At the forefront of Artificial Intelligence

Stiquito

The Stiquito kit is a small, inexpensive hexapod walker powered by Nitinol (a dynamic alloy) that acts like muscles, pulling the robots legs back and forth. I received my Stiquito kit with the book Stiquito for Beginners, but they are also available from the Stiquito website (see bottom of page).

Assembly

The assembly of Stiquito was relatively simple in that there wasn't too many steps. Nevertheless, the robot is just over 7cm long, making a lot of the steps incredibly fiddly. You have to tie knots in tiny wires and thread them through tiny holes before crimping it all together very precisely.

This is not helped by the fact the instructions in the manual were a little sketchy to say the least (see the book review for more details), but I managed to make the robot within four hours with help from a friend. Below are two shots of the bottom and top of the Stiquito: you can see how the control wires (blue) are criss-crossed, allowing the Stiquito to walk using a tripod gait. The top view shows the power bus that runs down the spine of the robot. The very fine wires you can see attached to each leg are the nitinol actuators.

The robot can be controlled through various means: the kit comes with the necessary equipment to manually power the two sets of legs by using a simple circuit. The neat thing is that the book comes with additional control ideas and diagrams: via the parallel port of your PC or an autonomous analog circuit that sits on Stiquito's back.

Operation

Operation of the Stiquito was...interesting. Using the manual controller, the legs moved the specified amounts (4-5mm) but it didn't really go anywhere. This could be due to the surface, but I tried it on a variety of surfaces and it moved very little on all of them. The problem seemed to be with the feet that didn't grip much, it worked a little better when I applied a tiny amount of tack to each foot, but even then it didn't move all that much. Additionally, the nitinol seemed to take a while (about a second) to move back into position - therefore, quick motion was impossible since the nitinol didn't respond quick enough.

Does this mean Stiquito was not worth the effort? Not in the slightest - there is a definitely "coolness" factor to Stiquito. A tiny hexapod walker costing a mere $10 using no motors! It is quite creepy watch the little legs twitch back and forth silently as you control it. Hopefully, I'll get my hands on a pre-made Stiquito that will no doubt work much better than my own, as well as the different control circuits, improving the operation of the Stiquito as well as the appeal.

Conclusion

Stiquito is a neat little robot that will definitely please whoever finally builds it - it is definitely a challenge in dexerity and patience. While my robot didn't perform amazingly, it did work and I feel that some more fine-tuning would have it moving again nicely. Since I received my kit with the Stiquito for Beginners book, it is an excellent value-for-money package, since the book is an excellent introduction to robotics.

Cover 7.1

Price: $30.00 (book with kit) or $10 for kit (additional components)

Liked: Very cheap, neat design, Stiquito for Beginners excellent.

Disliked: Operation is a little erratic, construction is fiddly.

Website: http://www.stiquito.com/

Submitted: 11/04/2001

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