From bits to legs to locomotion: Building a hexapod from the ground up
summary
A six‑degree‑of‑freedom hexapod is designed and built from cheap hobby parts to be an order of magnitude less expensive than kits, using STM32F103 controllers, off‑the‑shelf PWM servos, custom PCBs with battery voltage and current sensing, SPI/DMA servo drivers and a simple radio link. Single‑leg inverse kinematics solve 3° joints with Pythagoras and the cosine rule, gait code implements a ripple gait and body translation/rotation, three prototypes iterate on power distribution, and the final robot walks and rotates reliably on stage.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:48The first hexapods
- 3:38Why is the hexapod body plan successful?
- 5:25First computer controlled hexapods
- 12:55What's this "degree of freedom" thing anyway?
- 16:20Inverse Kinematics
- 24:06Single Leg IK
- 27:54Scaling up Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
- 29:49Prototype #2 Turning a robotics project into an electronics project
- 32:04Firmware? STM32 Crash Course
- 32:15'Hierarchies of Datasheets Finding (large) needles in haystacks?
- 32:50CMSIS & HAL Register Definitions
- 38:06Ordering Parts What could go wrong?
- 41:09Locomotion! Gait & 6DOF IK
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