Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: mcmille@ecf.toronto.edu (MCMILLEN DAVID R)
Subject: Looking for help on cheap walkers
Message-ID: <C3BMqD.6J3@ecf.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 16:20:36 GMT
Lines: 35


Greetings,

	I'm looking for a book entitled *How to build a six-legged
walking robot really quickly for very little money*, or something
along those lines.  Are there any useful guidebooks which might
talk about this subject?  I'm doing a MASc and need a six-legged
walker to experiment with, but the construction of the thing is
not really intended to be the major focus of my project.

	The creature needs to be able to tell when its legs are
down or not, and to sense (relatively roughly, but to some degree
at least) the position of the legs front to back.  I'm envisioning
legs with two degrees of freedom each, lifting up and down, and
swinging back and forth.  It'd be nice if it could carry a little
bit of payload, but that's not critical.

	The real problem is cost - multiplying the cost of a motor
by twelve seems to lead to high prices in an awful hurry.  To give
a sort of ballpark figure, we're looking at spending something
like $5000.  (More if absolutely necessary, but closer to $5K than
$50K.)  (By the way, the FAQ list's statement that Genghis-II costs
around $2K is woefully outdated - it's around $8200 Canadian, and I 
don't think the exchange rate has become quite that bad.)

	Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  What
I really need is the benefit experience, not having any myself.
Thanks in advance.


-- 
-----------
David McMillen (mcmille@ecf.toronto.edu)
"Hey, hey, hey, hey now . . . Don't be mean.  We don't have
to be mean . . . because, remember, no matter where you
