I had a great time sharing TrotBot with this amazing group of students and teachers - thank you so much for inviting me!
Ben
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No TrotBots were harmed nor fell off cliffs during the making of this film in Moab, UT
Hoar frost blanketing the petrified sand dunes of Moab's Slickrock Trail
Below are photos from Moab's Captain Ahab Trail in the summer:
The backgrounds look almost fake, right?
I've been thinking about creating an EV3 Strider Ver 2, but to handle the increased weight and width Strider needs to be improved in a few ways, like by increasing the amount of foot-contact it has with the ground.
One way to increase foot-contact is to add four more legs. To check how this would smooth the gait I simulated one side of a 12-legged Strider (Ver 2), and if you watch the video below you'll see Strider bounce whenever the feet touching the ground switch. This bouncing shouldn't be much of a problem at LEGO scale, but it would be at large scale. While a scaled-up Strider's linkage could be optimized for a smoother gait, it can also be smoothed by adding feet that are shaped to offset the gait's bumpiness. As an example, in the second half of the video I added small triangular feet to the front legs, which act like heels and toes. These feet reduce the gait's bumpiness by about 1/3rd. However, the toes are more likely to catch on obstacles, which can cause the linkage to lock and gears to grind. UPDATE: in 2018 we re-optimized Strider's linkage again, and published a half dozen new variations who's gaits can be smoothed by adding toes like those added to Strider Ver 3 below:
Below is Strider Ver 3 in a LEGO prototype with the above simulated toes of length 2:
And here's the same Strider linkage with 8 legs plus longer toes of length 3. Longer toes were used to reduce how far the robot falls at foot transitions when built with only 8 legs: Curved feet Feet with curved bottoms that are shaped to offset the bumpiness of a particular linkage should be even more effective at smoothing gaits - at least when walking on smooth ground. Below is a great example:
And here's another example by Eko Widiatmoko:
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