It was a pain in the redacted to make the Tonberry not fall over or jump when you walked, and even then the best I managed was to make the thing slowly walk at about 1 knot, and it can't climb anything either, only walk on flat ground.
I'm thinking of making an actual, proper walker that can climb hills and stuff, but I have no idea where to even start with this, so here are some questions I have y'all might have answers to:
How do I make it have better traction? (I think by adding small wheels on the feet, but I'm not sure)
How do I make it handle uneven terrain like hills and maybe mountains? (feet moving by
PitchAnglemaybe?)How do I make it walk faster, and also able to run?
How do I make it keep it's balance and not fall from the force of the rotators? (Gyroscopes? Or maybe there's some FT solution?)
How do I get the scale right? Do I just build with tiny parts or use big ones and then scale it down? If the latter wouldn't that cause problems with weight, balance, etc?
Is it possible to make it roll somehow? (probably not but worth asking)
A lot of questions I know, but this would probably be the most difficult thing I have ever built if it works out, and so I'd want it to be the best possible.
Hmm...
1) For better traction i use sphere and hemisphere parts, they have friction and bounciness parameters to play with. Its a good idea to put them in the lower part of mech feet.
2) Well, the easiest way is adding an offset to the walking cycle and/or gyro aligning the whole mech to the terrain and tethering the offset value to, lets say, Trim for manual control.
It possibly will look pretty rough at times, but it will work with some tuning.
The hard way, atleast the one that comes to mah lifetime buddy, a.k.a. brain, is making mech to detect rough terrain autonomously, using variable output of rotators (which would be placed on feet itself or ,perhaps, close enough to it) with specifically resized wheels on them. Its hard to tell, so i'll leave this link here
Well its a bit outdated actually, but you can notice the white thin stripes in front of each feet (to access rotators open connections of the red-and-black-fuselage panel on the feet(not toes) ) which are the wheels... feel free to study.
There is also a way when we to put a suspension part somewhere in the legs, but tuning it while giving the mech ability to just walk and run would be a painful process.
3) Its all about the codes...
4) Gyroscopes will do, probably there are other ways but i didnt tested much enough to recommend something.
5) I build things in 2,2,2 scale then downscale it with fine tuner, and only after that i make the codes, tune the gyros and make adjustments to the structure if they needed.
6) Roll? possible, like in 2nd question, the main difficulty is making mech align itself on pitch and roll axis at the same time, be it hull rotation or leg bending...
Phew, well i think something of it may help you, experiment.
Hopefully this helps a bit. I am by no means an expert on the matter.
My NOVA robot is a good start for walking on uneven terrain. Its feet have a set cycle that allow it to walk both up and down slopes.
Traction? No idea. I think if the legs move too fast it causes issues.
I use gyros for bipedal walkers. They take a bit of tuning, but they work fine. Adding FT inputs to the gyro helps a lot as well.
Size can be adjusted with Fine Tuner. See what works best, and then go with that.
I'm sure rolling is entirely possible, but I have no idea how that would function on a bipedal walker.
How to make the walker go faster is really dependent on what code you're using. Higher speed can also be achieved by giving the walker a longer stride with each step (though settings this too high may cause balance issues).