In my previous post, I shared some of my exploration of walking mechanisms using mainly LEGO® Technic.
Here is a MINDSTORMS EV3 version I have just built.
The challenge with this build was maximizing performance while working with the heavy EV3 brick. I found that I could improve performance by adding "retractable toes" that increase foot-contact with the ground, but I had to saw 32 LEGO parts in half to make them. Instead, I looked at video of the gait in slow motion where it was obvious that the plastic LEGO axles were twisting a lot, and delaying the leg motion. I replaced the plastic LEGO axles with steel axles that I bought from Brick Machine Shop, resulting in the performance seen in the above video.
To get an idea of how much LEGO plastic axles twist under torque I set up this simple experiment:LEGO plastic axles:
Stainless steel axles:
I posted instructions on how I built my EV3-based TrotBot here. I hope you find this useful!
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