I bought the new
Tetrix Prime Expansion Set during the Cyber Monday sale at Pitsco. Unlike the Starter Set which primarily contains aluminum beams and plastic brackets, the Expansion Set includes a wide assortment of aluminum linkages, plates, and gussets. One major advantage is that you can use the linkages to make walking robots.
The building instructions for the WalkerBot (shown above) are included in the user manual. I think it "loosely" looks like a reindeer - very apropos for this time of year. This model was significantly more difficult to build than the introductory models in the Starter Set. The premise of a linkage is to transfer the motor's rotational motion into linear motion, however if you don't get the linkages lined up perfectly, the whole model just locks up. It took a little finagling and re-positioning of joints to get the model to start walking. Once it did, its gait was rather clumsy and lumbering - kind of like a cockroach after a few cocktails. I haven't tested WalkerBot with kids yet, but I suspect the slowness of its awkward gait may not be as exciting as some of its wheel-based counterparts.
