I Completely Scrapped My Hexapod's Code
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- I'm building an Arduino powered hexapod from scratch, and this video goes over the complete code refactoring I went through, allowing me to easily add 3 new gaits!
My new code added the ability to change each legs offset in its walk cycle. It also added a way to change the amount of time each leg was on the ground. The combination of these 2 things lets me create new gaits within minutes.
The 3 new gaits I made are Wave Gait, Ripple Gait, and Bi Gait. Wave Gait is where only one leg is off the ground at any one time. Ripple Gait is like tri gait, but where no legs are in sync. And finally, Bi gait is where only 2 legs are touching the ground at any one time.
I know I said this video would be on attack mode, sorry! I promise that it will probablyyy be covered in the next one!
Bipod Gait Video - • Six-Legged Robots Fast...
Discord Server - / discord
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0:00 Intro
0:13 Attack Mode?
0:43 Strafing and Turning
1:34 The Refactor
3:26 Wave Gait
4:10 Ripple Gait
4:42 Bi Gait
5:32 Outro
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Great work!! Can’t wait to see your upcoming videos and projects!!!!
great progress! I can't wait until the project files are available!! Looks like a really fun and complete build! Thanks for sharing
Thanks!! Me too, i cant wait to see more people make this 🙂
+1 This will make an awesome next project :D
@@AecertRobotics hi there im sure you have thought about this but are you planning to add analog feedback wire to servos you buy so your code will no the position , this would allow hexapod to detect inclines and get feedback from its enviroment but without needing extra expense of encoders ect ?
Such a cool project. Looking forward to the next instalment. Great work!
I love these kind of projekts! And you do it perfectly!
Awesome project! Can't wait to see more!
Very cool project, I look forward to more videos and updates. Very excited for the finished product.
Love the work man!
i absolutely love this series. i am looking forward to more stuff in the future.
This was so interesting! Congratulations!
Man i can't wait!!!
keep going and best of lock for you
Thanks! This was every thing I needed to get walking!
Great video!
Bi Gait looks so natural! Can't wait for the open-source release ♥
when is the open source release?
Me too
Wait for it
Amazing progress. Makes me want to dig up my hexapod project again. Guess I better go fix the 3D printer! Thanks for uploading!
I follow your project progress since your first or second post on reddit. It's amazing to see, how much fun you have working on it and how far you have come! I'm very inspired by your videos to do my own robotics project in the near future (As soon as there is time). Thank you for that!
Niceeee, dude ikr. Its come such a far way. Also im so glad to hear that!
I cannot wait till you release the final documents, I’d love to build one myself
That Bi gate looks amazing! Very organic.
If you want to implement field-oriented control (instead of robot-oriented), it works pretty well with just a gyro
You'll also want to be able to set/alter the angle whenever (by pointing the joystick in the same direction as the robot, and using that as the offset)
its a realy cool project. keep it up
Great work. Liked and subscribed.
This is great! I have an off the shelf hex pod I've been trying to modify and this is giving me all sorts of ideas. I'm going to go back and watch the rest in this series now. Thanks!
Niceee, let me know how modifying that goes!
The video and audio quality are excellent, so professional. Really looking forward to the next video(s).
This is so impressive. Keep it up ^^
Thank you so much! This means a lot I really appreciate it 🙂
one of the best walkers I've seen
I never thought It would be this Difficult to build a hexapod🤯🤯
you have no idea 😆
@@AecertRobotics 😂🥲
I don’t think it’s difficult, but to achieve your creativity on the hexapod is
So cool.
I can not wait to see the code.
Really looking forward to the course you're going to be offering, as well as a kit, but learning the coding would be great!
I can't wait to release it! Im most excited about the code part :)
Oh the mods i'm gonna add to this pristine white exoskeleton *chef's kiss* ! Can't wait for the files + electronics package to drop, imma subscribe in the meantime haha
Yesssss, dude I'm so excited to see what people add to this thing!
Quadruped gait would be cool! Awesome stuff as always 😊
Hmmmmm. I will do this! Just added as a planned video 🙂
This is amazing😮😮😮🔥🔥🔥👏👏👏
Believe me your channel is going to blow up soon with subscribers! great stuff..excited for future videos!
