“Bubba is a 3D printed quadrupedal spider robot. It has 8 degrees of freedom and can operate both autonomously and programmatically.
Inspiration for the project:
Bubba is a project I embarked on to combine my love for mechantronics, motion planning algorithms and robotics (and Forrest Gump, hence the name!). During the COVID-19 lock down, I got interested in biologically-inspired robots and their unique motion style. Taking ENGI 301 this semester at Rice University and learning about embedded systems gave me the confidence to embark on my journey into building a biologically inspired robot.
Since I am terrified of spiders, I thought it would be a good idea to build a spider robot. I utilized JavierIH’s github page for the.STL files required to print the chasis of the robot.
Link to JavierIH’s github page (shout out to him for an awesome chasis design)
https://github.com/JavierIH/miniKame
To learn more about 3D printing, I signed up for the OEDK’s 3D printing Fabshop class. I learnt to modify and design my own .STL file. This allowed me to amend some of the designs off Javier’s Github such that they fit on my project. Using my personal Printrbot Simple Metal 3D printer, I printed the chasis of Bubba using PLA. This task was painstaking and took over a week since each of the components had to be printed individually and had to be carefully filed such that they connected smoothly. Some of my prints failed and I had to start over. Each of the legs took on average 4-7 hours to print.”