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Protowalker
My first attempt at a 2-motor
walker
The pupose of the Protowalkers was to provide a comprehensive testbed for 2-motor walker mechanical concepts. I wanted something that was electrically simple, so I could concentrate on various geometric permutations. In particular, I wanted to explore the effect of giving a simple 2-motor walker a flexible body; "thought experiments" seemed to indicate that giving it a horizontally-flexible joint between the two motors would improve its walking performance. I also wanted to be able to experiment with leg geometry and Nv net process timing parameters.
To support all this, I came up with a design concept that wasn't too tough to produce (the idea was to make two identical walkers, and "race" them against each other), and had significant mechanical and electrical configurability.
Mechanical layout
The original Protowalker
(Protowalker 1) body was built
in two pieces, connected by a simple hinge, with provisions
for springs to govern the rotation of the two pieces with
respect to each other. Also note that the front motor's
geometry can be rotated with respect to the rest of the
walker body (the drive shaft can be up to 45 degrees away
from the horizontal).
When I decided to take a step back and regroup, I removed just the hinge, and rearranged the walker weight to arrive at the Protowalker 2 design. Note that Protowalker 2 is, to date, a "paper design" -- haven't decided to build it yet.
 Top view, Protowalker 1
Top view, Protowalker 2 |
 Side view |
Circuit diagrams
As was mentioned elsewhere,
Protowalkers have "body" cards that provide basic power and
signal routing functions, and separate "brain" cards that
carry the control circuitry. Note that the "brain" cards are
discussed in detail elsewhere.
"Body" PCB layouts
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Protowalker 1 -- all that's left of him...