Thanks man! it already is tbh 😁
Your channel is my new favorite
❤️
Such impressive work! I need to study it in order to improve my 3D robot in blender
omg, how are you not more popular? this is amazing work, keep it up!
😄Honestly the amount of growth this channel has had in the past couple weeks has been insane.
Thank you so much! I will!
new suscriptor, dude!!!
The gaits are great! Now for automatic gait selection based on environment based input... Great job by the way!
Thank you!!
Oh man im not sure about that 😄 What i do want though is some sort of display on the controller telling you what gait is selected (and possibly some more info as well)
Yeah, that's not going to happen! It was not in the original code that he used (instead of writing his own).
Waw awesome ✨
Very inspiring! Ordered my first hexapod kit... Went with the Adeept RaspClaw............I saw the cost of the 35kg-ish rated servos and decided lets start with a cheap kit for the first one....Second one will be much bigger, unlesss my head goes Boom (which is possible)
That looks like a great kit to start with! Yeahhh 20 each can add up...
good one
Really awesome project! It could be really interesting if you added knobs or sliders to the remote control to tweak the gait parameters on the fly.
I love that idea, imagine a controller with like 10 switches 10 knobs and 10 sliders. Like the controllers sole purpose is to debug and to test.
I like your videos!
I feel your pain... I need to re-write mine too...
Great video! You should also add an IMU, so that the robot would always walk according to the controller's forwad direction and not the robot's.
Agreed! IMU is planned :)
2:45 long before time had a name the first of spinjitsu masters
🤣🤣
You could use bi-gait for normal and high speed motion, and automatically switch to the other "one leg" gaits when more pulling forward or carrying power (assuming attachments like can holders) is needed.
I dont have any way to sense payload weight, but the user could easily change the gaits based on whats needed
One option would be to ad a current sensor on one servo, another one to conpare planned motion and actual motion using an accelerometer: if there's a discrepancy, maybe the maximum pulling force has been reached already.
Idea to keep track of where the front is: Googly eyes
Love it!
Im curious how you did the ground contact percentage.
Did you just changed the speed for the 2 curves?
Also, for smoothing the movements, you could consider logistic equations. Like ln(1/(1+e^-x)). You can get nice transitions and directions with constant speeds.
Also, for the arc formed by a step, it usually looks more like the cross section of a wing than an half circle, and i think parametric equations of that would give you way more control!
So the walk cycle is made from 2 bezier curves, one for pushing on the ground, and one for lifting. The walk cycle time goes from 0 to 1. Lets say the ground contact percentage, or the push percentage, is 66%. When the walk cycle time is less than 0.66, i generate a point from the pushing curve based where the cycle time is. If its greater than 0.66, i generate a point from the lifting curve. This percentage can be easily changed, and by doing so will change the amount of time the cycle will be pushing or lifting.
Hmmm, i can definitely make different shapes with bezier curves other than half circles, ill have to experiment!
Reconfigured desk, no cat, no cat bed? Huge update!
🤣🤣
Looking forward for the code and 3d printing files. It would have been nice to share the first versions in the videos descriptions.
Email me and I'll send them to you. I don't want to share them yet because they are not in a presentable state
You absolutely have to strap a drone to the top, basically do what Mad Lab Industries did back in 2013, 10 years you should carry the torch for the HexaCopterPod, please
Hahahaha, this specific hexapod is wayyyyyyy too heavy for that. Also flying stuff is hard cause you have to be extremely light weight and frankly i dont want to have to worry about that. Do you have a link to it though? I searched and couldnt find it.
I congratulate you, excellent work. Are you working only with an Arduino, with a Mega? or are you using PCA9685. Is there any wood that you share the code for?
Hey can you make it to climb stairs. By the way great work, can't wait for the next video.
Maybe, but it would take a ton of effort + hard coding that tbh wouldnt be worth it.
Thank you! I'm really excited for this next one :)
I feel like this thing would be even better with additional things like camera vision, not only to have it record but also stream to a display on the controller and perhaps the addition of OpenCV for object recognition
Totally agree! But for this Arduino Powered project specifically that kind of stuff is out of scope unfortunately.
