Rana: A Biologically Inspired Hexapod

Rana, which is Italian for “frog,” is really an interesting six-legged robot design. The locomotion, which according to their writeup, has never been used before and combines the walking methods of an ant and a frog.

This kind of locomotion, as opposed to three-servo based ‘bots that simply rock back and forth allowing the front and back legs to move, requires ten servos. Two servos are attached on both pairs of front and back legs, while the middle legs receive only one servo each.

Although the robot’s motion is complex, the mechanical housing and legs are kept simple.  Pieces of wooden rod are used for all the legs, while a larger piece of balsa wood (presumably for weight savings) is used for the body. As no other linkages are used, this may be a surprisingly easy walker build for those wanting to build one.

Although it looks like there is a plan for the robot’s walking gait, the code is not released yet. As the write-up states that “programming is one of the hardest steps,” the code is apparently not done or not to a state that the author is ready to let others look at. Hopefully we’ll see some further development on this interesting project!