Robotic Ant Walker

Markus Opitz reports that he has black horse ants on his terrace, which he finds fascinating to watch as they go about their work. As something of a sign of respect, he made a 3D-printed ant walker that moves about on its six legs using 12 MG90 servos.

The model ant employs an ESP32-S3 XIAO board for control. This features not only an ESP32-S3 processing and wireless unit, but also an OV2640 camera for visual feedback. The upshot is that it functions as sort of almost-ready-made FPV robot hardware setup.

For a user interface, a phone or tablet can be implemented, logging on to the robot’s web server over Wi-Fi for movement commands and FPV navigation. Alternatively, the write-up suggests using RemoteXY as the phone-side solution, which looks like a helpful app for easy remote control.

The device uses a 9V battery as its power supply, with a switch and buck converter used to tone things down to a 5V level. A PCA9685 servo board is used to… drive the servos, which has room for up to 16 of these little motors.

This configuration leaves four servo slots free, which could be used for a gripper, head and/or tail movement, or whatever else you can dream up. It would also be possible to add a sensor or two to allow it to act autonomously, though the writeup notes that how to go forward from here is up to you!