Spider

This first prototype was remote controlled by a normal four ways remote controler.

Each stick controls three legs in triangle.
This is a design for the tripod gait.
Contralateral legs of the same segment alternate in phase.
A rather straight and quick design.

Stick's Horizontal Axis modifies lateral leg elevation
Stick's Vertical Axis controls forward/backward leg elevation

Technical Characteristics

 Hexapod
 Twelve Servo Motors, two per leg.
 Speed : Well, humm ... about 0 km/s.
 Not Autonomous.
 Gait : Tripod 
 Range : power supply cable length.
 Energy : Single 5V from external power suply.
 Power consumption : 2200mA at full (?) speed.
 Remote controlled, Radio FM receiver, needs four channels (two sticks).
 Almost direct copy-control of the sticks. Four degrees of freedom.
 Electronics placed on a test board.
 Processor : 8 bits  ST62E10 microcontroler.
 EPROM 2Kbytes.
 RAM : 64 bytes !
 Processing Power : About 6.5 microseconds per instruction. Don't need more.
 CPU Load : 10%.
 Use two 1 to 8 multiplexors to drive in sequence each servo.
 Refresh rate : about 32ms (31Hz). Weak control.

Design Year 1992
Mechanical Design & Making : Valentin LEFEVRE
Electronics & Software (ASM): Laurent Chabin. (email :

Practically speaking, it is extremely hard to pilot an insect that way.
It requires a very good coordination we were not able to achieve.
One have to move the two sticks along ellipses unphased 90 degrees.

This problem was supressed with the second version of the insect