Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Soccer Playing Robots Score On Human Goalie!

August 4, 2014 by 22 Comments

Soccer robot scores on humans

Did you know there’s a rather large community dedicated to making robots that can play soccer? Did you know they’re getting pretty good?

RoboCup is an international robotics competition held annually, first founded in 1997. The goal first and foremost is to promote robotics and AI research — and to do so, they decided to make the competition something that is publicly appealing — Why not one of the most popular sports around? The official goal of the project is to have a team of autonomous humanoid based robot players beat the most recent winning team of the World Cup, complying with the official rules of FIFA. This year, the RoboCup coincided with the real World Cup, and was hosted in Brazil.

There are several categories in RoboCup with various types of robots, and the mid-size team did pretty well this year.

Arguably, this is the most exciting game of all, because it gives a sense of what the current state-of-the-art in robotic soccer is, and how it stacks up to a team of moderately talented squishy bipeds.

We guess that’s a nice way of saying “non-professional soccer players”. Regardless though, they SCORED!

Continue reading “Soccer Playing Robots Score On Human Goalie!” →

Makers’ Mountain House Promises Productivity Without Distraction

August 2, 2014 by 23 Comments

Maker's Mountain House Retreat

Ever wish you could take your projects with you on vacation? Do you ever take time off from your job just to work on things at home? What if you could combine an actual vacation retreat, with the thing you love most — making? A group of people are starting to plan the Maker’s Mountain House, and it sounds pretty interesting!

Makers Mountain House will be a  mountain retreat and makerspace, whose purpose is to provide time and space for makers to create. Makers Mountain House will be open to the public June through October, and reserved exclusively for makers and artists, November through May.

It’s still completely in the planning stages, but the organizers sound pretty serious about making it a reality. It’s planned for somewhere in Upstate New York (unconfirmed) – so if you’re interested in something like this, do them a favor and fill out the quick survey they’ve posted.

And no – just in case you’re wondering – the picture above is just a stock image of a barn. It is rather pretty though! They plan on having shared work spaces in larger buildings, as well as private cabins for people to stay in.

[Thanks KwartsLab!]

Electric “Microkart” Has Tons Of Kick

July 25, 2014 by 14 Comments

Go Kart with Independent Suspension

When you’re building an electric go kart, you really have two options. Convert a normal gasoline powered one by swapping out the power plant… Or build it from scratch! [Ganharr] opted for the for the latter to save some money, and to design it just the way he wanted.

Now you may have noticed it looks a bit small — because it is. It’s really more of a Micro-Kart, but that’s okay because [Ganharr] is winning a father-of-the-year award for building it for his kid!

It features two 2kW (~3HP) brushless electric motors, which independently drive the rear wheels. These are powered by two 48V 50A continuous (100A peak) speed controllers.[Ganharr] also spared no expense on the batteries, opting for a 48V lithium-ion pack composed of Headway cells (3.2V 15aH capacity each, 40152 type).  Continue reading “Electric “Microkart” Has Tons Of Kick” →

A New Approach To Robotic Walking Looks More Like Kinetic Art

July 24, 2014 by 22 Comments

Flipping Robot

Here’s a really cool application of 3D printing and robotics by a fellow named [Maundy] – He’s created a very unique kinetic robot which relies on gravity to walk around.

All the electronics are housed in the cylinder as shown above. It can roll freely back and forth by some kind of mechanism inside (not shown), but the beauty of it is, when the cylinder rolls to one end, gravity takes over and the little robot actually flips through the air, reorienting itself onto its other feet.

Due to the flipping nature of the bot, it can even climb over small obstacles with ease – but this one can’t steer, so there’s no threat of them taking over the world. Perhaps with a modification to the control cylinder (turn it into a ball), the robot could orientate itself vertically, and then kind of spin in place in order to steer…

Anyway, you have to see it to believe it, so stick around after the break to see it in action!

Continue reading “A New Approach To Robotic Walking Looks More Like Kinetic Art” →

DIY Conductive Paint For All Your Wearable Needs

July 23, 2014 by 24 Comments

DIY Conductive Paint

Conductive ink or paint is lots of fun. It opens up tons of possibilities for flexible and unique circuits — unfortunately, it’s pretty expensive. [Brian McEvoy] shows us how to make your own for cheap, and it works great!

He started trying to formulate his own recipe after playing with other Instructable guides and commercially available paint, and what he found is it’s really not that complex! Graphite powder, acrylic paint, and a jar with an airtight seal — seriously, it’s that simple! But, like any engineer worth their salt (he calls himself the 24 Hour Engineer), he had to do some tests to compare his formula.

In a detailed experiment he compares his formula to the commercially available Wire Glue, and two other recipes using Elmer’s Glue-All and graphite, and Titebond III with graphite. The results? Acrylic paint and graphite produce the most conductive material — and the cheapest!

Now that you can make conductive ink, why not 3D print a circuit stamp to make your very own SMD circuit board!

Monster 100W LED Flashlight Produces A Whopping 8500lm!

July 21, 2014 by 33 Comments

100W LED Flashlight

[Yannick] got a hold of a 100W LED diode recently, and like any self-respecting hacker, he just had to turn it into a ridiculously over powered flash light.

The tricky thing about these diodes is that they need a high amount of DC voltage, anywhere from 32-48V typically. [Yannick’s] using a 12V sealed lead acid battery coupled with a 600W constant current boost converter which ups it to 32V at around 3.2A. He also managed to find a giant aluminum heat-sink to keep the diode from getting too hot. A 120mm fan helps to keep the heat sink nice and cool, which allows the light to be run constantly without fear of burning it out. But just in case he also has an Arduino monitoring the temperatures — oh and it provides PWM control to adjust the brightness of the light!

To focus the flashlight he bought a proper lens and reflector which can be mounted directly to the diode. At full power the LED puts out around 8500lm, which is brighter than almost all consumer projectors available — or even the high beams of a car!

Continue reading “Monster 100W LED Flashlight Produces A Whopping 8500lm!” →

What Could You Do With 7 Fingers?

July 21, 2014 by 36 Comments

7 finger robotic glove

A strange thought yes, but MIT researchers think an extra two digits could really make a difference in many people’s lives. And as it turns out, having an extra robotic grasp allows you to do quite a few things single handed.

The extra two fingers provide three degrees of freedom each, and are mounted off the user’s wrist. A series of position recording sensors attached to the glove provide feedback to the system in order to control the fingers naturally, just by using your hand normally.

They taught the algorithm that controls the fingers by trying to pick up different (large) items using the hand and manually positioning the fingers. What they discovered is almost every grasp could be demonstrated as a combination of only 2-3 grip patterns.  Continue reading “What Could You Do With 7 Fingers?” →