Mission Objective

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By Mason Nguyen, Project Manager
and Elaine Doan

A hexapod is a six legged robotic capable of moving in all six degrees of freedom forward/backward, left/right, up/down with the combination of pitch, roll, and yaw rotations.  The objective is to deliver a hexapod that will need to operate safely during class room demonstration, capable of matching the speed with the rover, must be able to travel in a forest like setting while maneuvering over obstacles and must be built within $500 budget.

Requirements

  1. Hexapod will match the speed of the rover traveling on a surface with the speed of 0.20027 m/s or 7.8 inches/s as defined by the Rover Team.
    1. To match the speed of the rover, a calculation and verification testing will be performed so that Hexapod will have a walking speed of 8 inches in 1 second. 
    2. The hexapod will operate safely while navigating in a class room environment by operating a LiPo battery protection circuit in order to prevent the batteries from falling below or exceeding above the safe functioning point and avoid drawing too much current from the battery.
      1. Use power supply to mimic the battery and test and verify the performance of the protection circuit.
      2. The hexapod movement will be wirelessly controlled by the Arxterra Control panel via the Android Phone Arxterra app. Also it will utilize the phone camera to obverse the environment.
        1. Verification testing will be performed base on the Arxterra control panel test plan.
        2. The hexapod will travel and maneuver over obstacles 2.5 inches high at the designated terrain showed in figure (1 and 2).
          1. Angular swing of leg servos including Femur and Tibia servo will be calculated, and an2.5 inch object will be created in the classroom environment to test and to verify the maneuverable ability of the Hexapod.
          2. The project is anticipated to be within $500 range. However to improve the hexapod, the project budget could increase from extra components the team planning to add.
          3. The hexapod is expected to fully assembled by May 1st,2014. If time permits, the team will be adding more modifications. Demonstration will be presented by May 14h, 2014.

 figure 1

Figure 1. Location of the hexapod and spider bot Testing Terrain

figure 2

Figure 2. Route of the hexapod and spider bot going to travel.