Design Review

Positives

  • The design of the joints protects the servos from bearing any off axis mechanical load. This is due to the use of double bearings on each joint.

  • The parts are easy to print on a cheap printer with a small build volume

Negatives

  • Putting together the custom board for the buttons was overly complicated. In the future a ready made solution should used.

  • The design of the joints (while good for mechanical isolation) was overly complicated and difficult to put together.

  • Using "I" beams in the legs allows the legs to twist off axis. This could be fixed by making them "U" beams.

  • The weight added by all of the bearings makes the robot very heavy (not that it had a shot at walking with the current servos).

  • The robot can't walk ... the servos need to be substantially more powerful for this.

  • Having the on board display was cool, but probably not necessary.

Recommendations

PRODOS was an important iteration in the design process, but ultimately mostly provided lessons about what not to do. Build PRODOS if you want something cool to put on your desk. If you're looking for a functional robot build FOBO instead.