Robotics & Automation

It was observed that the most important feature of arthropods (like spider) is their segmented body, which provide them stability during their motion. This God gifted feature was taken as inspiration for implementing in engineering design. The main objective of this project was to design and implement stable mechanical structure for robot and control mechanism for 18 degree of freedom. The stability in mechanical structure was achieved by adopting the biomechanical characteristics of spider. The control mechanism was developed by mathematical modeling of mechanical structure based on kinematics and dynamics. The choice of 6 legs was based on the disadvantages of using a robot with less legs; a two legged robot’s center of gravity changes continuously, the movements of a three legged robot would be less stable, a four legged robot cannot turn about its axis, a five legged robot would be asymmetric. A 6 legged robot can not only turn all these disadvantages into advantages but it can also be configured to move with less legs if the condition requires it to do so. The PS2 controller was chosen to navigate the motion to avoid a non-professional look and use a controller that is a result of long term research instead of making a controller just to suit our minimum requirements; the PS2 controller provides us with the freedom to use different combination/sequence of buttons for different functions.