Final Report: Arachnae II

This project was based on the robot Arachnae I, previously designed by Edmund Schierer in winter semester 1997/1998.

The story all started at the time, when Professor Weissenböck asked the people in his course to build anything they want. So I decided to design and construct a small six-legged walking machine that was only able to go forward, backward and turn around. The only sensory were two simple switches each actuated by a bent autogeneous welding electrode. In the Arachnae II project we tried to avoid and overcome all the things that went wrong in that former design (weak servos, only 2 dof's per leg, to little sensory).

The mechanics was built (once again) by Edmund Schierer - thank you Dad for your workshop and machinery. He is also the designer of all the digital and analog circuitry and the protocol definitions. The code itself was written by Markus Würzl.to control the movements of the 18 servos for the six legs, to read the sensory circuits and to induce the robot to do something more or less useful. It was really a hard job to get them all to work even for this ingenious programmer.

Thank you to Mrs. Renate Blaschinz of Polaroid Austria. She provided us with two ultrasonic sensor systems for nothing.

A special thank you to our academic supervisor Uwe Egly for his enthusiasm and interest in the project, his continous patience and last not least for the workshop place at the institute.

Last updated: 26.6.1999