It’s exhausting figuring out the dynamics and statics and whatnot on a digital spider, so I decided to take a breather this morning to make a spider’s leg (four or more of these together => spider). The Box2D spider is coming along, but it’s taking its sweet time, so to fill my time I’m:
Siders (and insects) have some of the simplest biophysics, since they generally have to cram as much capability (walking, jumping, climbing) into such a tiny body. So, as engineers, we tend to favor spider and insect models as testing environments for new behavioral algorithms. If it shows some success, we scale it up to something more challenging, like a beaver*.
Update: It’s been over three months since my last update to this thread, but since Meccano Inc. doesn’t provide replacement parts, my work had ground to a halt – (and this is why Meccano will never successfully compete with Lego). As for the part itself, I need this:
I need 30 of these, and they cost 40 cents each. I located three retailers, each of who failed to satisfy my Meccano needs.
*OK, not a beaver. Well, not yet, anyways.
mycardboarddreams 