’ve had a number of designers mention that they’d love to see some examples of potential slogans. We’ve compiled a couple of our favorites here; feel free to add your own or give us feedback in the comments!

• Giant Robots: Because life isn’t dangerous enough.
• My other car has 6 legs.
• If you have to ask why I build giant robots for fun, you might not like my new best friend/ride.
• Robots: Man’s other best friend.
• We build because we can.
• I build giant robots. If you see me running, try to keep up.
• Wheels are overrated.
• Wheels are so Mesopotamian
• Stompy: Dragging you into the future, 6 feet at a time.
• Be nice to the robots. They’re bigger than you.
• Robots: You’re what’s for dinner.
• Humans: The other white meat.
• 5 gallons to the mile. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

After months of fabrication, debugging, testing, more fabrication, and yet more debugging, we’re happy to announce that the leg cart rows itself right along! Check this out:

We have full inverse kinematic control of the test leg, and can get it to move the 600-pound cart in a straight line. The only catch, of course, is that we have to wheel the battery cart along behind the robot – hilarious shenanigans ensued. Next time, longer wires…

It’s still a little bit shaky, but we’re calling this good enough for now and moving on to the full-size prototype leg. We’re pretty sure our pistons on the test leg generate maximum forces that result in relatively low accelerations of our legs (the yaw piston produces around 800 pounds of force, to move a 150 pound leg), which is why everything’s so wobbly. We’re also pretty sure that slapping pistons that generate 12,000 to 18,000 pounds of force on 350-pound legs will take most of that wobble RIGHT OUT.

Now, on to the full size leg and Stompy!

Keep an eye out for my next update on how our full-size legs are designed.

-Gui

So in case you didn’t know, we’re building Stompy, a 4,000 pound, propane-powered, 6-legged hydraulic walking robot that seats two. We’re about to put out a call to fundraise for the final robot via Kickstarter, and we want to have really awesome stuff to give away. If this doesn’t call for some cool logos, T-shirts and bumper stickers, we don’t know what does.

We, unfortunately, are all engineers, and those particular kinds of design skills have atrophied over the years, if they ever existed.

Thus, we introduce the Project Hexapod Swag Design Contest!

We would like designs for the following:

1. A bumper sticker. This is the reward for the first Kickstarter level, where you declare your undying love for giant robots by vandalizing nearby surfaces with adhesive-backed paper.

2. A supporter T-shirt. This is the shirt you get at one of the low-to-medium Kickstarter levels that screams “A bunch of nutjobs up in Boston have built a giant, life-endangering walking robot, and it’s so amazingly cool I bought this shirt to support them.”

3. A team T-shirt. This is the shirt that the 19 robot builders get to wear to fairs, job interviews, first dates, etc. It has to say “I build giant, life-endangering robots for fun, and if you have to ask why you wouldn’t understand the answer.” We’re looking for a comical front design here; the back would be designed later to include sponsor logos, team member names, and other shout-outs.

For those designs, we are putting up the following prizes:

1. A $100 prize for winning a category (up to $300 for winning all 3)

2. A free ride on the finished Stompy robot

3. If you win all 3 categories, free driver training on the Stompy robot instead of a ride

Both T-shirts are restricted to 4 colors or less so that they can be silkscreened cheaply; the bumper sticker will be digitally printed, and can be whatever colors you want. The supporter T-shirt will be one-sided – you choose whether it’s the front or back. Entrants (except for the bumper sticker) must be capable of producing color-separated files that could be sent to a screenprinter. Upon submitting a design to the contest, you grant Project Hexapod a non-exclusive license to it for the indefinite future.

We would like the swag to be comically self-aware of how large, dangerous, and awesome this project is, all wrapped up into one design. Significant bonus points will be awarded for catchy slogans, cartoonish depictions, and humor. Ideally, a conceptual Stompy would be pictured in part or in whole, in a way that we could make into a logo.

Enter the contest by emailing rideablehexapod@gmail.com with the subject line “Swag Design Contest -” followed by “Bumper Sticker”, “Supporter T-Shirt”, or “Team T-Shirt”. Attach your image files to the message, along with any description you think is necessary. In your email, indicate if you are willing to modify the design given feedback or not. Enter as many different designs (in separate emails) as you’d like!

All entries must be received by noon on Friday, July 20th. Entries will be voted on by the Project Hexapod team, and winners will be notified by the following Wednesday.

Here’s some art from our most recent development to spur some creativity: