Mini Bi-Ped

(built 2002)

This small bipedal robot starts to walk when you clap your hands. If it detects an obstacle in front of its path, the biped turns around and continues its mission. It has two DC motors for stepping and steering. These motors are controlled by a PIC 16F872. This microcontroller inputs signals from an IR-proximity detector and a sound level detector. The microcontroller program is written in C, and is based on a state-machine approach to control the walking movements and goal selection. The robot can walk forward, backward, make curves and turn around by alternating forward and backward steps. Look at this video-clip (1.2MB) to see the robot in action: it walks towards a cookie tin, detects it and then turns around 90 degrees to continue.

10cm height, 5cm width, 8cm depth weights 80g power consumption approx. 0.5 Watts 2 degrees of freedom Controlled by a PIC16F872 @ 15MHz Can walk autonomously, can make curves. Simple object and sound detection. Typ. speed 3 m/min

The robot is constructed of aluminum plate, and the construction itself weights about 15 grams. Each leg segment is 2 cm long and the footprint is about 5*5 cm. This construction is just able to carry the battery and electronics. The electronics are a bit heavy right now, and I'm considering to use SMD parts instead.

The robot is powered by a 3-cell NiMH battery of 60mAh.

Look for more details on this page.

The Bi-Ped family: 'little man', Bi-Ped, and Mini Bi-Ped.

The result of a simulation with ThreeDimSim is shown below: