Slinky robot?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all,

I'm new here and to the Arduino in general and look forward to learning and getting to know some of you. I have little (read: none) electronics experience, but some moderate programming experience in languages such as Ruby, BASIC and C. I've been wanting to get into robotics for awhile and decided to try to do so now. I've purchased Beginning Arduino and the materials for the first 14 or so projects in the book and will go through that first, but am just trying to imagine/plan ahead what project I could eventually do, perhaps towards the end of this year.

All that being said, I've always liked slinkies and was curious if there would be a way to create a slinky robot. I'm sure I could mount a slinky to a robot base with wheels attached to the base and use those as locomotion but would rather set it up so the slinky itself was autonomous. So rather than having a motionless slinky roll around on a platform, it would be cool to actually have it walk. I imagine that this probably isn't very feasible but I figure it couldn't hurt to ask. Also, cost is somewhat of an issue with my projects--I would like to work on a lot of projects and would rather not sink hundreds/thousands of dollars into any one project. However I would probably be willing to spend up to a few hundred if it was really necessary and would assist in accomplishing this.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, specifying 1): Is the project in any way feasible? and 2): If so, how much money would it most likely cost? I know the price would be more of an estimate but it would just be good to have an idea.

Thanks!

2

Hmm, well at least you are ambitious right out of the gate...

The only possible (and even if possible, probably not pratical) to autonomously power a slinky would be with one or more (probably very customized) actuators based on a shape-memory, probably something like nitinol. Even though this is still a rather esoteric technology, there are some companies that specialize in building and selling these type of actuators, like Miga Motors.

3

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I figured it wouldn't be easy (if even possible), but this information gives me something to consider. I'll keep that in mind as I work on the basics and we'll see where it goes.

Thanks again!

4

Let us know how it goes. Oh, and I didn't mean to imply it was the absolute only way to do it, just the only way that occured to me...