Mondo spider

How it all started

The Mondo Spider Project was founded by five Vancouverites: Charlie Brinson, Dillard Brinson, Alex Mossman, Leigh Christie and Jonathan Tippett.
Junkyard Wars

Inspired by the famous TV shows Scrapheap Challenge and Junkyard Wars USA, Alex Mossman, Brian Wells and several other brilliant local Vancouver Engineers started a competition known as The Vancouver Junkyard Wars (VJYW). In 2005, the competition was to be a "walking machine" race. Jonathan, Leigh and Charlie had all participated in the VJYW in the past, and in 2005 they formed a team together along with Alex. Leigh Christie brought a crew of participants together. The final team roster included: Jimmy Koo, Charlie Brinson, Alex Mossman, Jonathan Tippett, Bradley Buss, Matt Chudleigh, Josh Vines, Emerson Gallagher, Ryan Johnston, and Vince Augustine.

This combined team took an overly ambitious approach to the design challenge. While a machine with a very small step would have been the smart thing to do, this team of lunatics saw it as an opportunity to make a mechanical beast! A more impressive and aesthetically pleasing leg mechanism would have to be found.

Alex found a website called www.mechanicalspider.com. On this site he found a 6-bar linkage mechanism that had been patented by Joe Klann. The linkage mechanism produced a relatively flat foot path and a tall step height. It appeared to be exactly what they were looking for.

The competition took place over the course of a weekend. Within 48 hours, the team had built a walking machine with 8 of the bizarre six-bar linkage legs made of wood. At the final minute, some key changes were made to the machine. And with a grand total of 10 seconds of test time, the race began... And the machine walked!

Unfortunately after 20 steps, the spider began to hobble, and then crawl, and then die. After the competition, the carcass of the spider was thrown in a recycling bin.
Vancouver Junkyard Wars Team Spider

The picture is from the prototype walking machine. Due to obvious time constraints, little attention was paid to aesthetics. The machine was built entirely from scrap parts found at local junkyards, and while being a proof of concept, was consequently not the most reliable vehicle. Many of the original Junk Yard Wars team went on to work on what was soon to be named the Mondo Spider project.

A few weeks later, after nearly recovering from the blitzkrieg-like JYW competition, Charlie, Leigh, Jonathan and Alex were haunted by memories of their beloved but ultimately dead junk spider.

"This is what JYW does to you.. you wake up in the middle of the night thinking of different ways to make a better walking machine!" - Alex

"Yeah... I've been going through this stuff in my dreams for a couple weeks too. I'm really itching to build another walking machine!" - Leigh

And then Dillard Brinson asked the team to build another walking machine ...
... but this time not using junk

And then Dillard Brinson asked the team to build another walking machine, take a look.
But this time not using junk!
Source