Hi! Never read anything on this subreddit, next to none experience in mechanical engineering myself, but way too easily excited by stuff — That's how I came here after watching this Making Of where they use stilts additionally to the tracking suit to compose in an exoskeleton later with high realism.
Anyway, these stilts sparked my imagination: Could one build advanced stilts that extend ones legs in a cushioning arrangement like these, but also feature more than one contact point with the ground, actuated by the feet?
I tried sketching up what mechanical elements and connections it might require (just for the general motion, not specific constraints/measurements yet), but I'm getting rather confused trying to figure out what I need to achieve, especially natural foot positions from crouching to standing upright while there's a third part to the leg with angles not matching up equally but approximately in some proportion (I hope you get what I mean by the image).
The stilt leg consists of three parts (plus foot), so there is one extra segment that cannot simply be controlled naturally by a body part of the one wearing it. In the mentioned Making Of they use the foot to drive the lowest part supported by cables attaching to the upper one, but I want to have proper feet. That motion must thus be inferred by just the upper two parts, so the human leg/the knee angle. What makes it more difficult, I thought it would be best to have the lowest part be the steepest, in part out of intuition with the desire to increase the maximum height — though if I'm correct, this is the easiest problem to solve, by having a strut that does not quite make a 90° rectangle but a trapezoid. (Also, a spring here is probably a good idea to help support the weight over the extra distance.) The real challenge for me to wrap around is what kind of constellation I need to get a proper feet angle so it is not only possible to balance (and feel the force feedback) on the stilts, but that it also feels natural. I sketched my quick approximations of what these would probably be at the bottom. Since the angle and position of "pedal" and the foot of the stilt relative to another are changing, I thought of connecting them via cables and pulleys, and my intition faintly hints at having one the one and one at the other side of the hinge there — but that is the part I'm most unsure about. Assuming this as I said it is correct, then I would need to ensure they stay at half of the angle there or whatever.
I hope this makes sense and you can see in what direction my thoughts go.
Are you guys interested in puzzles like this/is that normal around here? Maybe you do even know of stilts that do this but somehow aren't popular? What have I gotten right, what would you change, what is missing? And if you are extra bored, what tips do you have for designing these kinds of mechanisms? (And if you answered even that, how does the difficulty rise when asking for sideways foot control also — quadratic or exponentially? :P )
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