Wearable Robot Makes Mountain Climbing A Breeze For Seniors

January 26, 2024 by Kristina Panos 23 Comments

You know, it’s just not fair. It seems that even if we stay active, age will eventually get the better of our muscles, robbing them of strength and our bodies of mobility. Canes and walkers do not provide additional strength, just support and reassurance in a treacherous landscape. What people could really benefit from are wearable robots that are able to compensate for a lack of muscle strength.

[Dr. Lee Jongwon] of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology has developed this very thing. MOONWALK-Omni is designed to “actively support leg strength in any direction”, and make one feel like they are walking on the moon. In order to test the wearable robot, [Dr. Jongwon] invited senior citizens to climb Korea’s Mount Yeongbong, which is some 604 meters (1980 feet) above sea level.

The robot weighs just 2 kg (about 4.5 lbs) and can be donned independently by the average adult in under ten seconds. There are four high-powered but ultra lightweight actuators on either side of the pelvis that aid balance and boost leg strength by up to 30%. This is all designed to increase propulsion.

An AI system works to analyze the wearer’s gait in real time in order to provide up-to-the-second effective muscle support in many different environments. One wearer, a formerly active mountain climber, reported feeling 10-20 years younger when reaching the top of Mount Yeongbong.

It’s quite interesting to see mobility robots outside of the simplicity of the rehabilitation setting. We have to wonder about the battery life. Will everyone over 65 be wearing these someday? We can only hope they become so affordable. In the meantime, here’s a wearable robot that travels all over your person for better telemetry.

Vroomba Gets Upgrades And A Spoiler

January 15, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 11 Comments

[Electrosync] is the creator and driver of the world’s fastest robotic vaccum cleaner, the Vroomba. It’s a heavily modified roomba capable of speeds of around 60 kph, well beyond the pedaling speed of most bicyclists. Despite being rejected by Guinness for a world record, we’re fairly confident that no other vacuum cleaners have gotten up to these speeds since the Vroomba first hit the streets. That’s not going to stop [electrosync] from trying to top his own record, though, and he’s brought the Vroomba some much needed upgrades.

The first, and perhaps most important, upgrades are to some of the structural components and wheels. The robot is much heavier than comparable RC vehicles and is under much greater strain than typical parts are meant to endure, so he’s 3D printed some parts of the chassis and some new wheels using a nylon-carbon fiber filament for improved strength. The wheels get a custom polyurethane coating similar to last time.

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Weird Trashcan Is Actually Advanced 1990s Robot

January 11, 2024 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

[Clay Builds] found a bit of a gem at a recent auction, picking up a Nomadic Technologies N150 robot for just $100. It actually looks like something out of science fiction, with its cylindrical design, red bumpers, and many sensors. He decided to try and restore the research-grade robot to functionality with the aid of modern hardware.

Right away, it’s clear this was an expensive and serious bit of kit. It’s full of hardcore gears and motors for driving three rubber-tired wheels, each of which has a pivoting mount for steering the thing. Through his research, [Clay] was able to find some ancient websites documenting university work using the robots. His understanding is that the platform was designed for researchers experimenting with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms, and other robotic navigation tasks.

[Clay] doesn’t just settle for a teardown, though. He’s been able to get the platform running again in one sense, using an Arduino to manually run the robot’s drive controls under the command of a gamepad. Without official software or resources, it’s perhaps unlikely he’ll be able to get the stock hardware to do much without completely rebraining it, so this method makes sense. In future he hopes to get the bumper sensors and sonar modules working too.

It’s a fair effort given [Clay] was working with no documentation and no supporting software. We’ve seen similar efforts for robotic arms before, too. Video after the break.

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Voice Controlled Rover Follows Verbal Instructions To Get Around

January 11, 2024 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Typically, when we want to tell a robot where to go, we either pre-program a route or drive it around with some kind of gamepad or joystick controller. [Robotcus] decided to build a simple robot platform that drove around in response to voice commands instead.

The robot is based around a Raspberry Pi Zero, charged with instructing the motor controllers to drive the ‘bot around. The Pi Zero is also in charge of interpreting the voice commands via Google’s speech recognition tool. The ‘bot itself is a fairly simple design using brushed gearmotors for propulsion and a 3D-printed chassis to tie everything together.

The car is capable of understanding five commands – drive, turn left, turn right, go backwards, and “attack”. The last command simply activates a flipper from the robot’s former life as a battlebot. Things ran okay at first, but the Pi Zero was slow at processing commands. The wheels also had minimal traction. A full-fat Raspberry Pi solved the latter issue, while a new chassis provided better grip.

