Hexapod Robot Kinematics - part 2 (Entering meat-space)
A couple of years ago, I built this Dynamixel powered Hexapod. It sports 18 AX-12A servos and a custom controller board of my own design. It looks impressive, but it lacks proper kinematics firmware.
I have to admit that I underestimated the complexity of robotics. Building a robot is easy. Making it behave the way you want is a bit more difficult.
In order to properly learn the fundamentals of kinematics for this system, I decided to create a simple hexapod simulator. This allows me to play around with topology, forward and inverse kinematics, various gaits and gait transitions.
I'm currently running the simulator under Windows and MacOS, but I am planning to also compile it for Raspberry Pi, which I in turn can use as a more generic robot controller.
This is the second part of the series, where I let the simulator act as a controller and stream servo parameters to a robot arm/leg.
I have also designed a new ESP32- based controller board for my hexapods. This should be able to either run the kinematicspart directly, or act as a receiver for a remote controller.
Contents of this video --
00:00 - Intro.
00:07 - Papa's Got a Brand New Board
00:54 - Mad keyboard skillz
05:52 - Ranting
07:02 - Bad editing skillz
08:05 - Streaming servo params over UDP
08:41 - Donald Knuth lends a hand
08:51 - Entering meat-space
10:32 - Next steps
11:46 - Mouser Electronics - Please get your act together.