| Author: | Owen Anderson <owen@cs.washington.edu> |
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SpokeBot is composed of a single central "torso" and four feet. The feet are, in theory, connected to the torso by cylindrical legs, but these are not explicitly modeled because they never come in contact with the ground. In theory additional mass can be added to each foot to account for the "missing" mass from the leg.
The controller for SpokeBot is quite simple: at each point in time, it forcefully extends a single spoke, while retracting the other three. By choosing which spoke to extend properly, the controller causes the SpokeBot to overbalance, and thus roll forward. Then the process repeats itself. The end result is that the creature rolls forward at a roughly steady pace.
SpokeBot's custom terrain uses a sold sphere to simulate a hill, which it is able to navigate itself past.
The inspiration for the SpokeBot was the piston joint in ODE. The goal of the design was to create a viable creature using only piston joint. Once that idea had been shown viable, a secondary goal was to do so while minimizing applied force.