Let's Get Moving!

With the first leg finished, it was time to start implementing the controls for the legs. Before we can start implementing the walking motion, we have to be able to move the legs to any x, y, z coordinate. This can be done by deriving an inverse kinematic model through basic trigonometry. The model would take in the desired coordinates and calculate the servo angles required to achieve the desired coordinates. To speed up development we used the open source inverse kinematics developed by James Burton which can be found here. Since our mechanical design is a little different some modifications had to be made to the code. We also had to take some time to figure out how to calibrate the servos and what angle their initial position should be set at.

Check out the videos below to see the fruits of our labour:

Moving the leg up and down

Moving the leg forward and backward.

Moving the leg side to side.

Once all the legs are ready, the current code can be expanded to handle all four legs. From there we can will implement and test out the inverse kinematics to control the roll, pitch and yaw of the robot. Then we will be ready implement the controls for walking!