Servo - January 2013

www.servomagazine.com/index.php?/magazine/article/january2013_ThenNow

into the DRC competition. Teams have from October 1, 2012 until the end of 2013 for the first phase of the contest, and a year later to complete the second phase. Teams in Track A will develop both the robot’s hardware and software for DARPA funding, whereas teams in Tracks B and C will develop control software with and without DARPA funding. Teams in Track D will develop a robot’s hardware and software at their own expense. All will be eligible for prizes varying from one to three million dollars, depending on the Track level and support requirements. Some really great robot designs should result from this competition.

FIGURE 3. Innovati Mini Hexapodinno.

Multi-legged Robots Evolve into Bipedal Humanoids

June 2004 was one of the first kit bipedal robots available to hobbyists. The design was improved through several models and the more advanced KHR- 3 is shown in Figure 5.

Most of these were sold in Asia and a few made it to the US.

Walking robots rapidly became the best selling robots for hobbyists.

The Korean radio control company, Hitec debuted the popular Robonova-I the next spring, and it soon became one of the most popular robot kits. Robonova originally sold for over a thousand dollars but was ‘the’ robot to have and program. The Hitec robot looked similar to the KHR-1 but had much better joint brackets with special servos and a very sleek design. It soon became the humanoid robot of choice for experimenters.

Figure 6 shows one of the martial arts movements of the Robonova 1. Looking closely at the outside of the right leg, you can see wires from each of the servos in a bundle, running up to the servo controller. The cable bundles become progressively larger as they run upwards with more servo leads in the bundle.

Figure 7 shows each of the 16 servo connections lying out and disconnected from the controller board that has the capacity for 32 servos. Having each servo’s control leads running to a central controller board was perceived as a potential Experimenters had long built multi-legged robots such as quad and hex crawlers, and these robots are still very popular. Figure 3 shows a hex-legged robot called the Mini Hexapodinno made by Innovati. It was the hit at RoboGames 2011. The tiny Hexapodinno uses micro servos and barely stretches 12 inches with legs fully extended, but it can perform many tricks. I spent a lot of time watching folks from Kowatec (the local reps in San Jose, CA) put the personable little crab-like robot through its paces.