Robotic spider
This robot spider was designed for fun to show off Megahard mechanical CAD capabilities.
A biological spider and hence also this robot spider, have the ability to navigate terrain that is impassable for most other land vehicles. In this design, the legs of the robot spider have at least the same freedom of movement than those of a biological spider.
Free & open source design
If you'd like to contribute or start your own robot project based on this design, feel free! This project is work in progress. The mechanical CAD files for the spider robot can be found here: https://gitlab.com/Megahard.pro/spider-robot-cad
Want to get in touch? Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a contact form. Megahard would love to hear from you if you use the design files.
Biological spider leg
Mechanical design of spider leg
3D printed robot spider leg
Applications in the real world
Exploring dangerous and / or rough areas for humans. For instance searching for survivors after a nuclear disaster, exploring war zones, inspecting unstable buildings after natural disasters such as an earthquake, tsunami or a volcanic eruption.
Equipped with sensors and weapons, such a robot could be used in a crisis or war to avoid risking human lives in battle,
Defusing bombs such as land mines. Currently robots with tracks are used to do this but this robot spider would have the serious advantage in that it could be used in more impassable areas than the current robots.
Guarding property.
Analyzing spider motion
The next step will be to implement the algorithm which will allow the mechanical spider to move and navigate. To do so, the motion, intelligence and control system of a real spider need to be studied. One of the pieces of information to do this is a motion capturing video and data of a tarantula. This data and the video below have been created by Christian Kickenweitz for his thesis at the University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart, Germany (2006).
