[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWh6MFUCZ-U]
[Spiritplumber] has been sending us updates on a promising project he’s working on called RobotsEverywhere. We’re not completely sure if that name covers the project itself, or just the name of his group that is selling robots (and giving us schematics and source code). Either way, they have some really cool stuff. The really cool part about many of the bots is that they are using Android phones as their brains and they use the same system on land, air, and water. There’s tons of information sprinkled around the site and the Wiki, take a few minutes and look around.
The actual name of the project is Robots Anywhere, and lets you do just what the name suggests: turn damn near anything into a robot with a bit of hacking, a completely stock Android phone (yes, you don’t even need to root it now, though rooting adds more functionality) and a RA-compatible motherboard. There should be a few different ones becoming available soon.
There’s something inherently funny about that robot as it is pushing that box around.
AKA… I LOL’d
Note to self: clean pad before posting video to youtube. Interesting concept though.
I have looked at some of my old phones and considered using them as a platform(smartphones anyways) over adruino and such
I thought I was a slob. I want to thank these guys for showing me that I am but a padawan slob, they are truly masters.
looks cool, Can I assume the delay in moving the robot is due to the latency in sending pictures back via the G1?
That was possibly the jerkiest movement I’ve seen in any sort of robot. Is it truly autonomous or is it just R/C over some sort of Android data link? I think at this rate an R/C car would do better anyway.
Let’s see if I can offer some answers :)
The apartment is a mess because we were moving out of it: most demos are made in empty environment so we felt we should use the opportunity and show how the thing handles the real world (opening doors, pushing off boxes and so on).
The movement is pretty jerky in this one video: remember that video is from the Renegade prototype, it got a lot better since then. And yes we’re sending video back.
The NAVCOM vehicles are autonomous, the Android-based vehicles can either be left on auto or steered manually.
You mentioned in the first post that with this project you can turn nearly anything into a robot with a bit of hacking. I’m curious would it be possible to do something like this with a handheld gaming system like the Sony PSP or something like an N-Gage?
Anything that has a serial port can talk to these :)