Jeb's spider mount

[klond]

 

This is for the folks that didn't see this on KerbalX.  Story time.

 I wanted to make a 4-legged walker after I had success with the mecha-pigeon.  The idea started when I saw a restored Wells Fargo stage coach and thought well, I'm gonna need some horses.  I thought people would really dig a horse.

 I'll just use the mecha-pigeon parts x2, right?  But it seemed too difficult for me to be able to keep time between two different motors, so I needed all 4 legs on one motor.  After I saw Azimech's latest piston engine and other gears on kerbalx I can see now how it could be done possibly, but this all happened a few weeks ago.

I pulled up some gifs of horses to see what legs moved in what order.  I put each leg 90 degrees off of the previous one so each leg made a full up/down once per rotation, but in some kind of order.

 Too creepy for a horse.  Problem is this guy just cannot balance, or run, or do anything worth anything the way it is (even though it looks to me like it should).

 Salvaged project by adding legs.  I didn't research how spiders walk, but the direction I was heading was a bug of some type just to get more legs on the ground for balance (4x2 legs was easier than 6 I thought).

 The spider legs are still 90 degrees apart, but it walks better as front/rear/front/rear leg movement instead of the horses front/front/rear/rear.  -Always 2 front and 2 back feet on the ground.

 So the spider ride is a little bouncy - more weight maybe?  More motor power doesn't seem to help increase speed as traction is limited.  On hills, sometimes the rear toes dig in and the whole machine can flip, so I added some weight to the front and kept the center of gravity low.  @Castille7 helped me with some of the bug features to keep with the theme.  I'm really happy with it.  Too bad about the horse though.

 

 

KerbalX

Edited August 16, 2017 by klond

[selfish_meme]

Amazing, I remember @Bubbadevlin's first walker. Slow it down and use airbrakes to increase the 'throw' of the legs? You might need @EpicSpaceTroll139's KOS scripting skills to keep the airbrakes deploying in time

[Bubbadevlin]

Saw this on KerbalX a while ago, and i must say, it is a VERY cool walker, with a much smoother/more realistic walking mechanism than my walkers had.  Seems to me like longer legs would help the most for the speed.. and I found landing legs (go figure) made great feet to absorb the bounces as well as have very good traction 

[klond]

20 hours ago, Bubbadevlin said:

Seems to me like longer legs would help the most for the speed.. and I found landing legs (go figure) made great feet to absorb the bounces as well as have very good traction 

 I didn't know about the landing leg traction.  Thank you.

[Castille7]

@klond thanks for the mention man, its always fun to help!