Best Robot Demos From ICRA 2013

June 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

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The 2013 IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation was held early in May. Here’s a video montage of several robots shown off at the event. Looks like it would have been a blast to attend, but at least you can draw some inspiration from such a wide range of examples.

We grabbed a half-dozen screenshots that caught our eye. Moving from the top left in clockwise fashion we have a segmented worm bot that uses rollers for locomotion. There’s an interesting game of catch going on in the lobby with this sphere-footed self balancer. Who would have thought about using wire beaters as wheels? Probably the team that developed the tripod in the upper right. Just below there’s one of the many flying entries, a robot with what looks like a pair of propellers at its center. The rover in the middle is showing off the 3D topography map it creates to find its way. And finally, someone set up a pool of water for this snake to swim around in.

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RedBull Creation 2013: Final Thoughts And Recap

June 18, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

I have arrived home safely, and I’ll spare you the long and boring story of how horribly my airline experiences were, both directions. The contest was delightful. Not only did I get to watch the teams compete, I got to meet people that I’ve wanted to meet for a long time. The judges and shop monitors were a delight to talk with and work with. There are some great daily recap videos on the creation website, but I can’t embed them.

You’re probably wondering who won. Well, that was announced after I left. The public hadn’t even begun to vote on people’s choice (we weren’t even finished building the sign with the voting buttons!).

The judges were from all different areas of expertise. We had a form to fill out for each project that had several different values. There was functionality, aesthetics, resourcefulness, and some other stuff I can’t remember right now. [Greg] put together the criteria and I think he did a fantastic job at making the judging fair and balanced.

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[Frank] Builds A Chair From A Sequoia

June 18, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

[Frank Howarth] is a very competent woodworker known on the YouTubes for his wonderful stop-motion videos of turned wood bowls. Lately, though, he’s put some effort into building furniture, this time a beautiful lawn chair made from a gigantic sequoia log.

A few years ago, [Frank] and a friend acquired a gigantic sequoia log and milled it themselves with a chainsaw. After two summers, the huge boards were finally dry enough to be used and [Frank] decided a lawn chair would be a fine project.

The sides of the chair are a single monolithic piece of wood. Of course [Frank] needed to cut the sides in half and join them together again for the decorative holes, but it’s still an impressively solid piece of woodworking. The back and seat of the chair are also made out of the same sequoia board, cut into slats held together with three very large dowel rods.

This project probably wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the awesome equipment and tools [Frank] has in his shop. He has a great tour of his shop available for your viewing. We should all be so lucky.

Causing Trouble At RedBull Creation 2013

June 17, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

Skullduggery systems (a first time participant) came up with an extremely ambitious idea for their instrument. It was to be a jug, that would have a changing pitch based on water being pumped in and out. Ultimately, they ran into a few issues that meant that the effect wasn’t quite what they were looking for. They shouldn’t feel too bad, a bunch of teams didn’t succeed in making things the first year they participated.

What their instrument did do, however, I found simply delightful. The jug sounded just like feedback from the sound system. The contest was happening during a big music festival called the NorthSide festival. There was a stage and a huge crowd most of the time. They were testing their jug and we noticed that the band on stage (with a full crowd at the time), had stopped playing and was checking all their equipment. The sound guys were running around like crazy. They thought they were getting feedback.

We held off for a while and decided we would wait till sound checks to mess with them. While we wanted to cause trouble, we didn’t want to ruin the show for an entire crowd. As you can see in the video, the sound is very much like feedback. They would begin to play, then stop to track down this mysterious feedback. We even tricked [Tyler] the announcer that was talking over our local sound system in the Redbull tent (by accident, I assure you).

Modifying A CRT Television For Use As An Arcade Monitor

June 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

Finding himself in need of an arcade monitor [Eric Wright] turned to this ancient CRT television. The problem is that arcade monitors and televisions didn’t operate in the same way, differing in both resolution and refresh rate. [Eric] modified the television to work like an arcade monitor, but only with limited success. He’s hoping a few more alterations will lead him to a complete solution.

The image above shows him testing a Pac-Man machine on the altered Sharp television. Those familiar with the game will immediately notice that there is something wrong. We see most of the tracks upon which Pac-Man and the ghosts travel, but he maze itself is completely missing. To get to this point [Eric] consulted the television and arcade schematics to figure out how to connect the composite sync and three color channels directly to the arcade machine. This way the CRT timing is forced to conform to the game standard. The problem is that there is no way to adjust the drive and cutoff of the individual color channels. This is something [Eric] hopes to fix in the next iteration of his experiments.

If you already have a working arcade monitor but no gaming cabinet why not use a Raspberry Pi?

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Coopering Wine Barrels

June 17, 2013 by Caleb Kraft No comments

The process of making a high quality wine barrel is still done very much by hand. Each piece of wood is hand selected, even from the point of purchasing specific logs at auctions. In this video he is using many power tools and modern techniques, but still performing everything himself. I couldn’t find any videos of coopers using only hand tools, let me know if you find one.