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* Walker

*Image 1 motor

*Image 2 motors

*Image 3 motors

*Image 4 motors

*Image 5 motors

*Image 6 motors

*Image 8 motors

*Image 12 motors

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The BEAM Bestiary is a BEAM Reference Library site.

Walkers
They're propelled by legs which lift to make intermittent contact with the ground



Walkers are legged robots that lift their legs in sequence as they move. Fang's walkerThere are a large number of walking BEAM robots around (you have to admit, they just plain look neat!). The simplest is based on a single motor, two legs, and a little "idler" wheel that's drug along behind -- go here for details.

The most common design by far is some variation or another on a theme -- a 4-legged, 2-motor robot. These rely on clever balance, and inter-motor timing to create a walking gait.

Less-common, but increasingly popular, are walkers with 3, 4, or even more motors. Obviously, the more motors a walker has, the more varied its behavior can be (but along with this comes an increase in both mechanical and electronic complexity, as well as cost).

I've got more-detailed information in subsequent sections on various designs; I've organized these sections according to the number of motors a given walker design uses (note that any one of these can have various numbers of legs).

Note that walker circuits are discussed over in the circuits library.

For more information...


Along with the galleries on subsequent pages, you might also want to check out Ian Bernstein's "BEAM-Online" megagallery of walkers here, and the Solarbotics walker gallery here.

There's also a (German language) walker page over on BeamPlanet with nice pictures and video.


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Page author: Eric Seale
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