robots.net - Personal info for lkcl

lkcl is currently certified at Journeyer level.

Name: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
Member since: 2002-01-02 10:46:13
Last Login: 2005-12-17 13:52:43

Homepage: http://cb1.com/~lkcl/SpiderBot

Notes:

Hi, i'm the proud owner of 3 part-sets of the realrobots.co.uk dinky-toys, and am interested in building a rather large and dangerous 200kg walker robot for a robotwars.co.uk competition.

i will be writing a simulation for it, not just as proof-of-concept but because controlling 12 legs will be almost impossible manually under intense battle conditions. i'll need the simulation to develop the control software. i can't really say more about the robot's design, because then other people would make one and wipe the floor with razor [literally!]

i also own an axis.com etrax-100 developer board, which runs linux 2.0.38, has 3 serial ports, 2 parallel ports, 1 rs-485 and 1 10/100 ethernet. [their latest boards have VM, linux 2.4, and built-in bluetooth!] i hope to use this board as the controller for the walker, receiving commands from the simulation software by adapting the standard RF transmitters used by all the competitors.

Articles Posted by lkcl

Open Source Motor Controller 1 Feb 2002 at 09:51 UTC

Recent blog entries by lkcl

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24 Jan 2002 »

Set up a basic web-site on SpiderBall

20 Jan 2002 »

well, doing weight-assessements, i came up with this:

70cm body size requires:

- 5mm plate armour, 2msq (weight: 38.90 kg)

- 6of legs, 1.57metre @ 35mm (weight 71.28 kg)

- frame 30of @ 30cm (weight 3.5kg)

- gearing / internal framework (appx weight 10kg)

- 12of motors (litton-ps, reliance, iskra, lemco) (appx weight 30-64kg)

- 3of batteries hawker 12V (appx weight 20kg)

- 12of controllers (bigcheeserobot.com) (weight 6kg appx)

total: 190kg.

eeks!

16 Jan 2002 »

well, i just made a cardboard mini-mock-up of the robot, which is limited to 137kg, not to 200 as i first thought (argh). and the mock-up took about 90 mins to make and is _extremely_ useful.

i now have something to be able to guage whether the design is practical, whether i can shorten the legs to save weight (and thence get bigger motors, and maybe even some 4QD controllers for them!)

4 Jan 2002 (updated 1 Feb 2002 at 09:52 UTC) »

realrobots.co.uk

i have three subscriptions, and am ordering spares frequently. reason: lots of bits to test and break. the axis developer board, ultimately, when the circuit diagrams are made available (issue 19?), i will probably plug in to control it :)

spiderbot research

12 motors, from robotbooks.com, are an INSANE $USD 4,140 (excluding shipping!). however, these motors would allow the spiderbot's legs to move at an equally insane 11 feet *per second*, and for *each leg* to be capable of lifting 3000 kilograms - that's 3 metric tonnes.

these are some _serious_ electric motors. normally, people only buy one - for a spinning disk weapon!

12 motors equals 65 kilos.

battery array plus electronics equals 5? kilos

frame equals an estimated 25 kilos, if using stainless steel box frame, and that fancy polycarbon plastic whatever.

65, 70, 95, that leaves 65 kilos for weaponry & legs.

yikes... it's going to be close. the limit is 150 kilos for a walking robot...

2 Jan 2002 »

spiderbot simulation

currently having fun picking up source code for mesa-gl, with examples etc. matrices multiplication mmmm :) need to work out where the legs will go, then find out which is the lowest leg. hmmmm....

that would involve... finding the three lowest points that describe a plane, which no other legs intersect. cool! [i'm not going to worry about objects on the plane, for now...]

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