Make: Online: Robotics Archives

Archive: Robotics

November 19, 2009

BEAM turns 20

Speaking of BEAM robotics, this "school" of robotic architecture celebrated its 20th anniversary on Nov 10th. Twenty years ago, on that date, BEAM creator Mark Tilden built his first BEAMbot, the Solarover 1.0, out of two dead calculators, two dead Phillips cassette mechanisms, and parts from Laser printer cartridges. Solarbotics has a little celebratory post, with some thoughts from Mark Tilden. Mark writes:

...I went on to build dozens of similar robots based on the primitive Solarengine neurons that year, which led to the BEAM International Robot games, international lectures, the 1992 Santa Fe Artificial Life conference (lecturing alongside Brooks), publications, books, TV, kits, Solarbotics, Los Alamos National Laboratory research, NASA, and a broad line of WowWee robots which have sold around 20 million units to date (not forgetting the thousands of hand-built robots by colleagues, enthusiasts, and steampunks internationally).

Oh, and Solarbotics is also having a sale of a bunch of BEAMbots and components through the end of the month.

20 Years of BEAM Technology

More:
BEAM coverage on Make: Online

Solar-powered miniball

It may look like some futuristic Christmas tree ornament, but the miniball is part of the BEAM robot family of "rollers." A miniball is a motorized hamster ball that, sadly, you don't see in the wild too often. Solarbotics used to sell a miniball kit. This Instructable, by MAKE contributor and Solarbotics intern, Jérôme Demers, shows you how to make your own.

Solar Powered Miniball Wannabe

More:
How-To Tuesday: Make a Beetlebot
BeetleBot Revisited
Mousey the BeetleBot?

November 18, 2009

Robot body by Lego, brains by Arduino

Hector of Make: en Español sent us this piece from the site:

What happens when you give an Arduino to a student whose resources barely provide for the most basic maker needs, but is nonetheless eager to create something awesome? You get tech-art in the making.

David Busto Torres, the newest member of the elite robotics club from ITESM SLP campus (Mexico), shares with us his creation. It is a robot made only with an Arduino, some Ethernet cable, a couple of IR LEDs, two salvaged DC motors, an improvised H-bridge, and of course, some Lego bricks.

The total cost was less than US$10 (around $100 Mexican pesos) -- the Arduino was provided by the crew at Make: en Español.

David promised to share a video with us once he's finished creating an Arduino shield to replace all the cables and improve the robot's aesthetics, but for me, what could be more beautiful than the pictures above?

[Thanks, Hector!]

Line-following chassis from RepRap

Here's a set of chassis parts for a line-following robot, made on a RepRap machine, by a member of the IEEE Robotic Club at Rutgers. The mechanical and electronics parts were part of a kit everybody got. This builder created this RepRap body to go with his kit.

RepRapBot Mrk II
Chassis for Line Following Bot (on Thingiverse)

New in the Maker Shed: Robotic arm kit

With this award-winning Robotic arm kit, you can control the gripper, wrist, elbow, base rotation and motion, all from the tethered remote. The robotic arm has a vertical reach of 15", horizontal reach of 12.6", and lifting capacity of 100g. Features include a searchlight on the gripper and an audible indicator on all 5 gearboxes to prevent any potential injury or gear breakage during operation. Who is going to be the first to hack this with an Arduino?

November 17, 2009

The vibrobots of Norway

Nifty video (in Norwegian) of DIYer Morten Skogly showing off some of his vibrobot creations on a Norwegian TV show.

Vibrobots (Tekno S03E04)

In the Maker Shed: 3pi Robotics bundle

The 3pi robotics bundle from the Maker Shed includes all the major components needed for programming this fun little bot. The Pololu 3pi robot is a complete, high-performance mobile platform featuring two micro metal gearmotors, five reflectance sensors, an LCD screen, buzzer, and 3 user push buttons, all connected to a C-programmable ATmega168 microcontroller. Just add a few AAA batteries and a USB cable to get programming!

The 3pi robotics bundle includes:

(1) Pololu 3pi Robot $99.95 value
(1) Orangutan USB Programmer $27.99 value
(1) 3pi Expansion Kit without Cutout $19.99 value
(1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value

Learn how to program the 3pi:

Don't forget to read our How-to Tuesday: Getting started with the 3pi for a lot more information about this little bot.

