This is the technical document for the hexpod walker. The hexpod walker is a six-legged walking robot similar to an insect. The walker's legs have a fully articulate motion. The body and the legs were cut out of plastic that was designed on a CNC machine. The movement of the 12 servos on the 6 legs are controlled by a microcontroller, more accurately a Basic stamp 2.

We started construction of the hexpod walker late October. We started leg design because we knew it would be the hardest part of the construction.
Our predictions of the legs being the hardest part was true and remains true.

They have been re-designed about 6 times and we still haven't made a perfect design. We have constructed a design that functions quite nicely, though. After we finished the legs, the body was a quick design. It only took a couple of weeks with two re-designs. After the design stage was complete, we started construction of the hexpod walker. After building the walker with metal screws we found that the legs wouldn't move freely. So we replaced almost of the metal screws with nylon screws which allowed the legs to move freely. Then we moved on to programming the walk into the micro controller to allow the robot to move around. The programming step turned out to be harder than expected because we ran into crosstalk problems with the servos. We solved the cross talk problem and carried on. Then the the only thing left was to program the walking pattern into the hex pod walker. We went through a couple of walking patterns for various reasons, then set for a tripod walking pattern.