Today, we would like to introduce one of robotic animal which can blink eyes, walk, and jump!
Robotic Kangaroo!
The size of the kangaroo robot is about 70cm long and 50cm height.
The weight is about 4kg, its fairly light weight considering its size.
The most difficult part during designing and manufacturing part was the leg mechanism.
The first prototype leg was barely jumping about a centimeter or two with just legs.
There was no way of making it jump after putting all the parts together…
It was too heavy and the servo motor did not have enough instant power to catch up with the jumping speed.
Then we decided to manufacture some of the parts in carbon fiber plate and add spring support to the joints.
The carbon fiber plate only weighs about the half of aluminum plate.
Because it’s more shock resistant, we were be able to use thinner plate.
At the end, the parts were only weighing about one third of the first prototype.
When machining carbon fiber, we kept it in the water based machining oil to prevent the harmful carbon dust flowing around in the room.
Here is the pic of blinking mechanism of our robotic kangaroo.
To match the size with the real Kangaroo, we had to use very small servo motor for the eye blinking.
It was a little tricky to fit everything inside such a small head…
Here are the pics of the head and the hand while gluing fake fur to the FDM 3D printed shell.
After trimming the fur, it started looking like a kangaroo now!
Using special spray can, we painted the fur in light brown.
Of course we did not forget putting eye lash and whiskers.
We will post the final look later this year once its available in public.
This Robotic Kangaroo will be first seen in the TV show called “Spy in the Snow” from BBC ONE on 2018 Dec 30.
Please watch it if you have chance!!!
