I have been experimenting with different leg materials. Originally I used the ABS plastic but I didn't think that the 3-D printer had high enough resolution to print something with the servo pattern. Instead of printing out the servo pattern I printed out the legs and glued the servo horn onto the leg. That looked very messy so I tried laser cut the legs out of acrylic. The lasercutter had enough resolution but the legs were to heavy and they broke a servo. I realized that previously my printing resolution was set to medium so now I am trying to print the servo pattern and see if it works.

There are a few reasons that we decided to make the robot have five legs. One of the main reasons was that the four legged robot was having trouble balancing and we figured that if we added another leg it could be the difference. Another reason is we were afraid that some people might think that it looks like a swastika with four legs.

Issues: 

- Too much friction between legs and body that is preventing the legs from moving smoothly

- We didn't fit the Arduino and wires inside the body. Nice wiring is required

- We are not sure if the motors are strong enough

- Both the Arduino and servos have to be connected to same battery. 

Today we spent most of the day experimenting with the code for the servos, which control the legs. We are working on two different approaches for making the robot walk. There are five legs in total, like star. The first approach involves keeping the support leg — the alternate one on the ground — mostly straight and would look something like a human cartwheel. The second approach would allow the support leg to bend, which would be an easier solution for movement, but we prefer the elegance of the first.

While experimenting with the movement of the legs, we encountered a few problems. First, the robot legs were not heavy enough to flip the robot over into the next position. First, we tried laser cutting pieces of wood to add weight to the ends of the legs, but this was not sufficient. Eventually, we decided to go back to the 3D model and increase the length of the legs in SolidWorks to give them more weight. We are excited to try out the robot tomorrow!

(I do not have any pictures of the code or model because we did it on the IMac.)

The new servos came! The special thing about these servos is that they have metal gears. This means that the gears will not grind down. Saeed made a few prototypes of the new servo holder. Now I am making the prototypes even better. After I finish with the servo holder I will have to make a new servo hole because the new servo's pattern is larger and it has 25 notches instead of 15.