Six rotors, six legs, one gripper

Those crazy guys at Mad Lab Industries have put together a multimodal contraption that flies like a hexrotor (because it is one) and walks like a hexapod (because it is also that). In their own words…

Our first attempt at getting a Quadcopter that could walk involved locking the two machines in a closet for a few days in hopes nature would take its course. When it became apparent this approach wasn’t going to work we knew we had to intervene.

Seriously, they’ve succeeded in building a functional machine that is both, with six rotors and six articulated legs, and that has enough lift left over to carry light objects, using its legs as the fingers of a downward pointing gripper. They started with a Phantom X Hexapod kit from Trossen Robotics substituting carbon fiber material for ABS parts to save weight. If this project intrigues you, you’ll want to subscribe to their YouTube channel. On the subject of kit availability, they say…

We plan on launching a Kickstarter (hopefully, obviously we will have to be approved for one) campaign to see if all the interest in a kit is genuine as we would have to sell 5-10 kits to make to make it a meaningful endeavor at a price point that is anything close to reasonable.

John Payne

John Payne