If you’ve ever wanted your own self-driving car, this is your chance. [Sebastian Thrun], co-lecturer (along with the great [Peter Norvig]) of the Stanford AI class is opening up a new class that will teach everyone who enrolls how to program a self-driving car in seven weeks.

The robotic car class is being taught alongside a CS 101 “intro to programming” course. If you don’t know the difference between an interpreter and a compiler, this is the class for you. You’ll learn how to make a search engine from scratch in seven weeks. The “Building a Search Engine” class is taught by [Thrun] and [David Evans], a professor from the University of Virginia. The driverless car course is taught solely by [Thrun], who helped win the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with his robot car.

In case you’re wondering if this is going to be another one-time deal like the online AI class, don’t worry. [Thrun] resigned as a tenured professor at Stanford to concentrate on teaching over the Internet. He’s still staying at Stanford as an associate professor but now he’s spending his time on his online university, Udacity. It looks like he might have his hands full with his new project; so far, classes on the theory of computation, operating systems, distributed systems, and computer security are all planned for 2012.

What’s better than one amazingly acrobatic quadcopter? How about a swarm of acrobatic micro-quadcopters? It’s not a rhetorical question, but an experimental reality. A team at the University of Pennsylvania are showing off their latest round of hovering robots which can move in formation and alter their orientation as a swarm.

You may remember us salivating over the unbelievable stunts the team pulled off with a single ’copter back in 2010. That device needed a sophisticated camera installation to give provide feedback, and this uses the same framework. But we don’t that detracts from the achievement; it’s simply a future hurdle for the project.

The video after the break shows some of the stunts the slew of whirring devices are capable of. Watching them move as a grid, and even landing simultaneously, we can’t help but think of the Dog Pod Grid from Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age. It was used as a protection system, keeping unwanted flying intruders out. Doesn’t sound so far-fetched any more, does it?

http://hackaday.com/2010/05/28/quadcopter-acrobatics-like-nothing-weve-seen/

After the terrible tragedy in Fukushima, the cleanup and damage assessment has begun. A robot operator, known only as [S.H.] has decided to write a blog about their efforts.  As pictured above, they are using [iRobot] models, including the [510 Packbot], and the [710 Warrior].

Since cleanup efforts started, [S.H.] was posting on his or her blog daily.  After word of this blog started getting out via various social media outlets, the blog was mysteriously taken down. The blog was at times critical of elements of the cleanup effort, but it’s unknown why the disappearance happened. Efforts to reach [S.H.] were unsuccessfull according to [IEEE].

Fortunately, before the takedown, [IEEE]‘s [Erico Guizzo] decided to make a copy of the posts. These have been translated into English and portions are now available at the link listed above. Be sure to check out robot training video after the break.

Even though abstract expressionism died out several decades ago, robots are still chugging along dripping nihilistic pigment onto a cold, uncaring canvas. [Liat] and [Assaf] created a robot named The Originals Factory to create paintings in the style of abstract expressionism, a style of painting that is arguably best represented by [Jackson Pollock] and his ‘drip paintings.’

The build is surprisingly simple – there are four containers filled with C,M,Y, and K pigments. Pumps transport these paints to a print head mounted on an aluminum rail above a canvas. The software portion of the build is rather interesting. Instead of pixels, the image is rendered in ‘vixels’ – vertical lines of a specific length and color. Although we don’t see any examples of more precise work, [Liat] tells us The Originals Factory can be used to plot graphs on the canvas.

Check out a video of The Originals Factory squirting paint down a canvas after the break.

[Pythagoras] is a delta robot built originally using RC servos. Humbly, [Aaron] “concedes” that the first version of his delta robot using hobby servos was easy to build. As anyone who has built any kind of robot knows though, there is definitely a lot of work involved in even the simplest robot. Coordinating three axes and programming it to draw a picture is a really great accomplishment.

The second version, however is currently in development and uses stepper motors instead of servos. These upgraded motors should make the robot faster, more controllable, and more accurate. This version is at least somewhat working as evidenced by the time-lapse video after the break.

Although the title page listed above is a little sparse on build details, if you dig deeper into the page, there are actually 15 articles about the ‘bot, so be sure to poke around.

If that’s not enough delta robot fun for you, be sure to check out this article about a delta robot controlled by a Kinect, or this attempt at a 3D printing delta ‘bot!

