Walking Star Wars Droid Prototype

A number or people have sent me various videos of the new Star Wars Droids walking around Disney’s Galaxies Edge theme park. These are smallish bipedal Droid characters which are a bit like BD-1 but kind of bigger and with bigger joints, because they aren’t fiction.

The robot I’m going to build in this video will only have four motors. I’m going to ignore four of the hip joints as well, and also simplify the legs so we just end up with something that’s a bit like tipping a box onto its corners without its body being able to translate directly sideways. I am however going to walk on feet with edges to pivot sideways, so no big feet this time around. If this works ok then I can move on to build something more advanced in a future video with a head and the missing joints.

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HARDWARE/SOFTWARE

Below you can also find a lot of the typical tools, equipment and supplies used in my projects:

[matthiaswandel]

looked up those servos. Holy cow, I didn't know servos could be so expensive!

[dinohorseaborus]

I think you've pretty much mastered the art of rapid prototyping.

The fact that you could get into the real world and stable in 2 weeks is just insane!

[thomask.]

Sorry James, your analysis is all wrong... there is actually a highly trained hamster inside each of them...

[giannismitropoulos]

I BEGGING you to recreate the "TANK" robot from generation zero!! It has the same walking style

[WalterMurch]

big thumbs up for Huey, Dewey, and Louie. I absolutely love silent running.

[Fattrucker]

Silent Running an awesome iconic film far before it's time .
Yes James it does remind me of Huey, Louie and Dewey 😢

Fattrucker

[hollowedge]

with electrolysis you get about 1828L of hydrogen and oxygen per 1L of water, so that creates a very efficient and reliable compressor.

so long as you.
1) have a bubbler and mesh filter to prevent gas getting into the system.
2) use pneumatic muscles to fine tune the movement.
3) don't ignite the gasses that are used as rocket fuel.
4) add a condenser to recycle the gasses.
5) keep the system close to the centre of gravity.

you can make all pneumatic robots you want, maybe combined it with electrical actuation for more dynamic walkers like an opendog V4 or use the electrolyser and a water wheel as a "heart" to increase runtime for your robots. (please look into this)

[GreedWillEndUs]

Do you like have a team or something, consistently delivering awesome projects and videos on your own at this caliber is so amazingly awesome. Love it!

[Warrigt]

The Disney ones are cool and adorable. James' one is amazing and sassy.

[leesmithsworkshop]

what a great starting point, I was one of the people who asked about this project so very happy to see a first video.

[SteveRowe]

You are amazing, James. I love to hear your thought process and watch it get turned into something that works.

[BuckeyeStormsProductions]

You read my mind, because I was literally thinking this reminded me of Huey, Dewey and Louie a split second before you said it. Now I need to see tha movie again.

[kaboomer]

I love when you release your videos. I have had to work very late and your videos often come out at midnight for me. It's a welcome surprise to brighten my night :)

[BeefIngot]

Weird tip you might appreciate. There are these things called nylon rivets which are plastic push rivets that come in all sorts of different sizes (in Metric) and not only are removable (by simply pulling what you pushed), but require significantly less effort in cad as it reduces the amount of nut slots, threads or heat thread insert holes you have to make and instead, all you need is either 2 holes or one hole and a conical cavity for the expanding bit of the nylon thread. The ones you want are called R Type Nylon Rivets. Automotive rivets exist but they all are weird proprietary sizes so you're probably better served with these R Type nylon rivets with tons of different sizes that you can buy cheaply in bulk.

[polarvortex]

“Coefficient of wobbliness” Ah, yes, of course.

[bricogeekcom]

It's really amazing how much you put into so little time, great robot as always!

[Hertzer]

Cool! Looking forward for the new features! Amazing how fast you got the basics sorted out!

[AerialWaviator]

Very impressive demo of a functional concept James. Just one interaction of hardware, and some software experiments to tune a basic algorithm, all in just a couple of weeks! Really looking forward to seeing the hardware design iteration with the extra hip servos. That should really enable many options for future experiments.

[TurboLoveTrain]

One dude in his garage made something in a few weeks that probably took a team of Disney engineers years to accomplish. The power of DEI.

[Roger_]

i like it when the smart british man says lumps