It’s a simple project, but one that taught [Robotcus] plenty about programming and building small robots in the process. Like so many learning experiences, it’s easy to see how the robot starts out flailing uselessly and eventually starts to perform as intended. It’s always nice to see that progression. Video after the break.

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CoreXY On The Pi Pico

December 28, 2023 by Jenny List 8 Comments

There are enough off-the-shelf CoreXY mechanisms out there that for the cost of an AliExpress order it’s possible to quickly and cheaply make yourself a plotter. But [Koushani Das], [Mahathi Andavolu] and [Dengyu Tu] are completing their project for Cornell University’s ECE 5730 course, so of course they have designed one from the ground up. Happily for us it seems to be fairly easy to replicate, so you can build one too if it takes your fancy.

The write-up makes for an interesting dive into the nitty-gritty of design, for which we hope they managed to secure a decent grade. The hardware itself seems pretty straightforward as does the pair of stepper controllers and RP2040 they use to run the thing, and their explanation of the math behind the CoreXY coordinate system is genuinely interesting for those of us who’ve never taken the time to consider it.

All the good stuff can be found in a GitHub repository if you’d like to take this further, and meanwhile they’ve also put up a demo video which you can see below the break. We like this little plotter, and we hope others will take its design and run with it.

Want more CoreXY explanation? We’re happy to oblige.

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Infrared Following Robot Built As Proof-of-Concept For Autonomous Luggage

December 23, 2023 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Once upon a time, the poor humans of the past had to lug around suitcases and trunks with their own arms. Then, some genius figured out that you could just put wheels on and make everyone’s life a million times easier. Now, what if you didn’t even have push, because your luggage could just follow you instead? Well, students [Yuqiang Ge] and [Yiyang Zhao] have figured out a proof of concept for how that could work.

Their build is a small robotic platform that they assembled for their ECE5730 final project. The tiny wheeled robot is programmed to rotate on the spot until its infrared sensors pick up a signal. In turn, the user is intended to carry an infared beacon for it to lock onto. A pair of sensors are used on the robot platform, separated by a board to serve as a blind. The robot determines the relative signal strength from each sensor, and uses that to vary PWM signals to the two DC drive motors to steer the robot platform to seek and follow the infrared beacon.

It’s a neat idea, and looks to work pretty well in a university corridor. It even has an ultrasonic range sensor to (ideally) stop when it gets too close to the user. Whether it would survive the tumult of a crowded airport is another thing entirely, but that’s what the engineering process is about. Indeed, the very concept has been commercialized already!

Following-robots are a common student project, and one well worth exploring if you’re new to the robotic field.

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The Logg Dogg: How A Mysterious Logging Robot Leads Down Twisting Forestry Paths

December 16, 2023 by Maya Posch 31 Comments

There are many places where you’d want to use remotely controlled robots, but perhaps forestry isn’t the first application to come to mind. Yet there are arguments to be made for replacing something like a big logging machine with grapple for a much smaller robot. The reduced ground pressure can be beneficial in fragile ecosystems, and removing the operator is much safer if felling a tree goes wrong.

This is where a US company called Forest Robots tried to come in, with their Logg Dogg, of which [Wes] over at Watch Wes Work found a very unique prototype abandoned in a barn, courtesy of Zuckerberg’s marketplace of wonders.

One of the two receivers on the Forest Robots' Logg Dogg logging robot prototype. (Credit: Watch Wes Work) — One of the two receivers on the Forest Robots’ Logg Dogg logging robot prototype. (Credit: Watch Wes Work)

After lugging the poor abandoned robot back into a warm repair shop, he set to work on figuring out what it was that he had bought. At the time he knew only that it was some kind of logging robot, but with no model number or name on the robot, it was tough to find information. Eventually he got tipped off about it being the Logg Dogg, with even a video of the robot in action, helpfully uploaded to YouTube by [Hankey Mountain Garage] and embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

As [Wes] noticed during teardown and inspection was that it has that distinct mix-and-match feel to it of a prototype, ranging from metric and US customary bolts to both European and US/Canadian supplied components. Although it has two RF receivers on the device, no remote(s) came with the device, and the seller only knew that it was already in the barn when they purchased the place. After getting the engine working again on the robot, [Wes] contacted one of the people behind the robot: [Dean Edwards], a professor at the University of Idaho, hoping to learn more about this robot and how it ended up abandoned in a barn.

Hopefully we’ll find out in a Part 2 whether [Wes] got a response, and whether this robot will get a second chance at life. Meanwhile, in countries such as Portugal such robots are already finding significant use, including for fire protection in its forests, tackling difficult terrain more easily than humans. With forest fires an increasing risk, perhaps the Logg Dogg and kin could find a use there.

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