I've been doing some tinkering with hybrid leg/wheel designs and built up a 5 joint leg with a steerable wheel attached at the end. I was looking at the completed assembly and was wondering how I could check it out and work with it. I did some rough mechanical alignment of the five servos according to how I want the assembly to move and the maximum ranges for each joint.
Since the only robot body I have that is large enough to support this leg is WALTER, I attached it to his body. I was amazed at how this hybrid leg looks on WALTER. His body is plently light enough with three decks that I think four of these legs will work fine to move him around, even with batteries and electronics installed. Since there are going to be four steerable wheels powered by gear head motors, I'll have to use two Sabertooth 2X5 motor controllers because it won't work to pair the motors up on a heavier duty controller. With each wheel being steerable, I need independent control of all the motors.
I'll definitely be using an SSC-32 servo controller to handle the hybrid legs. With five servos per leg and four motors, it will take up to 24 servo ports on the SSC-32 if I use PWM to control the motor controllers. With this new hybrid leg design, it may be possible for WALTER to adjust to terrain and maybe even do a bit of climbing.
8-Dale
73 from N7PKT