Hi Aeceret Robotics, thanks for fast reply. If you release your codebase, then i will try to integrate some serial servos with feedback loop. It may be helpful to have informaton like torque and position, when we talk about climbing obstacles with a Hexapod. But you are right, those servos are not the fastest, but at least they have a metal gear and quite a high torque. Looking forwart to your self-built-kit, with best regards, Peter.
Email me and I'll share the code!
..by the way, with the ST3215 Servos , you can also read out the feedback of position and torque of each servo, this may be helpfull for climbing tasks with a Hexapod, to detect obstacles and steepness of the ground, without any aditional sensors...
Those servos are a bit slow for my taste, but that info would be really nice to have. I know I can mod my current servos to read the potentiometers position, but for this project specifically I think I'll leave it as is tbh.
A good upgrade could be to add position feedback to the servos, most hobby servos can be easily modified to take out the internal potentiometer voltage that you can then read with a microcontroller so then you can write your code to be aware of the legs actual position. This would let you not use hard coded delays or speeds and instead rely on when the motors reach their set position. That should theoretically allow you to get the fastest walking speed possible and the legs can adapt to different loads and speeds, so if you change the mass of a leg or the walking surface, etc, the robot can tell that the legs are moving slower and compensate for that. It would also allow it to tell if a servo breaks or isn’t behaving right or just tell when the leg is stuck or has hit something.
Another thing you could add is an IMU, this way the robot can tell its orientation in its environment, it could tell the angle of the body and allow it to adapt to different slopes and keep the body perfectly level. It would also be good for attack mode since the robot can tell if it is stable or not, or which way it is falling and can compensate. You can get decent IMUs very cheap now so is definitely something worth adding. If your IMU has a magnetometer then the robot can tell its compass heading so then you could have the controller move it relative to the earths magnetic field rather than its forward direction, so no matter what way it is facing all its motion is relative to a certain direction.
Thanks for the suggestions!
100% agree. Knowing where the legs are instead of guessing would be invaluable. For this current project though, I believe its out of scope unfortunately. Assuming I could get 18 additional analog inputs (mega only has 16), im not sure the mega can handle reading them every loop without slowing down too much. And even if it could, i want to keep this specific project as simple as possible and to be frank im not sure the added assembly complexity would be worth it. For the more advanced version that i want to do though, i will be doing this.
an IMU on the other hand i will be adding! making the hexapod move relative to the controller is something im really looking forward to (in addition to be able to stay level, ofcourse)
@@AecertRobotics an analogue multiplexer is a good way to get extra analogue inputs, it just switches between them. You could also use a separate smaller microcontroller, like an Arduino nano just to handle reading the analogue values.
Your next should include all details 🙏🥰, can't wait 🙏
I fully plan on making a course that goes over everything! 🙂
@@AecertRobotics be fast with it sir 💕💕
@@NS-SMART-ELECTRO-ROBOTICS 😆 this stuff takes time!!
Great progress. Does your code switch between the different walking modes automatically depending on the input speed or is it selected manually?
Currently I press a button to cycle through the different walk cycles. You can see that in action here! th-cam.com/video/w3q_4_-ZHJ4/w-d-xo.html
Hexapods excite me, as an FPV drone enthusiast I would eventually like to build a hexapod you drive FPV.
Dude that would be so sick.
Cool sir, your robot has a smooth and stable gait🤩. I'm also building a hexapod using Dynamixel Servo from scratch. I have got formula for Inverse Kinematic and also leg trajectory using Cubic Bezier Curve (with 4 control points).
I want to know what the gait formula/concept is (especially for the Tripod Gait) to determine at what point the three leg sholud starts to swing while the other three leg is pushing. So that the robot body can be stable when walking (no dragging feet when walking) like what your robot is doing.
And also how do you set the percentage of time when the leg swings compared to pushing?. Does it mean that you set it by determining the ratio of the number of trajectory points for swinging and pushing?
I need your help 😁, and also if you can provide an example of arduino code or other reference regarding the thing I'm asking about, I will be very helpful. Thanks😄
I'm excited to see attack mode
me too 😄
I did some thinking about it today, and unfortunately it wont be able to move during it, once it lifts one of the 4 legs on the ground itll just fall over. Butttt i have some surprises planned which imo will be even cooler.
