Be Lazy, And Get Somewhere At The Same Time

Cruise the beach in comfortable Jamaican style with this motorized hammock. [Stephen Shaffer] and his friends built it for the Red Bull Creation contest which has as its number one requirement, the need to include an Arduino. We’re basically looking at a hammock frame made out of square pipe that has been put on wheels. Watch the video after the break to see the prototyping, construction, and final product. Looks like originally the electric wheelchair base that’s used for propulsion was centered below the hammock. One sharp turn and the rider/operator gets dumped out on the concrete.

The final version includes a couple of wheels that serve as outriggers, keeping the vehicle upright. A PlayStation 2 controller is used for steering and directional control. It’s polled by the Arduino, which then uses servo motors to control the original wheelchair joystick. At least that’s what we were able to figure out by watching the video.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/22826209 w=470]

25 thoughts on “Be Lazy, And Get Somewhere At The Same Time

  1. I like seeing projects that involve an Arduino, but I’m less impressed by ones like this that could function fine without one and only have it for the sake of having it. Using servos to move the original joystick is just plain lazy when you could spend 3 bucks on an L298N and drive the motors directly from the Arduino.

  2. Yes, We used the PS2X library v1.6! There were many plans, automatic swinging, LED lights all over (there are some, but not very visible during the day), solar rechargeable, cup holder arms and more to be controlled by the PS2 controller. However time was our enemy and we focused on the main project til the last day!

    We only had to interface with servo motors because of “proprietary programming” by a certain wheelchair manufacturer, in the short time period we had, they’re engineers and my logic sniffer failed to give me usable data, and we went Xzibit style – yo dog, we heard you liked joysticks, so we put in a joystick to control your joystick!

  3. man do I ever need one of these, I see a great market potential for this. kinda reminds me of the chairs in Wall*E. someday(hopefully) this will be the way everyone gets around.

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