November 14, 2009

Open source swarmbots

One of my fave websites at the moment is Hizook, Travis Deyle's robot news portal. Here's a snippet from a piece he posted about the University of Stuttgart and University of Karlsruhe's open source swarm robot project:

I'm a huge fan of so-called micro robots -- those with cm length scales, thus μ m3. I've posted about numerous micro robots before, including the amazing Alice micro robot swarms from EPFL, and I am a long-time micro and nano autonomous sumo robot advocate (see RoboGames). Perhaps that is why I'm so excited about the SwarmRobot.org open hardware micro-robot swarm, developed by the University of Stuttgart and the University of Karlsruhe. All of the hardware and software is open (in the GPL sense), including parts lists, circuit board and chassis designs, and software. With a stated goal to produce sub-€100 robots, I'd really like to see this take off. Combined with a wireless power surface, a micro-robot in perpetual motion would make a great desk ornament!

Open Hardware Micro-Robot Swarm Project

High voltage line robot

1442768
Very cool High voltage line robot from HIBOT...

High-voltage power-line inspection has always been a dangerous job for humans, so a handful of companies are sending in the robots. One such company, the Tokyo-based HiBot, is working with western Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. to field a new robot next year that can inspect several power cables at once, a first for such daredevil bots.

November 13, 2009

iPhone controlled bipedal walking robot with multi-touch gestures

Most of the iPhone controller hacks I've seen tend to use the accelerometer along with on on-board camera. Walky is a bipedal walking robot that's controlled using a natural gestural interface. [via GeekyGadgets]

Yuta Sugiura and his colleagues at the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, have developed a new control scheme for robots and virtual characters called Walky for the iPhone. Rather than using a cumbersome game controller or keyboard, which may pose a problem for novice users, they can use Walky to control walking, turning, jumping, kicking, and other actions through simple finger gestures on the iPhone's touch screen.

November 11, 2009

Remote-controlled bowling ball

For just $1500, you can have your very own remote-controlled bowling ball! Maybe this is worthy of a remake? How about adding flashing LEDs to one of those translucent bowling balls? That shouldn't be too difficult to make, right? Although I doubt the addition of LEDs will help you score a 300!

November 10, 2009

CupCake CNC build part 2: Unboxing

I purchased my CupCake CNC Deluxe Kit from MakerBot Industries. This machine is from batch #8, and it's serial #000305. Future batches may be slightly different, so don't use this as an exact guide for making your own CupCake CNC. Here's what MakerBot Industries says about this version of the kit:

This kit has everything you need to build a MakerBot CNC and get started in DIY digital fabrication. Not only have we included all of the parts you need to build a CupCake CNC, but we've also included all the tools that you'll need to put it together and have the build go smoothly.

What exactly is included in the $950 deluxe kit?

The laser-cut parts to assemble a CupCake CNC machine.
3 x NEMA 17 motors to drive your machine
The nuts, bolts, and various hardware to assemble it.
The belts and pulleys for it to move things around.
All the bearings to make your machine nice and smooth.
The highest quality precision ground shafts for the X and Y axes we could find.
Pre-assembled 3rd generation electronics to drive it better, faster, and stronger.
Magnetized, detachable build platform to make removing your finished prints easier.
Pinch-wheel Plastruder to make things in plastic.
1lb of natural ABS to get you started printing in 3D.
USB2TTL cable to talk to it
cat5e cables to wire things up
Standard ATX power supply
Tools kit with all the hex keys, wrenches, and other bits you need to construct it.
Full 5lbs of ABS plastic so you can print your heart out (in addition to the 1lb of ABS)
Extra acrylic build surface, and a spare build platform
SD card to buffer your prints

You can also save some money by purchasing the Basic CupCake CNC Kit for $750. Check out the link for more information about what is, and isn't, included in the basic kit. Then again, you could always build your own from scratch since it's totally open source.

Let the unboxing begin:

The first thing I found was a nice letter from the MakerBot team and a couple of postcards. I'm going to keep these filed away in a safe place. Maybe one day I'll be on the Antiques Roadshow and the host will let out a delighted *gasp* when I whip out my original, signed MakerBot Industries letter. Hey, you never know?!

Read full story

November 9, 2009

Driving a car with an iPhone. A freaking car. For reals.

