For getting around on most surfaces, it’s hard to beat the utility of the wheel. Versatile, inexpensive, and able to be made from a wide array of materials has led to this being a cornerstone technology for the past ten thousand years or so. But with that much history it can seem a little bit played out. To change up the locomotion game, you might want to consider using robotic legs instead. That’s what [Giliam] designed into this mobile coffee table which uses custom linkages to move its legs and get itself from place to place around the living room.
The process to build this mobile coffee table started years ago, when [Giliam] was designing walking mechanisms in software. A genetic algorithm was used to develop improved versions of various mechanisms, with the best ones going on to develop successive generations of the designs. Originally this just started out as a software project, but [Giliam] also developed some woodworking skills in the meantime which led to the actual construction of this coffee table.
From there the design was moved to Fusion 360, where it could then be sent to a CNC machine to create all of the parts for the 12-legged table. An Arduino Nano controls the leg movements, with power to the legs’ crankshafts provided by 24 V brushless motors. Finally, a Bluetooth module is included to allow the table to receive commands from a modified Nintendo Wii “Nunchuk” — itself an impressive project that we covered back in 2020.
This project took an incredible amount of work not just to design th ..
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