African man hunched over a small robot car chassis

The Dar Es Salaam Hacker Scene And Gamut Detection

October 27, 2023 by Anne Ogborn 8 Comments

We’re on a sort of vacation in Tanzania at the moment and staying in a modest hotel away from the tourist and government district. It’s a district of small shops selling the same things and guys repairing washing machines out on the sidewalk. The guys repairing washing machines are more than happy to talk. Everybody’s amazingly friendly here, the hotel guy grilled us for an hour about our home state. But I really didn’t expect to end up in a conversation about computer vision.

In search of some yogurt and maybe something cooler to wear, we went on a little walk away from the hotel. With incredible luck we found a robotics shop a few blocks away. Mecktonix is a shop about two meters each way, stuffed full of Arduinos, robots, electronics components, servos, and random computer gear, overseen by [Yohanna “Joe” Harembo]. Nearby is another space with a laser engraver and 3D printer. The tiny space doesn’t stop them from being busy. A constant stream of automotive tech students from the nearby National Institute of Transport shuffle in for advice and parts for class assigned projects.

In between students, Joe demos an autonomous car he’s working on. In classic hacker fashion, he first has to reattach the motor driver board and various sensors, but then he demos the car and its problem – the video frame rate is very slow. We dive in with him and try to get some profiling using time.monotonic_ns(). He’s never done profiling before, so this is a big eye opener. He’s only processing one video frame every 4.3 seconds, using YOLO on a Pi 3, and yup, that’s the problem. I suggest he change to gamut detection or a Pi 4. Continue reading “The Dar Es Salaam Hacker Scene And Gamut Detection” →

Tim’s Draw Bot Gets Around With A Pen

October 26, 2023 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

If you grew up playing with LOGO on an old 8-bit computer, you’re probably familiar with the concept of a drawbot. It’s a simple robot that drags a pen around to draw on paper. [Tim] decided to build one that uses a simple skid-steer design to get around the page.

An Arduino Nano is the brains of the operation, paired with a CNC Shield that allows it to drive a pair of stepper motors. The stepper motors drive the wheels via cogged belts, with the 3D-printed rims fitted with square rubber drive belts used as tires for additional grip. A third jockey wheel is used for balance, in addition to the two main driven wheels. A servo is used to raise and lower the pen as needed. All the hardware is mounted on to a simple tray chassis, which was 3D printed along with most of the other basic componentry.

The robot does a good job of plotting out a drawing on a small scale, with [Tim] using it to outline his name on paper. We’ve featured some other great drawbots before, too, including this nifty spray-can version. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Tim’s Draw Bot Gets Around With A Pen” →

The Insatiable Hunger Of Paper Shredder-Based Locomotion

October 18, 2023 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

We enjoy hacks that combine or alter devices, enhancing (or subverting) their purpose in the process, but [Japhy Riddle] reminds us all that sometimes it’s fun just to enjoy a spectacle. In this case, it’s an old paper shredder given wheels and a continuous line of paper to rip into.

The result is a device demonstrating a shredder-based form of locomotion, noisily pulling itself along by its own insatiable appetite.

It even looks like a robot, even though there’s nothing really going on inside. It just mindlessly and noisily consumes, converting paper into shreds, moving inexorably forward and limited only by the supply of paper or the length of its power cable, whichever is shorter. Powerful artistic statement, or simple spectacle? You be the judge.

Want to try your hand at a paper shredder-inspired piece? You can take artistic inspiration from the stock tracker that literally shreds your money when the market is down, or if you’re more interested in the worky bits, make your own shredder from LEGO.

Continue reading “The Insatiable Hunger Of Paper Shredder-Based Locomotion” →

Just When You Think Everything In Robotic Combat Has Been Tried Before…

October 6, 2023 by Jenny List 15 Comments

Since the first combat robots emerged around three decades ago, it seems as though every conceivable configuration has been tried at some point or other. Whether it’s a two-wheeled wedgebot, a walker, a four-wheeled flip-bot, or whatever, someone’s already been there. But how about a self-righting taco with a novel two-wheel drive system? It’s called Taco Tuesday, its team lead [Carter Hurd] has sent us the video below the break, and it’s worth a second look because the technique might find a place outside the arena.

So what exactly is novel about this bot? It has a single big fat wheel near the front in a longitudinal direction, and a larger slimmer one at the back in a transverse direction. The former wheel propels it around the arena while the latter wheel acts as a rear-wheel steering system, allowing it to pivot round and face an attacker very quickly indeed.

It’s this maneuverability which we think could find an application in other machines, though the same problem they have of sideways friction on that rear wheel would need to be overcome.

The video follows the bot through a BattleBots competition in Las Vegas, and shows us some of the damage they receive in combat. The drive system needs a bit more refinement, but this outing certainly proves it has plenty of potential.

Some of us here at Hackaday have a bit of a soft spot for fighting robots.