Great videos, thanks... keep it up... I might actually get over my arachnophobia! 😅
I will! Oh man.... just wait until I add a tarantula skin to this thing 🤣
@@AecertRobotics : NOooo!!! 😱 😢 🥴
Not a huge coding expert here but in order to fix your confusion with the orientation of the hexapod while crabbing and turning, may I suggest a sort of field-oriented control? You could add a gyro and track the direction the bot is facing, and have your joystick forward always move the bot forward, backwards joystick always move the bot backwards, etc. this way it is much easier to control the hexapod no matter which way it is facing.
So I love the idea, but i think it would still be kinda weird. Like once you start it up, forward is locked to a single direction?
The dream is to have forward always be the direction the controller is facing, but honestly i just need to get better at driving 😆
I have the acceleration really low right now to make animations smoother, but that makes it more difficult to steer. tightening that up a bit may help in the short term.
2:45 Karate Kids crane kick
Freakin awesome! I’m actually building one for the first time. My question is I want to make or control it on Bluetooth on my iPhone and wondering is that possible and if POSSIBLE is there way you show or direct to some links?
Thank you so much!!
Yoo that's awesome! It is definitely possible, search "controlling Arduino with phone" and I'm sure a ton of tutorials will pop up.
I really like how it kooks and moves but I dont see the utility of it. Stuff like manipulating objects, sensors and so on. Will it have eventually something like robotic arm or capability of doing things with legs?
Yeah I feel ya. I will be adding a gyro and switches in the feet, but that's probably it. Maybeee I'll design an arm for it, but that's a large maybe.
I'm totally open to adding individual leg movements , it would be pretty easy too. The hardest part is figuring out the controls, like how to select what leg you want.
I need to learn to code.
Hey Aecert, great project - love it! Definitely want to do a replica. Very cool.
How does the hexapod cope with uneven terrain and stairs?
Already follow your channel. Keep it up!
Thanks!!
Stairs are a no go for the time being. Uneven terrain is fine, but the hexapod is always just assuming its walking on flat ground. I do plan on adding in an imu and using the switches in the feet. The combo of those 2 things should let me keep it level even if its walking on uneven terrain.
Leaving a comment as a sacrifice for Algorithm Gods to bless your channel xD
Following you since your Update #4 on Reddit. Great job as usual.
😆 The algo will appreciate your sacrifice
After seeing your clip, you make me ditch building fpv drones and start building Arduino projects again. I wish that you would release it sooner. In case your course is around 100 USD, I would buy it. When you finish, it would be great to see some AI implementation. Then you could call it creepy.😁
Awwww thats awesome🙂 And trust me I wish I could release it sooner too. 100 is right around what I'm thinking, as well as hugely discounting it if you buy the kit with it.
What kind of AI are you interested in? Im trying to keep this specific project as approachable as possible, and getting into stuff like object recognition or autonomous navigation using ROS is a bit out of scope of this project imo (assuming the arudino mega can even handle it).
WOW, that is great... I my self have been working on a hexapod and I also have struggled alot with the timings... Do you plan on sharing the code?
Thank you!! Yeah it can be difficult to get it right. Email me and I'll send you the code
You could licence your code to hack Smith so they can continue with their giant mechanical octopus.
LOL I don't think their code was the issue 🤣 although I do hope they try it again with better parts/design
Very nice progress, I wonder now at 2:58 if it could not turn into a forward jump mechanic, maybe part of attack mode? :D
I love the idea of a jumping attack! Or just a directional jump tbh.
@@AecertRobotics With the way the servos seem to react quickly, maybe it is a possible option, although not sure how much the servos could take before they start to overheat :/
We will see! im doing a ton of testing to make sure people who build this wont be burning up servos
amazing! any chance you could post the cad so we can 3D print it?
That is the plan! I wont be releasing it until its done though. I dont want people to be reprinting things every time i change something.
Awesome work, I am starting my hexpod project and looking for any ideas how to start and avoid tripping points as of the expiration of others...many thanks for the clips on how to design the 3d printing parts that was a big challenge step...do you offer your code for downloading?
