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Quadrup3D

An affordable fully 3D printed quadruped chassis designed to be built on an FDM 3D printer and used for testing gait algorithms.

robRob
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Quadrup3D (pronounced quadruped) is a project I've been working on for about a year now with the goal of developing a low cost open-source 3D printed quadruped robot platform. Built from 26 3D printed pieces that are easy to print, bearings, nuts and bolts; it can be easily created by anyone with enough filament in their printer. I created this project because I couldn't afford a 200$ chassis required to build a quadruped robot and there weren't any other low cost open source options. This chassis can be printed for less than 15$, making it accessible to anyone. Although harder to program than the more common Hexapod, quadruped robots require 6 less servos. With servos taking up a big cost, it cuts that cost by a third. Quadrup3D was controlled over a serial Bluetooth module by a computer or mobile device, but has since been updated to carry the awesome Raspberry Pi Zero onboard! Currently Quadrup3D is controlled from my laptop over an ssh connection with a SpaceMouse.

I am a strong believer in simple design with as few unique components as necessary, thus Quadrup3D is build up of only 6 simple parts! You will need 1 X base, 1 X electronics bracket, 12 X servo brackets, 4 X Shoulder, 4 X Femur and 4 X Tibia. If The .STL files for printing your own Quadrup3D are available for download below.

You can find the Python code running locally on the Raspberry Pi Zero here: https://github.com/RobWks/Quadrup3d

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thanks to Karol Rabalski for the great pictures.

Body.STL

Prints without support.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 348.81 kB - 05/30/2016 at 06:11

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ElectronicsBracket.STL

Small amount of support required.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 282.70 kB - 05/30/2016 at 06:11

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Shoulder.STL

Large amount of support required.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 125.77 kB - 05/30/2016 at 06:11

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Tibia.STL

Prints without support.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 87.39 kB - 05/30/2016 at 06:11

Download

Femur.STL

Prints without support.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 82.50 kB - 05/30/2016 at 06:11

Download

View all 6 files

View all 13 components

  • Two-phase Discontinuous Gait Testing

    Rob05/30/2016 at 07:29 0 comments

    I've been working on a simple two-phase discontinuous gait to get Quadrup3D mobile. The gait has definitely been the toughest part of this project, particularly since I wasn't able to find many resources on quadrupedal gaits. In the video you can also see the custom stand I've designed to be able to hold Quadrup3D in the air which is great for testing gait motions!. If you have any experience with quadruped gaits, particularly with cheaper servos I would love to hear from you!

  • Moving the CAD to Fusion 360

    Rob05/30/2016 at 06:28 0 comments

    Quadrup3D was designed in Solidworks, it's what I'm best at and it's available through my school making it pretty convenient. I love it, but it's not exactly accessible given the high price tag. Anyone who's downloaded some cool thing from Thingverse has probably run into the annoying problem of not being able to easily modify the design. To make sure everyone can change or contribute, I'm going to be porting the whole thing over to Autodesk Fusion 360 which is available for free to hobbyists. Hopefully this won't take long!

  • STL Release

    Rob05/30/2016 at 06:10 0 comments

    Got a printer? Print your own! I've uploaded the files here on the project page and I will be adding them to Thingverse soon with print recommendations. The shoulder and the electronics are the only parts that require some support. The others will print great without support. The parts list will be added in soon and I'm working on instructions for assembly. Send me a pic if you print one!

  • Next Step

    Rob05/30/2016 at 05:57 0 comments

    Hey everyone, it's been some time since my last log! School's been crazy and I haven't had a great amount of time to record everything. Since my last log, I've made a some big changes to Quadrup3D to remove any tether to a computer and to make it completely autonomous. I managed to snag a Raspberry Pi Zero in January and I am now using a Pi onboard to control the robot instead of the serial Bluetooth module. The Pi Zero is a great choice for this project as it's small, low cost and low power. The Pi Zero is equipped with a USB WiFi adapter to broadcast it's own ad-hoc network, this works really well as I am able to SSH into Quadrup3D to upload code and I hope to be able to transmit telemetry data from the robot to my laptop in the future! I've also a small custom Pi hat with an Adafruit BNO055 9-DOF sensor to allow Quadrup3D to know it's orientation in 3D space. The hat will also be able to interface with the mounted ultrasonic sensor. Furthermore I've added a sparkfun LiPo charger with an 18650 LiPo cell for powering the Pi and the servo controller. Stay tuned, more updates are coming!

  • Older Video of Body Motion

    Rob11/06/2015 at 02:39 0 comments

    As requested by zakqwy I attached the only video I could really find. This video is from a couple of months ago, i'll try to find time to take a better one this week. At this point, the body could be translated in all three axis with a combination of pitch, yaw and roll. In the video you can see a micro usb cable that is used to provide power to the logic board, while the quadruped is communicating over Bluetooth. Since it is being controlled by a laptop, there are a multitude of different ways you can control it. In this case I am using PS3 controller.

  • Open source

    Rob11/05/2015 at 06:39 0 comments

    In the coming weeks I will be releasing all the .STL files for 3D printing your own Quadrup3D. I will also be releasing a parts list, build instructions and the source code with the hope that others can help build on this project!

View all 6 project logs

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    Coming Soon!

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Discussions

Adam Fabio wrote 05/27/2016 at 03:26 point

Ok - i need to print one of these up - do you have those .stl files?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Rob wrote 05/30/2016 at 06:14 point

Hey Adam, I added the .stl files to the files tab. Let me know if you run into any issues with printing!

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Richard Hogben wrote 11/07/2015 at 00:42 point

Looks great

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Rob wrote 11/06/2015 at 17:54 point

Right now I am able to do a simple walk forwards with a pre-programmed sequence learned by trial and error. I'm finding 4 legs is much harder than than 6 and there isn't a whole lot of info on quadruped gaits, so I'm figuring it out myself right now.

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deʃhipu wrote 11/07/2015 at 13:19 point

I'm trying to fix it with #Tote, affordable spider robot. You can look at my gait code, and there is a high-level explanation at http://tote.readthedocs.org/en/latest/gait.html

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

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Rob wrote 11/07/2015 at 17:05 point

Looks great Radomir, that'll actually be really helpful! I'll certainly let you know if I have questions, after done reading through everything.

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zakqwy wrote 11/05/2015 at 19:28 point

Great project! Any videos of it in action?

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Rob wrote 11/06/2015 at 02:41 point

Thanks Zach! I attached the only video I could find in the latest log so check it out,  sorry ahead of time for the terrible quality ha.

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zakqwy wrote 11/06/2015 at 17:09 point

Nice!

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deʃhipu wrote 11/06/2015 at 17:11 point

That looks nice. Did you get it to actually walk too?

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