This spider turns on one leg.
Spider
Here is a spider-looking
turret steering robot (sounds like
an insult):
The wide leg base
makes movement a breeze. Notice the touch sensor
in the top right, it tells the RCX when
the legs are off the floor for turning. The front
facing light sensor serves the radar and
the down facing light sensor will
follow a black line.
When the robot is
first run, the robot turns 360 degrees
(measured by a hidden rotation sensor) looking
for a black line. If no
black line is found, the spider goes into
IR radar mode and walks about avoiding
obstacles.
The rear motor drives
the turret. You can also see that
there are four sensors
attached to the
RCX. The rotation
sensor and down facing light
sensor each use one input, and the
leg up touch sensor and the IR radar light
sensor share an input. The input is set up
as a light sensor but reads 100 when
the touch sensor is pressed. If the touch sensor
is pressed, the program does not call the IR radar
subroutine to avoid false radar readings.
When the legs are
off the ground, the turret serves as the single
middle foot and turning base.
Hidden by the turret is the motor that drives
a worm gear that rotates the legs.
Here is the quicktime
movie
of the spider in action.