Meet Boxie. He’s a robot videographer with levels of interaction we haven’t seen outside an episode of Dora the Explorer. The project was conceived by [Alex] as his MIT thesis project to see if robots can use humans to make themselves more useful. All we know is Boxie is freaking adorable, as evidenced by this video.

The idea behind Boxie was inspired by Afghan Explorer to capture video in an attempt to tell a story. In the videos (after the break), Boxie wanders around the halls of MIT searching for people to help him (“can you carry me up the stairs?”) and tell stories (“what do you do here?”). It’s an experiment in autonomous documentary directorial skill that was edited down into a video that made sense.

[Alex] designed Boxie to be the cutest thing we’ve ever seen so he could elicit a response from the subjects of the documentary. We’re going to say the voice helped, but [Alex] also found the cardboard robot factor also played into the success. Boxie was originally planned to have a plastic skin, but [Alex]‘s friends thought it looked really creepy. They suggested that [Alex] go back to the prototype cardboard body. All we know is there’s a robot cuter than a Keepon, finally.

This is Chippu, a robot that [Achu] has been working on for some time. His most recent addition was to give the robot the ability to respond to voice commands. This is accomplished using a variation of the open source Continuous Speech Recognition package called Julius.

The package depends on two main parts, a set of acoustic models which let it match incoming sounds and a reference library of grammar which is built from those sounds. [Achu] published another post which goes into detail about using Julius on a Linux box. It seems like this is possible with less robust hardware (ie: on an embedded system) if you narrow down the number of acoustic and grammer models that need to be matched.

For now, Chippu is getting commands from a computer that runs the CSR. But this was only used as a proof-of-concept and [Achu] plans to transition the bot over to smaller hardware like the BeagleBoard.

Check out the demonstration of Chippu responding to voice commands in the video after the break.

[Mike Li] is showing of his stair climbing robot. It’s a bot that cruises around on a pair of tank treads, but some interesting modifications gave him the traction needed to ascend a flight of stairs without slipping backward.

The image above shows this process in great detail. You can see the unaltered treads leaving the top of the image. In the foreground, strips of rubber-backed rug add some sticking power to the otherwise smooth surface. To really stop the bot from slipping, segments of CAT5 cable have been screwed to the tread at regular intervals, holding the carpeting tightly in the process.

You can see in the video after the break the little robot has no problem with rough terrain. The design was inspired by the iRobot Packbot which has a set of treaded appendages sticking off the front end. These ensure that the vertical face of an obstacle, such as the beginnings of a staircase, can still be reached by the main set of treads.

[Eric Gregori] recently spent some time messing around with a Hexbug Spider, and wrote in to share some modifications he made to the toy. In its unaltered form the robot can be controlled remotely, and while it’s fun to play with, the excitement is short lived. Using a TI MSP430 along with a small motor controller kit he put together, he gave the Hexbug a bit more personality.

The kit is really just a simple board used for mounting the MSP430 and FAN8200 motor driver, along with an IR emitter/sensor pair. It would be easy enough to put something similar together yourself, though if you are looking for a protoboard/deadbug/PCB etching-free solution, his Spider Hack kit is a quick and easy solution.

[Eric’s] walkthrough shows how to disassemble the Hexbug, and details which components need alterations before the controller board can be properly mounted. A few soldered wires later, the toy is ready to be reprogrammed, a process [Eric] carries out using the Launchpad board from which he lifted the MSP430.

As you can see in the videos below, calling the robot autonomous might be a bit of a stretch (I don’t see it walking to the kitchen to make me a sandwich), but it can navigate and avoid objects with ease.

The Chief Knock-a-Homer robot is [Psycho Freaky's] shout out to The Simpsons. The robot design appeared in an episode where [Homer] built [Bart] a fighting robot. Since he’s not robot builder, [Homer] actually climbed inside the shell and dished out sweet vengeance while suffering some severe injuries at the same time.

But [Psycho] has the skills necessary to make this autonomous and keep it looking just like the TV show at the same time. He has a friend with a CNC mill, and used it to cut out case parts from Masonite which were assembled with hot glue. A pair of small servos drive two wheels at the rear of the base, with a ball-bearing universal wheel centered in the front. There are also two downward-pointing sensors which lend it the ability to follow a line as seen in the video after the break.

We love the paint job, it really polishes the look. But [Pyscho] isn’t quite done yet. He plans to add an audio circuit that will give the robot the ability to play back classic sound clips.

