Self-Balancing Robot Uses Android And Lego NXT

July 16, 2014 by 21 Comments

LEGO NXT + Android = Self Balancing Robot

Self-balancing robots are pretty cool, but sometimes a bit too complex to make. [HippoDevices] shows us that it’s really not that hard, and you can even do it with Lego NXT and an Android device!

First step is to build your two-wheeled robot – go nuts! As long as the Lego NXT motors are strong enough you’ll be able to make most different shaped robots easy to balance. You’re going to need an Android ADK board to provide communication between the Lego motors and your Android device. [HippoDevices] is using their own design, called the Hippo-ADK which is on Kickstarter currently.

This allows your Android device to read the status and control the Lego Motors — from there it’s just a matter of programming it to balance according to the device’s gyroscope.

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Android Controlled Robot Extravaganza

August 4, 2012 by 3 Comments

We have no idea why, but since we featured Botiful, the Android-powered telepresence robot a few days ago, the tip line has been awash in robot/Android mashups. Here’s a few of the cool ones.

Using an Android as a remote control

[Stef] used a Samsung Galaxy S3 to control an old rc tank. The Android sends accelerometer and gyro data over Bluetooth to an Android where it powers a pair of H-bridges to turn the wheels.

Turning Android into a Robotic Operating System

ROS, or the Robot Operating System, provides a bunch of utilities for any type of robot such as point-cloud mapping to multi-joint arm control. [Lentin] sent in a guide on installing ROS on Android. So far, he can get accelerometer data, stills from the on-board camera, have the robot speak and use the small vibrator motor. Here’s a (somewhat limited) demo of [Lentin] playing with ROS in a terminal.

“Just a quick procrastination project”

Last May, [Josh] wrote in asking if a tread-based robot controlled through Skype would be a cool idea. We said ‘hell yeah’ and [Josh] scurried off to his workshop for a few months. He’s back with his tank-based robot. One really interesting bit is the robot responds to DTMF tones, allowing it to be controlled through Skype without any additional hardware. That’s damn clever. You can see a video of the SkypeRobot after the break.

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Another Android Controlled Roving Robot

August 3, 2012 by 3 Comments

[Sam] has been working on a cellphone controlled robot for a while now and with the launch of a few similar Kickstarter campaigns he thought it would be good to share his progress so far.

[Sam]’s robot is controlled by an Android device with the help of an IOIO dev board. This setup provides more than enough computational power to send a robot on its merry way, and has the bonus of allowing [Sam] to connect additional sensors.

The case is designed to put the headers on the IOIO board on the outside, just above a little shelf perfect for holding a breadboard or two. With the right hardware and software setup, [Sam]’s bot can rove around the neighborhood collecting data and sending it to a server in real time.

If you’re wondering why a tiny Android/IOIO powered sounds so familiar, it might be because of the Botiful robot we posted a few days ago. Unlike Botiful, [Sam] can only control his treaded Android bot through Bluetooth as the whole ‘programming a web interface’ is a bit over his head. Hopefully [Sam] will meet an enthusiastic coder when he brings his Arduino tank to Dorkbots Boston this evening.

You can check out a prototype of [Sam]’s bot in action after the break.

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NXT Android Telepresence Robot

August 2, 2012 by 3 Comments

Here is a telepresence robot that uses an Android device and LEGO NXT parts. [Wolfgang] had an extra phone on hand and decided to put it to good use. The Mindstorm parts make it really easy to produce a small robot, and adding the phone really ups the computing and connectivity options available to him.

The Android device is able to control the NXT bot via Bluetooth. [Wolfgang] didn’t go into detail on that part, but you can get some pointers on the topic from this other Android controlled Mindstorm project. [Wolfgang] wanted the ability to check in at home when he’s travelling. He uses nanohttpd on the Android device to serve up a simple web interface. It uses HTML5 to push a snapshot from the phone’s camera as user feedback, and provides a set of directional arrows which let him drive the bot around.

Obviously this thing is going to run out of juice if he’s away for too long. To combat that problem he included a battery which powers both the NXT parts and the phone. Now he just needs to build an inductive charging station and he’ll really be set.

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Voice Controlled Robot Controlled By An Android Phone

July 5, 2011 by 2 Comments

[Jeff] sent in a build of a voice controlled robot he just finished based on the Android ADK and an iRobot Create.

The robot is able to obey voice commands telling it where to go. Currently the robot responds to forward, reverse, left, right, stop, and ‘whistle while you work.’ It’s a creative use of the Android ADK with some obvious applications, but this project really shines with the write up on instructables. It’s rare that we’ve seen a project so well documented; it’s a great project for someone who wants to get their feet wet in the world of robotics.

[Jeff]’s write up goes through the steps of hooking up the ADK board to iRobot and providing all the electronic necessities. [Jeff] graciously provided the code for his robot if anyone would like to add to his project.

The ultimate goal [Jeff] is currently working towards is something akin to a TurtleBot, while keeping the voice control of the robot. In all, a very nice project.

Amarino Makes Android Controlled Robots A Snap

January 24, 2011 by 5 Comments

[Lucas Fragomeni] is controlling this robot using the accelerometer on his Android phone (translated). He could have gone through our Android tutorials and developed a custom application but he took the shorter route and used Amarino, an ‘Android meets Arduino’ toolkit, to do it for him. [Lucas] combined an Arduino, a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem, and two servo motors to build his robot. Amarino lets him connect to that Bluetooth modem and send sensor data over the connection. In this case it’s only the accelerometer that he chose to use, but he could have gone with the touchscreen, or any other sensor the handheld has to offer. Using this code package got him up and running quickly, only requiring that he writes his own code to turn the received signals into servo motor control routines. See it in action after the break.

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Forknife, Android G1 Controlled Robot

January 25, 2009 by 11 Comments

g1bot

When we first saw [Jeffrey Nelson]’s G1 based robot we immediately wondered what the transport for the controls was. The G1‘s hardware supports USB On-The-Go, but it’s not implemented in Android yet. It turns out he’s actually sending commands by using DTMF tones through the headphone adapter. The audio jack is connected to a DTMF decoder that sends signals to the bot’s Arduino. He wrote client/server code in Java to issue commands to the robot. You can find that code plus a simple schematic on his site. A video of the bot is embedded below.

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