Bi-servo Crawler

Minimizing motor count has always been an efficient way to lower the production cost of robotic products. In this project, we experimented with the possibility of building a cricket-like robot that walks with just two 170-degree servo motors and a clever compliant mechanism.

While having two alternating servos may seem obvious, it is in fact more complicated than that. If the body is rigid, the two rotations would cancel each other and cause the crawler to stay in the same position. Our solution fixes this problem by making the body flexible. The blending of the body allows its front legs to be lifted up when moving forward, mimicking the posture when animals walk.