LEONARDO, a hybrid drone and bipedal robot

LEONARDO: The Hopping, Flying Bipedal Robot

October 7, 2021 by 22 Comments

We appear to have a new entry atop the “Robots That Creep Us Out” leader board: meet LEONARDO, the combination quadcopter/bipedal robot.

LEONARDO, a somewhat tortured name derived from “LEgs ONboARD drOne,” is actually just what it appears to be: a quadcopter with a set of legs. It comes to us from Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies, and the video below makes it easy to see what kind of advantages a kinematic mash-up like this would offer. LEO combines walking and flying to achieve a kind of locomotion that looks completely alien, kind of a bouncy, tip-toeing step that really looks like someone just learning how to walk in high heels. The upper drone aspect of LEO provides a lot of the stabilization needed for walking; the thrust from the rotors is where that bouncy compliance comes from. But the rotors can also instantly ramp up the thrust so LEO can fly over obstacles, like stairs. It’s also pretty good at slacklining and skateboarding, too.

It’s easy to see how LEO’s multimodal locomotion system solves — or more accurately, avoids — a number of the problems real-world bipedal robots are going to experience. For now, LEO is pretty small — only about 30″ (76 cm) tall. And it’s rather lightly constructed, as one would expect for something that needs to fly occasionally. But it’s easy to see how something like this could be scaled up, at least to a point. And LEO’s stabilization system might be just what its drunk-walking cousin needs.

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Building Your Own Filing Machine From A Kit

October 7, 2021 by 17 Comments

Files are a very useful important tool if you’re machining your own parts. They can do plenty of shaping themselves on smaller parts in particular. Powering such a tool just makes sense, and a die filer or filing machine is essentially just that, reciprocating a file up and down for you. They’re highly prized amongst clockmakers and model builders, and [jeanluc83] decided to build one at home.

The design chosen was the MLA-18 filing machine, for which castings and parts can be purchased from a company called Metal Lathe Accessories. However, it’s far from a simple screw-together kit. [jeanluc83] goes through the full process of painting, machining, and assembling the kit, which takes quite a bit of work to do properly.

Notably, the design is quite old fashioned in that it does not include its own power source. Instead, the MLA-18 filing machine is fitted with a pulley, such that it can be driven from a motor on a bench. A 1/4 horsepower motor running at roughly 1725 RPM is recommended for best results.

Filing machines aren’t exactly something you’ll find at every hardware store or Harbor Freight, so you might find building your own is the right way to go. Hackaday is, after all, full of examples of hackers building their own tools!

Upside-down c-clamp held in a frame, forming a crude press

C-Clamp Becomes Light-Duty Arbor Press

October 7, 2021 by 8 Comments

[ThingaUser] made a tool to solve a specific problem of theirs, but the design also happens to be a pretty good way to turn a c-clamp into a poor man’s light duty arbor press.

The frame is made for a common 4-inch c-clamp.

The problem they had was a frequent need to press nuts and occasionally bearings into other parts. Some kind of press is really the best tool for the job, but rather than buy a press, they opted to make their own solution. By designing and 3D printing an adapter for a common 4-inch c-clamp, a simple kind of light duty press was born.

Sure, one has to turn the handle on the clamp to raise and lower the moveable jaw, and that’s not the fastest operation. But the real value in the design is that the clamp can now stand by itself on a tabletop, leaving the operator to dedicate one hand to manipulating the part to be pressed, while twisting the clamp’s handle with the other hand. There’s no need for a third hand to keep the clamp itself stable in the process. As a bonus, it can print without supports and the clamp secures with zip ties; no other fasteners or glue needed.

Not all c-clamps are the same, so there is a risk that this frame that fits [ThingaUser]’s clamp might not fit someone else’s. In those cases, it’s best to have access to not just the STL file, but also to a version in a portable CAD format like STEP to make it easy to modify. But there are still ways to make changes to an STL that isn’t quite right.

Halloween Build: Exquisite Ray Gun Has Sound Effects

October 7, 2021 by 8 Comments

When we first saw [lonesoulsurfer’s] ray gun, we thought it looked oddly familiar. Sure, it looks like a vintage ray gun you might see in a dozen 1950-era movies or TV shows. But still, there was something oddly familiar about it. Turns out, the core piece of it is an old-fashioned timing light used when doing a car tune-up.

This is no unobtrusive Star Trek phaser. It looks substantial and has a cool sound generator that not only gives it something to do but also sports cool control knobs out the top of the gun. The design files for the sound circuit are in a Google drive folder if you want to recreate the build.

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Linux Fu: Globs Vs Regexp

October 7, 2021 by 17 Comments

I once asked a software developer at work how many times we called fork() in our code. I’ll admit, it was a very large project, but I expected the answer to be — at most — two digits. The developer came back and read off some number from a piece of paper that was in the millions. I told them there was no way we had millions of calls to fork() and, of course, we didn’t. The problem was the developer wasn’t clear on the difference between a regular expression and a glob.

Tools like grep use regular expressions to create search patterns. I might write [Hh]ack ?a ?[Dd]ay as a regular expression to match things like “HackaDay” and “Hack a day” and, even, “Hackaday” using a tool like grep, awk, or many programming languages.

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Meet The Winners Of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots

October 7, 2021 by 5 Comments

The judges’ ballots are in and we’re proud to present the ten winners of the fourth round of the 2021 Hackaday Prize. We love robots, and it’s obvious that you do too!  The number and range of projects submitted this year were overwhelming.

No robotics round is complete without a robot arm, and while a few of them were in the finals, we especially liked CM6, which really pulled out all the stops. This is research-grade robotics on a not-quite-student budget, featuring custom compliant mechanisms so that it can play well with its fleshy companions.

With six degrees of freedom, and six motors, the drivetrain budget can quickly get out of hand on builds like these, so we’re especially happy to see custom, open, brushless-motor driver boards used to reduce the cost of admission. Even if you’re not going to make a 100% faithful CM6 clone, you’ll learn a lot just from going through the build. Oh, and did we mention it has a software stack? Continue reading “Meet The Winners Of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots” →

World’s Cheapest And Possibly Worst IR Camera

October 7, 2021 by 16 Comments

Don’t blame us for the title. [CCrome] admits it may well be the cheapest and worst IR camera available. The concept is surprisingly simple. Mount a cheap Harbor Freight non-contact thermometer on a 3D printer carriage and use it to scan the target. The design files are available on GitHub.

There is, of course, an Arduino to grab the data and send it to the PC. Some Python code takes care of converting it into an image.

Perhaps you don’t need a camera, but having a way to communicate with an $11 IR temperature sensor might come in handy someday. You do have to mash the measurement button down, so [CCrome] used the 3D printer to make a clamp for the button that also holds the POGO pins to the PCB. We would have been tempted to solder across the switch and also solder the wires to the pad. But, then again, you need a 3D printer for the project anyway.

Don’t expect the results you would get from a real thermal sensor. If you want that, you may have to build it yourself or open your wallet wide. If you need some inspiration for a use case, look at the thermal camera contest from a few years back.