This is a project I’ve been thinking on for a very long time. Shortly explained this is a sphere shaped hexapod that I plan to give the following features:

• Roll freely like a ball
• Have different sort of locomotion for moving in any direction
• Variable inner-body dimensions
• Transform from a sphere shape into a hexapod and vice versa
• Walk like a hexapod

Before I started to make any exact sketches or started building anything, I shared my ideas with my friend Jeroen Janssen (Xan). We talked about this project when I visited him in Netherlands this summer. At first I was thinking of using a fixed sized inner body with 6 x 4 DOF legs, similar to what I used for the T-Hex hexapod. Another problem was finding a sphere shaped material that I could use. Jeroen and I went to a local toy-shop and I just asked him to look for ball-shaped object. After a little while Jeroen had found a globe! At that moment I got the feeling that using a globe could actually work. After a few months and some searching in different book and toy-shop’s I found a 28cm in diameter globe from Toysrus. It was also cheap and the plastic material seemed to be relative solid (about 3mm thick).

I’m cutting out 12 identical sphere parts. Using a simple handsaw and cutting along the lines of the Longitude every 60 deg. The line of equator was made of 1mm thick dark blue plastic band and was very easy to remove, that resulted in a perfect clean edge too! Here are some pictures of the sphere parts:

The map coating was very easy to peel of. The trick was to preheat the surface carefully and then start in one corner and just peel off the whole layer. To the left is the original part. The middle part has the globe/map layer peeled off and the right part is sanded by hand. As you can see the material is very transparent, I do have some future ideas of mounting several LED’s for some cool lighting effects.

 Morphing inner-body:

The principle is very simple. I’m using one digital 5645 servo in the centre of the body, the servo holds two delrin gears.

I’m using 7x of the LPA gear sets from Lynxmotion.  One gear with SES holes is mounted to each of the 6 outer body sections.

This construction makes it possible to adjust the body dimension by about x2 using only one servo.

The main reason for making the body like this is to hopefully make some more free space for each leg when the robot are in the walking mode. Even with the increased body size the legs are still going to be highly restricted in free motion caused by  the large sphere parts, but I think it will work I’ve already done some changes to the body section, like replaced the 1,5 mm aluminium parts used on the 6 outer sections to 2mm for more strength and stability. And also some more stuff like an holder for electronics.

There is still a lot of work left and I’m currently working with assembling all the legs. In total there will be 31 servos, 12* 5990 + 19*5645.

A little update on MorpHex (2010/11/19)

I just wanted to post some minor updates. I’ve added two decks (acrylic, I’m not sure to be honest) that are going to hold the electronics on one side and the battery on the other side:

       

One big challenge was to guide the power wires from the battery from one side to the other due to all the gears and the outher (variable) body parts. I solved it by carefully drill a hole through the battery-deck and inserting two brass tubes.

The power wires are going to be guide through these brass tubes. The tubes protects the wires from being crushed between all the gears. That would be very messy using LiPo power.. 

Picture from the battery-deck:

   

Talking about LiPo. I’m considering to apply the 5990′s directly to the LiPo without any regulators. So I’m using some self-made power distributors, the principle is very easy. Only ground and signal are connected to the SSC-32. A picture of the power distributors:

I’m using an ARC-32 board. Its from Basic Micro.

For making the hexapod work with a variable sized body there are some math to do, simple trig (law of cosine). The input value to the math algorithm is the angle of the inner body servo. Then you’ve to calc the new bodyradius and a new coxaoffset. When you have the body radius its pretty easy to find the new body dimensions (coordinates) for a circular body.

After that you need to adjust the positions of the feet corresponding to the new body radius. In the walking gait you can re-set the inital positions when the leg is lifted.

Next step is to work more on the code (sphere mode) and start mounting the actual sphere parts.

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“Morphex III Becomes Boca Bearing Company’s Innovation Contest Winner”
“Inspiring Hexapod Design”
“The grand prize winner of $10,000 in cash is Morphex III from Norway by Kare Halvorsen”

The Boca Bearing Company is pleased to announce the final winners of the 2012 Innovation Contest. To celebrate 25 years in business Boca Bearings challenged their community of engineers, robot builders, mechanics and makers to show us their innovative mechanical project videos. The only rule was their project had to utilize ball bearings, roller bearings, linear bearings or any form of full ceramic or ceramic hybrid bearings in some capacity.

The grand prize winner of $10,000 in cash is Morphex III from Norway by Kare Halvorsen. Kare has built quite an impressive, physically adaptable, hexapod robot platform. Morphex III is able to walk with legs but it can also change into a sphere and roll like a ball. This robot operates with 36 ball bearings and the 12 bearings in the body play a key role in keeping the robot in one piece. Kare said about his motivation in building Morphex III “[R]obotics is fun and very challenging. I know that MorpHex, and my other hobby robotics projects, will inspire many people to study robotics or start making their own robots.” You can view his submission and other winning projects here http://www.bocabearings.com/innovation-contest/winner-videos.aspx

The 2nd and 3rd place winners of the Replicator 3D Desktop Printer are Charon, presented by Peter Hudson and Gamera II, submitted by Ben Berry. Charon, is a 32’ tall, 30’ wide and 20’ deep, life sized 3D stroboscopi zoetrope that was unveiled at the Burning Man Festival in 2011. Charon weighs more than seven tons and is truly a unique project that seeks to blend technology and art. Peter used 56 bearings of varying sizes and types for this structure.

Ben Berry submitted the Gamera, a project aiming to design, build and fly the first human powered helicopter. The helicopter was designed to meet the requirements of the 32 year old American Helicopter Society, Sikorsky Prize. The Gamera helicopter uses ceramic bicycle bearings for the hand and foot cranks as well as steel needle roller bearings and steel needle thrust bearings for each of the four rotor shafts. There are also a variety of smaller radial bearings being used in the pulleys for transition.

The Boca Bearing Company wants to congratulate all the winners and thank everyone for participating in the contest. Due to the overwhelming response Boca Bearings will be holding another Innovation Contest in 2013. All project demonstrating commitment to innovation, science, technology, engineering, art and math are welcome to enter in the future competition.

External Links

http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2013/1/prweb10286897.htm

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