[Thanks Tim]

[DJ Sures] has been pulling all-nighters lately to get his AR Drone Parrot build off the ground. Now that it’s up and flying around, he managed to get it to follow objects around the room using on board cameras.

For the build, [DJ Sures] used the AR Drone ’flying video game’ quadrocopter. This toy has two on board cameras that can viewed over wifi. All that’s needed is some interesting software to make things fun. The camera tracking of EZ-Builder software was brought into the mix so the AR Drone can be controlled via object or speech recognition, wiimotes, tablets, or terminals.

[DJ Sures] has come up with some slightly terrifying awesome builds like a Bluetooth Teddy Ruxpin, realistic Wall-E, and an awesome Omnibot 2000 refurb. This is his first flying hack, and the first to fully exploit the camera tracking of the EZ-Builder software. Check out [Sures]‘ copter following him around a room after the break.

After taking the Stanford Machine Learning class offered over the Internet last year, [David Singleton] thought he could build something really cool. We have to admit that he nailed it with his neural network controlled car. There’s not much to the build; it’s just an Android phone, an Arduino and a toy car. The machine learning part of this build really makes it special.

A neural network takes a whole bunch of inputs and represents them as a node in a network. Each node in [Davids]‘s input layer corresponds to a pixel retrieved from his phone’s camera. All the inputs of the input layer are connected to 64 nodes in the ‘hidden layer’. The nodes in the hidden layer are connected to the four output nodes, namely left, right, forward and reverse.

After training the network and weighting all the connections, [David] got a toy car to drive around a track. Weird, but it works. All the code is up on github, so feel free to take a look behind the inner machinations of a neural net. Of course, you could check out the video of [David]‘s car in action after the break.

EDIT: We originally credited [icebrain] as the author. Our bad, and we hope [David] doesn’t hate us now.

Want to monitor how much a wheel has turned in your project? Then you need a rotary encoder! Here’s a way to add rotary encoding without changing the mounting method of your wheels (translated). [Jorge] added it as a way to improve the functionality of this line-following robot. It uses a paper encoder wheel which is monitored by an optical sensor.

The paper wheel consists of alternating white and black pie pieces. You can make this with a felt-tipped marker, or use a tool like the one we featured a couple of years ago to print out a disc rendered to your own specifications. This is glued to the inside of the wheel and monitored by a CNY70 reflective sensor (the same one used in that electric keyboard retrofit).

The homemade board which holds the sensor can be seen mounted on top of each wheel’s motor. It requires three wires, voltage, ground, and data. The data line is connected to the output of the phototransistor in the CNY70 package so it can be used with a microcontroller interrupt for easy integration with the firmware driving the robot.

[Jorge] goes into some detail about how the added data helps to improve the speed performance seen in the clip after the break.

[Thanks Tom]

[Marc Cryan] built this little bugger which he calls Wendell the Robot. But what good is an animatronic piece like this unless you do something fun with it? That’s why you can catch the movements matching [Michael Jackson's] choreography from the music video Thriller in the clip after the break.

This is a ground-up build for [Marc]. He started by designing templates for each of the wood parts using Inkscape. After printing them out, he glued each to a piece of 1/4″ plywood and cut along the lines using a band saw. We don’t have a lot of adhesive spray experience, but he mentions that the can should have directions for temporary adhesion so that the template can be removed after cutting.

During assembly he makes sure to add servo horns for easy connection when adding the motors. All together he’s using five; two for the wheels, two for the arms, and one for the neck. A protoboard shield makes it easy to connect them to the Arduino which is used as a controller.

Tweet Receiving, that is. This Ewok model, named “Ewen the Cheerlight,” is able to rotate its head left and right as well as show expressions. The most interesting feature of this hack, however, is that the little Ewok actually wakes up each time one tweets a “colour” to @cheerlights and lets it’s owner [Joel] know what he thinks of the “color” you’ve chosen. [Joel] insists that he’s like this featured on [HAD], although it remains to be seen if it will soon be turned off after the tweets start rolling in…

As far as how the device works, the head is turned with a simple hobby servo motor, and the expressions are shown on a LED matrix. The model itself is built from a polystyrene ball and an old table lamp. The build really looks awesome.

All of this is controlled by an Easy USB Interface Board which is listed on [Pozible], the Australian version of [Kickstarter]. Be sure to check out the video of “Ewen” in action after the break!