Continue reading “Just When You Think Everything In Robotic Combat Has Been Tried Before…” →

Life-Sized Rock’em Sock’em Robot Will Definitely Knock Your Block Off

October 3, 2023 by Richard Baguley 2 Comments

He knocked his block off! That’s what [Zach] of Byte Sized Engineering is planning on saying when he completes this Rock’em Sock’em Robots replica. The twist? His replica is going to be life-sized. The original game involved two players, each controlling a robot that could punch and block with two lever-driven arms. [Zach] is looking to scale that up to human sized, but with a few interesting technical additions.

This build might be a bit large to be driven by a small child, so for the punching action [Zach] is using a four-bar linkage moved by a pneumatic cylinder. After some modelling, he decided on a 16mm bore and 100mm stroke cylinder that should provide a good, quick pneumatic action, but without putting so much force in that it destroys the whole thing. The aim is to knock his block off, not to permanently remove his block and take someone else’s block with it. This first video details his first prototype of the arm and the first set of tests, with later videos hopefully getting more into the mechanism and technical details of the build. We’d also like to see (hint, hint [Zach]) some of the files and code to follow up with.

Bonus fact: as older Brits may tell you, the game was marketed for some time there under the name “Raving Bonkers“, with the robots renamed as Basher Bonker and Biffer Bonker. The name didn’t catch on, and they changed back to the Rock’em Sock’em robots name. Ask someone in the UK these days if they want to play raving bonkers with your basher, and you will probably get your own block knocked off. Video below the break. Continue reading “Life-Sized Rock’em Sock’em Robot Will Definitely Knock Your Block Off” →

Hackaday Prize 2023: An Agricultural Robot That Looks Ready For The Field

October 2, 2023 by Jenny List 12 Comments

In the world of agriculture, not all enterprises are large arable cropland affairs upon which tractors do their work traversing strip by strip under the hot sun. Many farms raise far more intensive crops on a much smaller scale, and across varying terrain. When it comes to automation these farms offer their own special challenges, but with the benefit of a smaller machine reducing some of the engineering tasks. There’s an entry in this year’s Hackaday prize which typifies this, [KP]’s Agrofelis robot is a small four-wheeled carrier platform designed to deliver autonomous help on smaller farms. It’s shown servicing a vineyard with probably one of the most bad-ass pictures you could think of as a pesticide duster on its implement platform makes it look for all the world like a futuristic weapon.

A sturdy tubular frame houses the battery bank and brains, while motive power is provided by four bicycle derived motorized wheels with disk brakes. Interestingly this machine steers mechanically rather than the skid-steering found in so many such platforms. On top is a two degrees of freedom rotating mount which serves as the implement system — akin to a 3-point linkage on a tractor. This is the basis of the bad-ass pesticide duster turret mentioned above. Running it all is a Nvidia Jetson Nano, with input from a range of sensors including global positioning and LIDAR.

The attention to detail in this agricultural robot is clearly very high, and we could see machines like it becoming indispensable in the coming decades. Many tasks on a small farm are time-consuming and involve carrying or wheeling a small machine around performing the same task over and over. Something like this could take that load off the farmer. We’ve been there, and sure would appreciate something to do the job.

While we’re on the subject of farm robots, this one’s not the only Prize entry this year.

How Warehouse Robots Actually Work, As Explained By Amazon

October 2, 2023 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

Amazon has been using robots to manage and automate their warehouses for years. Here’s a short feature on their current robot, Hercules. This is absolutely Amazon tooting their own horn, but if you have been curious about what exactly such robots do, and how exactly they help a busy warehouse work better, it’s a good summary with some technical details.

Amazon claims to have over 750,000 robots across their network.

The main idea is that goods are stored on four-sided shelves called pods. Hercules can scoot underneath to lift and move these pods a little like a robotic forklift, except much smaller and more nimble. Interestingly, the robots avoid rotating shelves as much as possible and are designed to facilitate this. To change direction, Hercules sets the pod down, turns, then picks the pod back up.

The overall system is centralized, but Hercules itself navigates autonomously thanks to a depth-sensing camera and a grid of navigation markers present on the floor throughout the facility. Hercules also can wirelessly sense and communicate with nearby human-worn vests and other robots outside its line of sight.

Essentially, instead of human workers walking up and down aisles of shelves to pick products, the product shelves come to the humans. This means the organization and layout of the shelves themselves can be dynamic, higher density, and optimized for efficient robotic access. Shelves do not need to be in fixed rows or aisles, conform to a human-readable categorical layout, nor do they necessarily need walking space between them.

Sometimes robots really are the right tool for the job, and our favorite product-retrieval robot remains [Cliff Stoll]’s crawlspace warehouse bot, a diminutive device made to access boxes of product — in [Cliff]’s case, Klein bottles — stored in an otherwise quite claustrophobic crawlspace.