The magic about RRRobot is that it is an incredibly
simple system to design and build. All
you need is a hemispherical shell, two hobby servos, some plastic arms,
weights, and something with which you can control the servos. Here are the instructions:
1) Get a
hemispherical shell. Something nice and light
will work great. We use a thin plastic
shell that can be found in craft stores.
Ideally, you want this shell to be about 10 inches in diameter.
2) Drill
holes into the shell so that you can attach your hobby servos. We use four 2 inch bolts with washers to
attach the servos. You can try different
things such as glue, Velcro, or whatever else you want.
3) Make arms
out of something light such as balsa wood or plastic. At the end of each arm, attach reaction
masses, each 50 – 75 grams. Attach the
other end of the arm to the servo plate that comes with the servos.
4) Get a
means of controlling your servos. We
used an RC thingy for a while, but then we got a Cerebellum from CMU and used
that. If you have something that you can
program, that’s great, because you can do nice arm gaits such as sinusoids,
square waves, or triangle waves.
5)
Experiment and explore! There are
plenty of opportunities for modifications and additions to make RRRobot a complex system.
We are focusing on understanding the basic means by which RRRobot can locomote on the
plane.