MorpHex: A Hexapod Transformer Robot In The Making
A Norwegian engineer named Kare Halvorsen came up with an idea of a project to create a sphere shaped hexapod that could move in every possible direction. Some other features which he thought of was making it roll freely like a ball, walk like a hexapod, varying body dimensions and the capability of transforming the sphere to a hexapod and back again.
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The principal material used for the outer shape of the robot was a globe, which he bought from a local toy store. The spherical structure was cut into 12 equal parts, with the line of equator serving as the divider for upper and lower part of the hexapod. Standard SES brackets has been used for making the legs of the hexapod which has been specially designed to get some extra room between them during the movement of the body.
The movement of the body is possible by the use of a digital servo, which works as a central axis, to which the robotic arms are connected. Of the twelve arms of the robot the bottom six are used for the movement while the top six arms are used as head of the hexapod. The MorpHex is controlled by a remote wirelessly, synced with a Basicmicro ARC-32 board which is set on the digital servo. The robot has not yet been programmed to roll like a ball but Halvorsen has that functionality as his next target on the hexapod.
Here's a video demo of the hexabot:
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