Jansen Walker

Description

An openly designed Creative Commons Licensed robot.

Note: New Version (Beta 2.1) posted 06/05/2009

New features: 12 legs instead of 8, "drop-in" center platform, 1:1.8 ratio gears, many small changes.

I only update this listing for major revisions of the walker, it's possible there's a minor revision posted at my site that is not here: 4volt.com/projects/jansen/

What you see here is the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 12 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation.

This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen's natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion. The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them "The 12 Holy Numbers". The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution.

For more info on Theo Jansen as well as some video and pictures see strandbeest.com.

I've marked this as non-commercial creative commons licensed, but it would be very easy for anyone get me to license a commercial version to almost anyone. For the most part I would just like to make sure I agree with the usage, and make sure I am aware of it.

See vimeo.com/4221721 for a video of the motion.
The home for this project is 4volt.com/Projects/Jansen/

Also, if you don't have a laser cutter, but would like a set of laser cut parts for this project see: 4volt.com/donate.aspx#jansen

Instructions

The assembly is fairly straight forward, but there are many steps. In general all the parts layer on top of each other using the long threaded rods as the main support structure. You'll need to use the images for the main part of the body, and refer to the "Leg Assembly" PDF for an exploded view of the layers of an individual leg.

Parts List:
4- 0.5in m3 (#6 US) bolts (Center platform)
12- 0.75in m3 (#6 US) bolts (1 Per leg)
36- 0.75in m2 (#8 US) bolts (3 per leg)
12- 1.5in m3 (#6 US) bolts (4 for battery, 4 per axle)
2- 12in m3 (#6 US) threaded rods
(66 bolts total)
3- m3 stand off nuts (arduino standoff)
94 - m3 nuts (#6-US 7 per leg, 19 per axle, 12 for center)
84- m2 nuts (#8-US 9 per leg)
36- m3 locking washers (#6-US 2 per leg, 6 per axle)
24- m2 locking washers (#8-US 3 per leg)
(238 washers and nuts total)
108- Plastic leg parts (9 per leg)
30- Plastic axle/gear parts
7- Plastic parts for center platform
1- Can of plasti-dip, enough for many walkers. (Optional)
(146 plastic parts total)
(450 hardware parts total)
1- Arduino or Arduino clone
1- Power source (6-20 volts)
2- Micro servos, modified for continuous rotation
1- Breadboard for easy electrical connections (Optional)
10- Short wires for bread-boarding
4- Buttons for directional control (Optional)
(21 electrical parts)