Building a six-legged Pi-Bug robot

Controlling motors is very useful for creating vehicle-like robots, but creating more naturally behaving robot components such as servos can provide excellent results. There are many creative designs of insect-like robots, or even biped designs (with humanoid-like legs), that use servos to provide natural joint movements. The design in this example uses three servos, but these principles and concepts can easily be applied to far more complex designs, to control legs/arms that use multiple servos. The Pi-Bug robot is shown in the following image:

The six-legged Pi-Bug robot uses a servo driver to control three servos to scuttle around

Getting ready

You will need the following hardware:

• A PWM driver module: A driver module such as the Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver will be needed. This uses a PCA9685 device; see the datasheet at http://www.adafruit.com/datasheets/PCA9685.pdf for details.

• 3 x micro servos: The MG90S 9g Metal Gear Servos provide a...