DIY Walkers from LEGO-scale, to SUV-scale

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Although the principles for building walkers are the same at both scales, the benefit of scaling up is how it magnifies issues with designs, providing feedback for fine tuning that is not available at LEGO-scale.
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TrotBot

​​Welcome to DIYwalkers!  I'm Ben Vagle,  and I've been building mechanical walkers since I was 11 years old.  I started DIYwalkers to share what I've learned, and to collaborate with you. ​ Let's see if we can take walkers to the next level, and more importantly, help to inspire students to learn the skills necessary to design and build these tricky beasts!

I started by building Klann's amazingly robust Mechanical Spider, Jansen's majestic Strandbeest and our own TrotBot and Strider in LEGO, and then I was a member of the team that scaled up TrotBot in my garage.

I'll kick off DIYwalkers with a few posts on mechanical walker basics, as well as building instructions for making highly functional LEGO-scale walkers, based on the same principles used for building large walkers.  I invite you to participate on DIY Walkers by sharing your builds or insights on the blog, or if you want to contribute more detailed posts on this site just send us an email.

Thanks for your interest!
Ben
Ben@DIYwalkers.com

Navigating DIYwalkers
Since launching in 2016, DIYwalkers has grown organically as we conducted more experiments and added more builds.  Here's an overview to help you with navigating the site.
  1. Wanna Build This? addresses the question "why build mechanical walkers?" and introduces the 4 major mechanisms explored on DIYwalkers.
  2. Walker ABCs is a high-level overview of how mechanical walkers work, or don't.
  3. Our Blog posts go into more detail on specific problems/solutions, experiments, and ideas for taking walkers to the next level.
  4. Build Instructions provides linkage plans and LEGO building instructions for a variety of walkers, as well as some foundational linkage challenges.
  5. Customize provides online simulators to modify walking mechanisms for building in LEGO, or for 3D printing.
  6. Linkage Simulation breaks down how to simulate linkages using math no more advanced than the Pythagorean Theorem, and provides sample code in Python and Scratch.​
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The guys at the Weather Channel's awesome Rockets Are Cool made this video of some of our walkers - thank you!


​© Ben Vagle, Wade Vagle and DIYwalkers.com, 2016-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s authors and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to DIYwalkers.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 
​Contact:  Wade@TeamTrotBot.com