Hachara is Arabic for insect, so it’s a fitting name for the six-legged 3D printed hexapod robot that Lotfi Leviaton made. Lotfi, who is from Algeria, was inspired to make his own robot after viewing Zenta’s MorpHex robot (which we’ve covered in the past) and by his son who dreams of making robots.
The structural elements are 3D printed from ABS plastic. It has 18 powerful servomotors (necessary for a 3kg robot) controlled by a microcontroller and an Arduino hacked directly to a PS2 controller. Hachara can do all sorts of movements: Walk, turn, crouch… Just don’t try get it to walk up stairs.
Though Lotfi considers himself a hobbyist, designing and 3D printing the project was relatively easy for him. “I started to ‘make things’ a year ago. To master a CAD like Solidworks and a 3D printer took me a couple of months, but the hardest part of this project was the programming side and the electronics.” It took a lot of research, but thanks to the many tutorials and videos online, he was able to complete this side of the project too. So in a sense “a PC and good internet connection are the keys.”
Lotfi would have liked to have made Hachara more autonomous by using a Beagle Bone Black or Raspberry Pi instead of the Arduino. To do that he still needs to learn ROS, but that’s where this project is headed next.
This project was submitted to us by the creator. Got something cool you’ve made? Write about it for Make: and submit it to us!
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