Rooster - My First NXT Biped

I've was honored when I was invited to be in the second wave of people to have advanced access to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT project. I got my first access to the NXT set around Christmas 2005.

The first design challenge thrown down by LEGO was to make a rover bot. My response was to build a biped. What a suprise!

I named my biped Rooster, because his a reverse knee chicken walker. Rooster is loosly designed to resemble a Star Wars AT-ST, made popular in Episode 6, "Return of the Jedi". Chewbaka and some Ewoks hijacked one of these and saved the day.

Rooster is a weight shifting biped. He leans side to side to have one foot weight bearing and the other off the ground. Once up on one foot, Rooster turns his legs to walk.

Here are some pictures of Rooster:

There are a few of us LDraw folks in the MUP/MDP early access program, and we managed to put together some unofficial LDraw parts for parts new to NXT. So I can show you a CAD render of Rooster too.

With the NXT hardware comes new NXT firmware. The NXT brick runs a firmware virtual machine, similar in concept to the RIS/RCX's bytecode interpreter. Also with the NXT, we have a new graphical programming language. Here is an example of a simple program to make Rooster walk forwards. The programming language is a vast improvement over the RIS graphical programming environment.

I'm still working on a program that can take commands via bluetooth, and have Rooster walk around under remote control. Mechanically Rooster can walk forwards and backwards, as well as turn right or left. It can turn within its own footprint.

Once day a successor to Rooster will walk around autonimously avoiding obstacles using his ultrastonic sensr..... someday.