So there you are. This is the result of a day or two of LEGO building, followed by weeks of thinking, sawing and soldering. Lucky for you, you don’t have to go through all that, and can just buy the needed parts.
This cute little bug can walk forwards, backwards and turn around, using 4 pumps on 3 switches. The outer 4 legs can move back and forth, with left and right having an individual pump. The middle legs are connected, and can move up and down.
By tilting the middle leg right, the outer right legs come of the ground, while the middle leg on the left is off the ground, then the outer legs can be repositioned for the next cycle.
There are touch sensors on the middle legs, to detect when they are of the ground.
To build this adorable model, you need your NXT, 4 pneumatic pumps, 1 compressor pump, 3 servo valves and a servo controller.
This is the walking routine in NBC for my custom controller. The concept is the same for the Mindsensors one.
#define tilt 0 #define left 1 #define right 2 #define servoport IN_2
thread main SetSensorLowspeed(servoport) OnFwd(OUT_A, 100)
loop: servo(servoport, left, 150, result) servo(servoport, right, 150, result) servo(servoport, tilt, 100, result) wait 7000
servo(servoport, tilt, 150, result) servo(servoport, left, 100, result) servo(servoport, right, 200, result)
wait 5000
servo(servoport, left, 150, result) servo(servoport, right, 150, result) servo(servoport, tilt, 200, result) wait 7000
servo(servoport, tilt, 150, result) servo(servoport, left, 200, result) servo(servoport, right, 100, result) wait 5000
jmp loop
endt