John Boiles, who earlier this year showed us how to control an RC car using an iPod's internal accelerometer (and also how to control the lights on a dance floor in more or less the same way), is a member of Austin, TX, based engineering collective Waterloo Labs, who have up-gunned his iPod technology to control steering, brakes, and acceleration on a full-size automobile. Definitely not the safest hack I've ever blogged, but probably the most impressive. Great work, lady and gents. [Thanks, John!]

New Propeller bot board from Parallax

Parallax has a new MCU module optimized for robotics that looks pretty cool.

The Propeller Robot Control Board provides all the necessary base circuits needed to build a very powerful mid-size robotics platform. The control board has an on-board USB serial interface to facilitate programming and communication with the Propeller chip. A dual switching supply regulates 6.5 - 20 VDC input to 3.3 V and 5 V at up to 3 A and contains green and red LEDs to indicate proper operation or an under-voltage condition. The on-board dual H-bridge motor driver makes it possible to directly drive DC motors up to 2.8 A and 20 V. The 24 available I/O pins are buffered through three 8-bit bidirectional voltage level translators providing direct 5V interface capability. The input voltage can come from a battery pack or a wall adapter using a standard 2.1mm barrel plug.

The 24 available I/O pins are connected to three TXB0108 8-bit bidirectional voltage level translators. They convert the voltage from 3.3V at the Propeller chip to 5V at the servo headers. These pins are fully bidirectional and are grouped as three ports with eight I/O lines each. Each group is brought out to a set of servo headers. A jumper selects either 5V or VIN for the group. All data pins on the servo header are at 5V signal levels, however should the need arise to directly access the Propeller chip I/O for 3.3V interfacing, solder points are provided to disable the translators and gain direct access to the I/O pins.

It retails for $100.

Propeller Robot Control Board

Roomba Pac-Man is Pac-Man IRL

Have too many Roombas and don't know what to do with them? Instead of letting your cats ride on them or taking pictures of how they work, why not make a real-life Pac-Man game? Thats what a group of enterprising engineers from Colorado State University did with Roomba Pac-Man. In the game, a human controls Pac-Man using a joystick, and each ghost acts autonomously to find and chase our hero.

My favorite part is that the dots are actually bits of paper that the Pac-Man roomba has to physically vacuum up. [via hacked gadgets]

November 6, 2009

Online servo database with user reviews

A reader just sent me a link to servodatabase.com, which lists RC servo specifications and provides user reviews, a comparison engine, and various forms of sorting. Looks like a very good resource. [Thanks, Phil!]

CupCake CNC build, part 1: Introduction & background

Having just arrived home from a quick trip to the hardware store, I was pleasantly surprised to see a large, unmarked, cardboard box sitting on my front steps. This isn't an uncommon event, since I am constantly checking out cool products and projects for the Maker Shed, however this box was a bit larger than normal.

Oh wow, it's the CupCake CNC kit from MakerBot Industries! I'd ordered it weeks earlier and had completely forgotten about it. (The truth is out: I have an atrocious memory, sad but true.)

And so the adventure begins! I'm going to document my "out of box experience" with a MakerBot. How many posts will the series be? I'm not sure since I've never built one. How often will I post about the build? Again, not sure, but I'll try to do at least one a week, maybe more, it all depends on how much free time I have between all my other maker-ly projects.

A little background: My CNC experiences

I've been tinkering with CNC for about 10 years, and consider myself an enthusiast, not an expert. I do own a few CNC mills, routers, and lathes. I have retrofitted old mills, and even build one from scratch. Pictured above is my mobile CNC machine, dubbed the "MobileC." I stuffed all the components into a mobile tool cart so I could bring it to hackerspaces, workshops, and events, all in the hopes of helping out fellow makers.

Read full story

November 4, 2009

Intern's Corner: Making Makey's "stretchy" body in Inventor

MAKE: Intern's Corner
Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.

By Kris Magri, engineering intern

How I designed Makey, Part II: Creating the "stretchy" robot body in Inventor

When designing Makey the Robot for MAKE, Volume 19, I ran into a problem that plagues all kinds of designers -- how to continually redesign a body to accommodate changes in whatever's crammed inside it?

Once I'd sketched out Makey's configuration and modeled the major parts in Autodesk Inventor 3D modeling software, I really got into some of Inventor's awesome features. Inventor has three basic design types you work with: sketches, parts, and assemblies. Up to this point I had designed each individual component, including Makey's robot body, as a part, as shown in Figure A.