Ty so much! Oooh well I'm glad my videos are helping with that 🙂
Email me and I'll send you the code
@@AecertRobotics sure, thanks mate, currently I'm on vacation but will contact you as soon as I'll be back at home, how do I get your email address, it's not part of your channel description?
@@mumbucorporation7243 if you go into the about page of my channel on desktop you can find it there
@@AecertRobotics I'll check it on a laptop afterwards, my mobile doesn't display it ✌
Can it walk a treadmill for spiders yet?
How high can the body get?
Can it dock and recharge and upload/download?
Lidar and 8 Spider eyes? Use tablet cams maybe?
I worked with Arduino a long time ago, and I know it would be really hard, but I just can't stop thinking if it would be possible to integrate some inverse kinematics here. Analyzing ground position and its texture, making legs move over and avoid obstacles without changing hexa's trajectory, climbing with horizon lock would look cool if you place a camera on it... my god you don't know how I want to have it on me to try to program it around, even if it means making a computing server on my PC if Arduino fails to handle it, but there is no way I would have time and money to built one myself. Don't have 3d printer, which means I would need to order prints; only one spare Arduino, and a couple of servos. Now thinking about it... I will try my best to find some time to invest into this
the idea of ground lock with a camera has sort of lurked in my head for a while. i think it requires two, vertically oriented cameras. maybe three...(mantis have 3 central eyes right?)
think of how our binocular vision works.
our brain does some nifty calculations and triangulates an objects distance from the relative angles required to make those objects overlap and achieve maximum resolution.
on ONE PLANE. the horizontal. we are really good at judging distances apart on a horizontal plane, as it is simply triangulation.
but are woeful at heights, we have no reference other than experience.... ever watched someone drop a tree? i find it fun to place bets. usually right because i dont follow my instincts but actually try and visualise the arc of the fall.
vertically oriented eyes would give us great vertical or height assessment, with woeful horizontal... (always sort of wondered about evolution and if there would be a need for that feature... then again, wtf do flounders and flatfish think of the world as one eye decides it belongs on the other side of their head?? the things that keep one up at night, lol...{edit. i just contemplated the tuatara, with its "third eye"... maybe nature decided such a feature wasnt worth the effort?})
three should be the nice happy ground.
gunna be some nasty independent recognition algorithms going on in each camera, with the trig required to figure out where things are. but seems possible.
well, any remote controlled toy moves according to where its forward heading. anyway, would'nt it be easier to just make it learn how to walk even on uneven terrain via a. i.?
It is very easy to say "use ai", but muchhh harder to do. It's out of the scope of this project, but I do have plans to incorporate ai into a different one, specifically to teach it out to walk.
Where could I learn this?
can you tell me what programming language you are using for this spider please
C++ in arduino
What servos are you using ?
Nice project, is there a chance that you also send your kit to germany I am very interested to build one as well
I dont see why not! International is more expensive, obviously, so i think for international buyers they will have to cover the difference.
Do you use automated tests in your code? is the best way to change working code without breaking it.
I probably should but I dont 😂
@@AecertRobotics It seems that will add a lot of work to create tests, but in the long term it removes a lot of work.
Not just for refactoring, but for creating new features, create the test first
Jump movement gate would be epic. Jump forward / side to side
100% agree, I will do this! Thank you for the suggestion.
I was just thinking of that, all leg endpoints at the same position relative to each other and move the body to make it hop.
Exactly! All the legs would be in sync.
Climbing gate would be cool, to make it over obstacles. Staircase gate to climb stairs? Lol
Hi, this is really good. Do you plan to release the files? I would love to make one.
I do! You will 100% be able to build your own 🙂
@@AecertRobotics Thanks man. appreciated,
You can also try PS2 controller instead of building a new one.
@@AecertRobotics when do you planting to do a release ? Im started already to worm up printer :)
If the kit of parts is available I would be excited to buy a set or two of the parts and if the models are available I would love to get started printing. If they aren't ready and you want help validating the models I can test print stuff on an ultimaker S5. I dont have blender, but I am very proficient modeling in 3ds max for my printer. :-)
The kit isn't yet, but im super happy to hear that!! The models aren't either 😅 But they are close!! I really really want to avoid people having to reprint things, so im not releasing them until im done iterating. Ill send you the blender file if you want though, just email me.
