The Hexbug Spider is a neat little robot toy available at just about any Target or Walmart for about $20. With a few extra parts, though, it can become a vastly more powerful robotics platform, as [eric] shows us with his experiments with a Hexbug and OpenCV.
Previously, we’ve seen [eric] turn a Hexbug spider into a line following robot with a pair of IR LEDs and a drop-in replacement motor driver. This time, instead of a few LEDs, [eric] turned to an Android smartphone running an OpenCV-based app.
The smartphone app detects a user-selectable hue – in this case a little Android toy robot – and sends commands to the MSP430-powered motor control board over the headphone jack to move the legs. It’s a neat build, and surprisingly nimble for a $20 plastic hexapod robot.
You can see the OpenCV-controlled Hexbug in action after the break, along with a video build log with [eric] showing everyone how to tear apart one of these robot toys.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3bWyM-DLRM&w=470]
“user selectable hue”, does “hue” mean program/driver/sketch? Or does it mean the robot will target/respond to a literal hue or color?
from context alone (or watching the video, where the method of selection is shown), ‘hue’ means ‘color’.
Very sweet!
GAC! Why use a awesome phone like the nexus HSPA for that? Why not use one of the Craptastic HTC or other junk phones that are not running Jellybean 4.2?
Gee, I dunno, maybe because he *had the phone lying around*?
Very fun. I’ve made a similar app, but it uses the inbuilt face recognition software to track faces (among other things): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluetooth
For those in the Chicago area, Eric, who did this project, will be giving a talk on Computer Vision, OpenCV, and Android at Pumping Station: One (3519 N Elston) on Thursday 1/10 at 7:00 pm – http://pumpingstationone.org/2012/12/computer-vision-and-opencv-on-android-automation-night-1220-7pm/. For those not in the Chicago area, we will be streaming a webcast of the talk at the same time and link.
as an aside, this toy is a stolen design from a guy named Jamie who developed this a few years ago. He is also building a giant rideable one in his shed.
http://jamius.com/Robot/Robot.html
Hey what about adding a spycamera, like this one: Contraespionaje. That way people won’t notice that robot is looking at them :)