| Thor - by David Buckley
| January 2003
|
Thor is a four servo 9.5 inch (240mm) high biped walking robot, controlled by a PicAxe40x2.
Thor is driven by four servos and powered by four AA cells.
Thor can walk Forwads, Backwards and turn Right and Left.
Thor can crouch down or stand tall and can walk while crouched or standing tall or at any position inbetween.
The Black Box holds 4AA cells.
On the face and on the lower legs there are forward facing high power orange LEDs for illuminating obstacles which then can be detected by the black shrouded phototransitors next to them.
There are contact switches on each foot for detecting table edges.
Long range sensing can be done by the Ultrasonic ranger module.
Being Aesir, Thor has Blue LED 'eyes' which are dim when waiting for a command and bright when executing one.
The 'eye' state can can also be set by the user as a HMI.
Thor can play sounds and Ring-tunes from its onboard speaker.
Thor can store sixteen user inputted 16 character command strings in its memory.
There is a socket for extra memory so hundreds of commands could be stored.
Thor can be instructed by commands from a Sony IR remote-control.
The full set of instructions can be sent serially as text over cable or a plugin radio module.
Thor has an on-board command-help file.
Thor is the third in my Aesir series of four servo biped robots controlled by a PicAxe40x2,
and each of them - Loki, Freya, Thor, and later Baldur and Ullr, has a different geometry.
The Aesir
- Loki is very stable, can get up if it falls over when doing crazy moves and is a stealthy walker.
- Freya amazed me, it has no trouble getting up even from lying upside down and is the best at coping with pens, pencils and other items lying on a table.
- I like the way Thor stands up from sitting, and when sitting or crouching is very stable but when standing tall is easily upset and can't get up if it falls over.
- Baldur is surprisingly stable and can get up from any position and can crawl and do a Roly Poly forward or backward.
- Ullr is also very stable and can crawl and get up from any position and can walk sideways with ease.
Thor Mechanics
- four GWS S03, 39.5x20.0x35.6 42g, 0.23 sec 3.4kg.cm @4.8v, 4kg.cm @6v +ve anticlockwise
- S03 servos weigh 43g
- 4 x AA NiMh cells weigh 111g
- Material is 4mm birch ply