For a number of children born of geek parents, the WowWee Tribot is sure to make an appearance underneath a Christmas tree this year. By New Year’s, though, this toy will surely make its way to the back of a closet to sit unused until spring cleaning. It’s a shame to let such an interesting robotics platform go to waste, so [haltux] sent in a nice guide to unlocking the motor controller of this talking robot.

The ‘legs’ of the WowWee Tribot have three omnidirectional wheels mounted 120 degrees apart. We’ve seen this drive system before, so getting a pre-built platform out of the toy box is pretty interesting.

[haltux] found three H-bridges inside the Tribot and connected the direction and enable pins for each motor directly to an Arduino. The build was a success, and the new robot platform scurried along the floor. There are also rotary encoders on the Tribot, but these run at 12 Volts. [haltux] said he’ll cover these in a future post, and we’re waiting to see it.

[Achu Wilson] was watching TV when he saw an ad for Volkswagen’s latest Passat, which happens to come equipped with a park assist mode. This essentially allows the car to park itself with little to no user interaction. While these systems come as a pricey add-on option, he figured he could build something similar in his own home, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Digging through his parts bin he only came across a single infrared proximity sensor, so instead of building vehicle that could parallel park, he settled on constructing one that can situate itself in a traditional parking spot instead. The car is built from wood and a pair of DC motors [Achu] had on hand, both of which are controlled using an ATmega16.

As a proof of concept, it looks to work pretty well despite the fact that it only has a single fixed sensor navigate its surroundings. We imagine it would be a relatively easy task to adapt the system for parallel parking, among other things.

Continue reading to see [Achu's] self-parking car in action.

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This is [James'] latest android build, a set of legs that use gyroscopes for balance.

He started off by planning the build with some LEGO pieces to get an idea of how each foot and leg joint would fit together. This let him achieve one of his goals. From the start he wanted to create a robot that would remain stable, and not build up enough momentum to tip itself over if there is a problem. With the dimensions established he cut out parts from 2mm sheets of HIP plastic using a hobby knife. They work in conjunction with a frame made from aluminum and HDPE. The whole thing houses eight servos responsible for movement, but he found an interesting way to use them for balance as well.

[James] came across some gyroscopic sensors which are made for use with RC helicopters. They connect in-line with a servo motor and offset it based on the gyro data. He’s using four of them with this bot, playing the hip and ankle servos against each other for balance. What results is a set of legs that look like their jonesin’ for a fix. See for yourself in the clip after the break.

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Once again, we’re wowed over [Zenta]‘s robotic skill. A few months ago, [Zenta] posted a video of his MorpHex hexapod spherebot that left us awed. After a few long months, more bits of MorpHex have made it onto the chassis. [Zenta] says his project isn’t done but it’s still enough to knock our socks off.

Going through the [Zenta] archives, there’s a little more to go on this time around. The MorpHex will be made up of two hemispheres, but only the bottom one will be able to walk. That’s really not that bad because [Zenta] gave the upper panels 1 degree of freedom. Just enough to scare off predators, we’re sure.

The chassis and the legs are amazing little pieces of engineering. Despite all the work [Zenta] has put into his MorpHex, there’s still work to be done. He hasn’t gotten the sphere to roll on command yet. We’ll be sure to post a video of the robot dancing to some lo-fi. Check that out after the jump.

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[DJ Sures] just can’t help himself from tinkering with robot toys built in the 80s. This time, he got his hands on an Omnibot-2000 (not to be confused with his other Omnibot hack), and updated it for the 21st century.

After its obligatory run through the dishwasher, the robot was fitted with two heavy duty servos in each arm – one for the shoulder and one at the elbow joint. He added another pair of servos and a head-mounted camera to the robot as well, giving it the ability to look around and navigate through his house.

While these physical modifications are nothing new to [DJ Sures], he wanted the robot’s control scheme to be different than what he has done in the past. Along with the standard autonomous/joystick/Wiimote/voice/iPhone controls that he built into his other projects, he added “visual glyph” control capabilities to the Omnibot. This means that the robot can recognize specific objects and surroundings, giving it the ability to perform context-related tasks.

He’s working on getting the robot to recognize both the refrigerator and living room, in hopes of eventually having the Omnibot to fetch him drinks from the kitchen – that’s something we can totally get behind!

Continue reading to see a pair of videos of the Omnibot-2000 in action, and be sure to visit his site if you’re interested in seeing more.

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This tiny line-following robot is quite impressive. It’s [Ondrej Stanek's] second take on the design, which he calls PocketBot 2. Just like the earlier version, this robot is small enough to fit in a matchbox, but it’s received several upgrades in this iteration.

The coin cells that ran the previous version have been replaced by a rechargeable Lithium Ion cell. The ATmega8 which controlled the first robot has been swapped out for an ATmega128 running at 32 MHz. You won’t find an IR receiver on this one either, it’s been traded for a Bluetooth module which adds a quantum leap in functionality. For instance, the graph in the upper left of this photograph shows the reflective sensor data readings used to follow the line.

There’s all kinds of great engineering in this design, which is shown off in the video after the break. One of our favorite parts is that the axles are attracted to the center of the robot by one rare-earth magnet. This keeps the rubber tires pressed against the motor spindles rather than use a gearing system.

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It’s off to the races once again with the Micomouse maze solving contest at the 2011 RoboGames. This is a picture of the winner, a bot called Min7 (main page) which was built by [Ng Beng Kiat]. Using four phototransistors and a flash sensor it managed to first map the contest maze, then speed run it in under four seconds. See both runs in videos after the break. He’s certainly got a leg up on the bots we saw last year. Min7 beats them both in time, and overall control during the speed run.

[Ng] mentions that this year is the first time he’s built a micromouse with four wheels instead of two. There’s a gyro on board which aids navigation by feeding the orientation data to the STM32 chip which controls the device. We took a moment to page through his past designs. It’s remarkable how they’ve evolved through the years. Read the rest of this entry »

The guys over at Rusty Nail Workshop have put up an Internet controlled robotic arm for your amusement. While you’re waiting for the turkey to be done (or, you know, working), try your hand at moving some LEGO pieces around with a remote-controlled robotic arm.

The build log goes through the parts needed for the build. The arm itself is a Lynxmotion AL-5D, a heavy-duty device that’s far more capable and looks a lot better than our old Armatron.

The arm is controlled by an Arduino Uno. The Arduino is connected to the arm’s servo controller. Movement commands are received by an Ethernet shield and translated into servo commands. The entire build runs independently of a computer just like this project’s inspiration, the Orbduino.

Of course you can imagine the mayhem that would ensue if multiple people tried to take control of the robot simultaneously. A bit of code on the project’s website makes sure only one person has control of the robot at any given time. Check out what somebody else is building out of LEGO blocks with a Waldo. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to knock that work down.