Fig. A: Makey's sheet metal body, near-final version, shown as a single part in Autodesk Inventor. Because I designed it as a component of an assembly, all the mounting holes and dropouts are perfectly aligned to internal robot components; if I move the components, Inventor automatically moves the holes.

Once I had these parts modeled, I placed them together into an assembly, as in Figure B. Then, I attempted to stretch the robot body as needed by making that part "Adaptive" inside the assembly. (That's what Inventor calls "stretchy" parts, and it's a powerful feature.)

Fig. B: Makey's body shown as part of an assembly in Inventor, constrained to the edges of the motors (at bottom, in blue). If I move the motors, the body automatically stretches to accommodate the new motor positions. Similarly, I constrained the battery boxes (at top, in tan) to the body, so wherever the body stretches, the battery boxes follow automatically. Nice!

Also, I cut holes into the body where I needed them for mounting the motors. This was the wrong approach! It seemed to work, but when I looked at the robot body as a part, outside of the assembly, the holes I had made weren't shown. They had simply vanished.

The reason for this is that Inventor can't know ahead of time how you're going to use a part. You could design one part that could be used in multiple assemblies, so if you alter the base part in any way inside one particular assembly, the alteration exists only in the assembly, but the base part is unchanged. Thus, my changes didn't "take hold."

The key was to create the robot body from inside the assembly. You can actually be inside an assembly and make a brand-new part. To do this, in the Assembly Panel area, instead of selecting Place Component, choose Create Component.

I ended up first creating what I called a "base plate," which existed solely to help me anchor all the parts, including the robot body. It would not be a part I would actually fabricate. I then placed the base plate, the motors, the Arduino, and the batteries into an assembly, using Place Component, and assembled it all by anchoring everything to the base plate (using constraints). This was pretty much what I had been doing before.

Now, still inside the assembly, I created a new part, via Create Component, which would become the robot body. I selected the material type Sheet Metal.ipt, since it's a sheet metal part, and created each bend and flange step by step, inside the assembly. This robot body now "belonged" to the assembly, and was adaptive inside the assembly. Any editing of it, from that point on, was always initiated from within the assembly.

Instead of making the body a specific width, I just made everything extra large with no dimensions. Once the body was formed, I finished editing, and now I was back inside the assembly with my new robot body. I then constrained the side of the body to an existing "edge" from another part, for instance, the sides of the motors (Figure B). When the constraint went into effect, the sides of the body "snapped" into place next to the motors. To make holes, I projected the motor mount holes onto the robot body, again edited the robot body part (from within the assembly), cut holes there, and then the holes "stayed put," so to speak.

Success at last -- I had modeled a fully adaptive robot body that I could easily modify to accommodate all the robot components I would be cramming inside it.

Next up: The battle to fit the brains inside.

More: How I designed Makey the robot, Part I: The first design

Frostruder MK2

Zach Hoeken wrote up a nice piece about the design of the MakerBot Frostruder MK2, currently in its second prototype. He talks about the challenges of designing a cheap, small device capable of computer-controlled cupcake frosting:

My first experiment was with some thick, chocolate frosting that you can find in nearly any grocery store. I simply wanted to see if it was possible to use air pressure to extrude frosting, so I wired up a solenoid to a switch and used that solenoid to turn the air pressure on and off to the syringe. I was using a 21GA (0.53mm) needle and a standard 60cc syringe. I hooked it up to the air pressure and opened the valve. Nothing happened right away, but I gradually turned the pressure up until about 50-60 PSI I started getting a frosting extrusion. I kept turning up the pressure to about 80 PSI where I got a really nice, very fast frosting extrusion that was about 0.5mm wide. Success!!!

From MAKE magazine:

In MAKE, Volume 19: Robots, Rovers, and Drones, learn how to make a model plane with an autopilot and a built-in robot brain. We'll also show you how to make a comfortable chair and footstool out of a single sheet of plywood, a bicyclist's vest that shows how fast you're going, and projects that introduce you to servomotors. All this, and lots more, in MAKE, Volume 19! Subscribe here, or buy the issue in the Maker Shed.

Giger: Custom humanoid robot

Giger is a really cool looking humanoid robot with impressive specs. The bot stands about 2 feet tall, weighs in around 11 lbs, has a WiFi camera, and runs embedded Linux. Did I mention it cost $10,000 to build! I guess all those actuators are expensive!