Hexapod Robot Kinematics - part 1 (Simulator)
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.
Huge thanks to @asodemann3 for her totally brilliant robotics lectures on YouTube! Highly recommended for anyone starting out on their robotics journey :)
Contents of this video --
00:00 - Intro.
00:07 - Prompt Engineering
01:53 - 300 baud connection ?
02:00 - Running potentially unsafe code
02:52 - Walking the virtual walk
06:00 - Old Man rants
06:49 - Old Man rants even more
08:52 - Still going
10:57 - He just wont shut up.
15:12 - The End - Finally.