Hello All,
Biggest problems robots face today, is battery power. Well, I did design a wave energy harvester. It doesn’t move physically, it just transfers stress to piezoelectric nodes. This would change Poppy’s Skeleton. As you know, a tripod is the most stable structure, as well as triangles in building light weight and strong structures. Align 3 poles on the points of an equilateral triangle, parallel and vertical, where the triangle lays flat. Let’s say, this is the knee to the ankle bone. I could cut the bone in half, make sure it had those three side supports, then make 3 cups on one leg, and three dowels on the other that fit inside the cups. Then I would place 3 piezoelectric ceramic disks, to harvest energy. I know that whenever Poppy moves, the amount of stress on those three point will constantly change but, there’s still a structural problem, the leg bone is still in five pieces, 3 piezoelectric disks, and two halves of a leg bone. Assembling this so that all the stress is exhibited on those points is actually easy, just use a turnbuckle at the center of the triangle and tighten the cable to keep both halves with some pressure applied to all three piezoelectric ceramic generators. Now, every long bone, and even the motor mounts could have the same ceramic mounting the motors, just keeping in mind that it will require some insulation around screws and mounting plates. But, the low profile and how thin piezoelectric materials are makes them idea do to the lake of more than a change in stress to generate electricity.
The next step is linking all of these piezoelectric pressure mounts, where are mounted where the stresses change the most, are used to reclaim energy used by the battery via an energy harvesting circuit designed to work specifically with piezoelectric ceramics. I don’t expect the machine to generate more electricity than it uses but, buy several times the battery life as a result of energy harvesting during operation.
Over the next few days, I may be able to draw a picture for you of the working portion of the Bones but, I really believe you all really understand that this is scalable, and can be done with either larger or smaller robots but, is probably about as efficient as the robot is at using it. It deserves the frank sense of it insists upon research due to the potential of extending battery life. But, it allows you to generate electricity from the rigid structures, supports and limbs to in effect, reclaim some power to extend battery lift. How efficient could that be? You can look at the piezoelectric generator’s ratings. For motors, and axle mounts I would suggest the shear force type, or a comparison for efficiency reasons, which is better where.
I thought of something. Every structure has it’s harmonic bad side. It could be a good side of having the robot shivering, to extend battery life. Stresses change the most the can at a structures resonant frequency. But, it also requires the least amount of energy to maintain a powerful shaking. Kinda like making it strong and rigid to perform like a bow, and with the load, be able to oscillate mechanically. I’d link that one to the GPS.