First Posted: April 5, 2026

Ever since transferring into Mechatronics Engineering, I've been exposed to a lot of cool technologies, including 3D printing, ROS2 (see my blog post), and I've been tinkering frequently with my Arduino!

Inspired by my mentor Lokesh Patel, I wanted to make a big project to learn the skills that I might have missed out on in the first year of the program. I also wanted to make something really cool that could teach me about robotics physics, ros2, and mechanical design in one. While this could be a complex project for me to tackle over the 4 months of a co-op term, I'm looking forward to problem solving every day I can!

I've always wanted to have a dog, and I fondly remember the first time I watched Michael Reeves' videos featuring Spot, the Quadruped from Boston Dynamics. This inspired me to take a swing at making my own Spot. From now on, it will be referred to as QB, short for Q-Bot, which is once again short for Quadruped Bot. Creative, I know. Maybe one day I will give it a better name. Like Gary. (Shoutout if you get the Robot 4 reference)

Today is April 5th, 2026. I got super bored of studying for exams, so instead, I got excited and started planning out a roadmap for how I'm going to tackle this engineering problem. I am still focusing on exams, but I am really excited to get building after exams.

For the legs, I have decided on 3 DOF. With 4 legs, this means I will need 12 Servo Motors. I'll be using a Bambu Labs P1S for 3D printing all of the robot's parts. The ultimate goal of this project is to allow the robot to navigate indoor spaces and small outdoor spaces with reactive obstacle avoidance and local waypoint movement. This will utilize 2D LiDAR SLAM and a front-facing camera. I admit this is looking pretty far into the future, but it's good to have a final goal in mind. I'll be using PLA for the prototyping prints to figure out the inverse kinematics and forwards/backwards walking protocols, and I'll be using ABS for the final structural parts, because I hear it's better structurally. I don't expect this robot to be massive, like Spot. Rather, I expect it to be around the size of my compact mini-itx PC.

This P1S is also my first 3D printer. While it's definitely not my first time 3D printing, I don't have the expertise of setting up and tuning 3D printers. The Rapid Prototyping Centre (RPC) at the University of Waterloo has been a great resource with loads of P2S and P1S printers. I've gotten to experience the workflow of printing and make some of my own fun projects. In fact, I had so much fun that I wanted to have a new printer! I landed on the P1S for a couple of specific reasons.

Firstly, the cost of the printer is within my budget. I wanted to get a higher quality printer that could last me a while, and also one that had an enclosure, because I read that enclosures can prevent warping on ABS, which is the filament I want to do my structural prints in. They also have better fume control, which is especially good because I mostly work in relatively small spaces, like my room.

Secondly, I've had experience printing on both ELEGOO and Bambu Labs printers, and I can say that Bambu Labs takes ease of setup and the availability of replacement parts to a new level. While this is my first time owning a 3D printer of my own, I've seen friends first-hand who own Bambu Labs printers and can attest to their benefits. Also, Bambu Labs Studio and the slicing, support setup, and everything else is so easy to use!

I didn't want to go for a P2S because it was a bit out of my budget. I can definitely justify $500 CAD for a solid 3D printer, but I am not sure about the marginal benefits of the P2S over the P1S for $300 CAD more. Will update on this later.

I ended up getting a P2S, and spending some time acquainting myself with the printing function and printer debugging. I've learned a lot about improving print quality and creating my own models. I actually have a course that I have to complete for my engineering design credit, which I have been working on in an effort to understand Solidworks to a greater degree.

To begin my design for the single leg prototype, I focused on freehand sketching the leg first, to give myself a general idea of what needs to be optimized during my design.