What you see here is Beta 1 of the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 8 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation. This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen’s natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion.
The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them “The 12 Holy Numbers”. The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution (files on Thingiverse).
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Yes, the Boarduino is a great thing, I have 4 of them and use them all the time!
Thanks for posting my project.