Tom by David Buckley
| July 2002
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Tom is a three servo biped walking robot.
Following on from biped robot Junior I designed Tom, much taller than bigFoot and Junior and named after Detective Tom Polhaus. I decided to put the tilt rods at the back so if I ever put arms on then the rods wouldn't get in the way. Tom was tested with a Toddler control board and it turned out the 18swg piano wire rods were a little weak and I had to stiffen them before Tom would walk properly. The extra height of Tom and weight of the three servos means the 4mm plywood flexes at the wrong time and the speed and range of movements needs to be limited for smooth walking.
Tom is fitted with three GWS SO3 standard size servos and has bump switches and obstacle detectors on the toes. It was intended to fit IR sensor looking through the soles to detect table edges.
BigFoot, Junior and Tom
Tom at 5th December 2009
13 September 2011 with a PicAxe 40x controlling an SP0256 speech chip (also with later IR ear)
The PicAxe 40x also reads the Hex-switch (green) and reports to the BS2e the Act to execute.
The two 2x5 pin headers were intended to interface IR obstacle detectors, however I wrote the Aesir software which uses a PicAxe 40x2 and is a much more capable system so left Tom's BS2e+40x system as it is.
19 September 2017 - TwinkleToes, optical obstacle detectors
19 November 2020 - IR ear for Sony IR commands
Tom plans
Squares are 5mm
Toe Sensors
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Tom & Kas - circuit
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Tom & Kas - PicAxe40x + SP0256 speech chip
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