I was part of the team that developed the TrotBot linkage mechanism in LEGO, and then helped to scale it up to the size of a minivan.

We gained a ton of knowledge from the scale-up and I’ve taken many of the improvements that we made at minivan scale back to LEGO, which really improved my builds.

Here are a couple examples:

I’ve posted detailed plans on how I built TrotBot, along with some of the engineering insights that helped me to improve it here.

I’ve also started to post a few challenge questions of the type we had to answer to design and build TrotBot. I hope you or your students give them a go! You can find them in my blog.

I hope you find this useful and inspiring.

Ben Vagle

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Ben Vagle

Ben Vagle is a high school senior in Colorado. His childhood was spent observing animals in nature and building with LEGO, and these passions are alive and well in his role as a young maker.

Latest posts by Ben Vagle (see all)

• DIY Walkers: Klann’s Mechanical Spider - 26 March 2018
• Hexapod TrotBot: A classroom-friendly DIY walker - 19 October 2017
• EV3 TrotBot Version 2: Inspired by a Galloping Horse - 4 May 2017
• DIY Walkers: Strider - 29 January 2017
• DIY Walkers: TrotBot using EV3 - 28 December 2016