Walking Tri-Sphere (WR2) :

My second summer at Square One I spent the majority of the time working on a complete controls architecture for the second version of Square One's walking Tri-Sphere. The walking Tri-Sphere like CARMa was an investigation to see how effectively the Tri-Sphere system would be able to preform a certain task.

The second generation walking robot, WR2, was created after several design issues were identified with the first walking robot. For WR2 the original controls architecture of WR1 was thrown out and the code was designed from the ground up. I worked extensively on developing a flexible and robust architecture for the system that would allow for long term development.

The major programming problems that had to be solved for the WR2 robot were: 

• Creating an extensible multi-threaded state-queue system that would allow for multiple tiers of abstraction.
  
• Creating a motor controls architecture that would allow synchronized movement between a distributed contouring system.
• Creating a fail safe and redundant emergency stop system that could programatically and safely halt all motion regardless of code state or code failure.

Overcoming these challenges allowed WR2 to become one of the most agile and autonomous frame walkers ever developed. The system is fully capable of navigating complex and cluttered terrains without user input. This is a feature that is unique to WR2 and is a result of the extreme precision and flexibility of the Tri-Sphere system.

This video depicts WR1, WR2 video footage has 
not been released from DoD control.