After a little testing on artificial grass wondering if we’re reaching the end of the road (so to speak) for wheels on the robots?
Wheels (tracks too) definitely have limitations as to the kind of terrain they can handle. Legs though are comparatively a lot more complicated when built ‘properly’.
That is, legs can use multiple (power hungry) servos, complicated maths and even machine learning to coordinate them and achieve a smooth movement. That complexity goes against founding principles for these efforts but it’d make for interesting experiments.
An issue is that the detector needs to remain close to the ground so additionally a probe would be required. If the overall body movement was not so smooth then again achieving a level detector would prove interesting!
Hopefully there’s a middle path but that’s currently proving to be elusive. Time may well reveal the answer.