Contest Entry 3 legged swashbot

[crabfu]

some pics here: http://www.crabfu.com/swashbot/

-Crabfu

[Eric]

Absolutely brilliant! You’re right, the concept is simple, but the design is awesome!!! Beyond just the technical, you really kicked up up a notch with the presentation. The aesthetic design is amazing. It looks like something that you can sell right out of the box. A very cute robotic bug my daughter would love to own. Great work!

[crabfu]

Originally Posted by Eric

Absolutely brilliant! You’re right, the concept is simple, but the design is awesome!!! Beyond just the technical, you really kicked up up a notch with the presentation. The aesthetic design is amazing. It looks like something that you can sell right out of the box. A very cute robotic bug my daughter would love to own. Great work!

Thanks Eric,

Yeah it's simple, mostly because I lack the skills to pull off all of the stuff that you guys do... I just make do with what I know and have... this is the first time that I had a stupid idea, and was able build it without having to go out and search for the parts... had all of the r/c heli spares sitting here And yeah, aesthetics are very important to me, probably too much so. I had another servo for the head, so it would tilt, compensating the tilting of the body.... but it raised the head up way too high, and hated the "look", but it functioned well. I also tried to put a head lock gyro on it, but no where to put it where it wouldn't glitch from interference in the tight package.

Anyway thanks for the kind words.... it's nice to work on a simple project for a change

-Crabfu

[Adrenalynn]

That is beautifully executed, and adorably cute! I love it! I love everything about it with one tiny niggily exception - if I'm not mistaken, you're using airband for a ground device. Very naughty. But I understand, and at the risk of losing my license, I forgive you.

That thing is just way too cute not to forgive anything of - I'd buy one today if you marketed them!

Can I vote you enter that in the contest? It's just way too pleasing not to be a contender.

[crabfu]

Originally Posted by Adrenalynn

That is beautifully executed, and adorably cute! I love it! I love everything about it with one tiny niggily exception - if I'm not mistaken, you're using airband for a ground device. Very naughty. But I understand, and at the risk of losing my license, I forgive you.

That thing is just way too cute not to forgive anything of - I'd buy one today if you marketed them!

Can I vote you enter that in the contest? It's just way too pleasing not to be a contender.

Thanks And it's spektrum 2.4ghz... although it is made for air, it is ground legal. Spektrum also makes other 2.4ghz tx/rx that are used for r/c car races, which uses the same technology but with just fewer channels.

-Crabfu

[Adrenalynn]

Aha! I stand [sit] corrected.

2.4ghz is the catchall band. It's fair game!

Ok - so it IS perfect in every way!

[as I type this, I'm navigating the site with a Wiimote's accelerometers. One step closer to world domination. At which time, all your bugbots are belong to me :P]

[crabfu]

Originally Posted by Adrenalynn

A
[as I type this, I'm navigating the site with a Wiimote's accelerometers. One step closer to world domination. At which time, all your bugbots are belong to me :P]

Sorry, my steambots beat you to it a couple of years ago... http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/27/s...ld-domination/

-Crabfu

[Alex]

Way cool work Crabfu, congrats on this!

Yes, it is simple, but that's a very good thing. It shows all of us that it might do us some good to take a step back and rethink how we build robots sometimes. Robots don't have to be the overly complex things that they are to accomplish incredible things. Us engineers tend to have a common trait to "overthink" a problem Matt used to yell at me all the time for that!

aesthetics are very important to me, probably too much so

I admire that quality! As I'm sure you can tell, this quality is a bit lacking in robotics, haha


BTW, I know you mentioned a lot of the details of your robot in your video, but do you mind putting them in this thread as well? It'll definitely help your score come July.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I got you entered in this contest!

[crabfu]

Thanks Alex!!!

And not sure what to mention about the swash, so I'll just list off parts you need here:

-4 micro servos. Standard size would be fine too, I just happen to have a lot of spare micros. It will be rather small and light, so you don't need anything fancy.

-lots of long servo horns. Each servo you buy will come with a lot of these... but you need the long ones. I think the long ones that I am using came from hs45HB's

-a r/c transmitter (tx) capable of eccpm, these are made for cp helicopters, and control 3 servos for the swash at 120 degrees. And as Adrenalynn pointed out already... to be ground legal it should be 2.4ghz. What I am using is a spektrum dx7, which I use for my steambots & helicopters

-rx that matches your tx. With 2.4ghz, only one tx can be bind to your rx

- one receiver pack - when you buy a radio system, it usually comes with one of these. It should be 4 aa cells to power servos... or equivalent rechargeable.

-servo tape, just tape on the servo to the pack

-helicopter ball links... I am using align trex 450 helicopter links, but just about any heli links will be fine. You can adjust the links to the correct length... trail and error until you get nice movement in the servo horns/legs.

-body... you can use whatever the head I am using one of those 50 cent capsule toy vending machine things... the wings are align trex heli tail blades. The body is from a canopy from some rc plane that I had forgotten where it came from

-led eyes are from micro heli as well... they have servo plugs and can be switched on and off via any channel- just set the end points on your tx to 100 or above.

That's about does it I think, pretty straight forward & simple. But feel free to ask questions if you guys are going to build one The hardest part is programing the tx, if you are a rc heli pilot it will all make sense to you - it literally acts like the swash of a cp heli. If you don't fly, it may be confusing, and the initial cost for the radio can be rather high The actual robot itself, minus the raido tx/rx, is cheap though, most expensive components are the micro servos, at 10-15 bucks a pop

-Crabfu

[Zenta]

WOW! Incredible creative work you have accomplished.

Your swashbot are "simply" ingenious. Most impressive and very good presentation!
But would you mind posting some pictures too?

-Zenta