I need to see it with a camera and IA..... 😁😁😁😁
Stop staring like that into my eyes
Try adding a camera it may make it easier to control if you can see from a different perspective.
I love that idea. Imagine a camera on the hexapod and a screen on the controller. I would probably need something more than an nrf24 chip for wireless though right?
@@AecertRobotics It can be done, just not great quality. Think like say a 165x120 monochromatic image for displaying on a cheap 320x240 TFT screen at 10 fps.
That could fit in the 2mbps bandwith of the nrf24.
I just recently got into RC Drones and don't know much about video transmission. But I used a small 3 in 1 Camera and a sky droid FPV Receiver from Amazon to prototype a drone. It works but I can't recommend it for you because of the poor video quality.
INB4 before this becomes an assasination bot.
Has anyone suggested jumping forward mode yet?
Hey, I'd like to ask you for some assistance. Im current finished with my build but my code is terrible :'[
I want so bad to build this. Imagine it printed in black filament with some red LEDs
My first leg was actually printed in all black and it was pretty slick. Only reason I switched to white was because I ran out of black filement, and the black was hard to pick up on camera 😄
Ill be making a poll to see what color combo the second hexapod i build will be
you need some hardware retooling for better current regulation to your servos i dont think your servos are the issue i think your getting current spikes you dont have the tools to detect and i do commend you for fixing the symptom of the issue the general jerkiness of the servos but your gonna keep having servos blow out if you dont regulate current better from what ive seen
How would I go about regulating current? I thought the servos only drew what they needed.
@@AecertRobotics you could use resistors to regulate the current or have the servos move slower your biggest problem is gravity and the fact that most servos arent meant to be applying pressure consistantly against something like the weight of everything youve got in the carapace your support structures were smart but seem to maybe have made the problem worse by perhaps pushing against the free movement of the servos which are releasing excess energy as heat which may also be the cause of them burning out quickly although a pretty interesting solution in a circuit a servo kinda acts like a variable resistor any energy not used kinetically is released as heat which makes heat the great enemy of electronics people everywhere anyway please do some research yourself i may just be wrong and it could be something else but if it were me thats what id look at
Bro I am studying electrical and electronics engineering as a first-year student. Which skills do I need to learn to make robots like this?
Ok so this requires:
- a slightly above beginner understanding of electronics
- a decent ability to 3d model/cad
- basic 3d printing knowledge
- a basic understand of pcb design
- a basic ability to solder
- a basic understanding of trigonometry
- a moderate to advanced ability to program (this heavily depends on how complicated you want to make it, with basic programming skills you can make it walk)
You being an electronics engineer means you should already have the majority of these things! I personally had to learn a ton for this project, but i was fortunate to have already had exposure to everything except pcb design.
@@AecertRobotics Thanks for answering! Your list was super helpful
It's not debugging, it's adding the "dance mod" :)
Ikr 😄 Ill need to add it back as a feature 😂
@@AecertRobotics yeees ! Bring it back, and add the Crabe Rave dance 😂
Maybe you can share the codes link here ....
Email me and I'll send you the code!
Soo... I might have made a mistake 😅
I've told my daughter that we're going to build this once the project files are available...
Now, she's asking about it every day 😅
Which wouldn't be a problem, but it's been 2 weeks now 😂
Omg 🤣
I am really sorry to say but the kit and course won't be out for months. In the meantime maybe do some other Arduino projects?
@@AecertRobotics hope my daughter gives me some leeway until then 🤣
I'm doing Hexapod robot.
at this moment, I have problem.
I looking for equation for last point location of swing leg
Can you help me?
Look into Bezier curves!
@@AecertRobotics in each gait
How do you know when should change swing to stance
What are you using as a measure?
@@moonoi8220 What do you mean by "Swing to stance"?
@@AecertRobotics yes. When shold change it?
can u make it gallop ..?, jus curious.
I can try to make it walk on 4 legs, but galloping probably not, it would be really hard on the servos. Bi-Gait is the closest thing to galloping, and it can barely do that.
@@AecertRobotics oh kk ! best of hardwork .