December 10, 2000

Progress

Platform:

  • Upper legs finished, body started.

Sensors:

  • No progress.

Software:

  • No progress..

Motors:

  • No progress.

Other:

  • Nothing much else.


The beginnings of Bing's body.  The box in the center (made from bent sheet metal and coated inside with electrical tape)  is where the batteries will go.  The holes in the plate on either side of the battery box are where the legs will attach, through a small bearing.  The perpendicular plates will support the servos that will attach to the legs and allow them to rotate.  Bing's two processor boards are like bookends on either side of the body.  Bing's body will be crammed with stuff, so the processor boards are on hinges which will allow access to the components and wiring.  Click for a larger image.
Slowly but surely, Bing is taking shape.  I am now focusing completely finishing Bing's body, and I have rescheduled everything else to take this into account.  A rough idea of what I hope to accomplish in the next few months is as follows:
  • December: With the exception of unresolved sensor issues, complete Bing's body, including wiring.
  • January: Get the basic software working, including all sensor data, all motor control, and communication with the PC host debugging program.  Also, get Bing to take a few steps using a non-feedback script.
  • February (and likely into March): Using sensor data, get the walking behaviors I will need working reasonably robustly.
  • March: Get navigation working.
  • April: Contest-specific items, such as putting out the fire.  Also, fine tuning.

This week, I started by slightly redesigning and reconstructing Bing's upper legs.  Last week I became worried that Bing could end up being too tall, so I came up with a plan that will involve modifying Bing's hip and ankle -- now I am pretty confident that Bing's final height will be a hair under 11 inches, which should be good enough!  Sometime in the next few weeks I'll rebuild the ankles; this week I did the upper leg modification to make the hips more compact:

The old upper leg. The new upper leg.  I had to modify the top plate and replace the old post with a thicker one, which will allow the hip u-joint to slide right into the post.  Savings: almost .75 inches!

Once that was done, I attached the upper legs to the lower legs; Bing is now over six inches tall and has twelve motors (see this week's State of the Bing image)!  The legs each ended up weighing 370 grams which isn't too much more than I was planning.  Current projection for Bing's final weight is 1600 - 1800 grams (I had been hoping for 1300 - 1500).

Finally, today I started on Bing's body, which I will have to invent as I go since I don't fully know what it will entail.  Here is the obligatory picture of a pile of parts:

And, here is another image of the body's base (besides this week's main picture):

Four months and twelve days to go!