Robots Hacks

2356 Articles

Madeline Gannon The Robot Tamer!

December 20, 2015 by 40 Comments

Let’s be honest. Who doesn’t want an industrial six-axis robot arm in their garage to do their bidding? Introducing [Madeline Gannon], the Robot Tamer!

The only tricky part is… if you received an industrial six-axis robot arm, would you be able to control it to do your bidding (easily)? Having taken robotics courses myself in college, and worked with ABB robots like this one, I can tell you, it’s not exactly plug-and-play. Yeah, there’s the teach pendant and you can pretty quickly teach the robot to do a repetitive task well, but unless you’re setting up your own mini manufacturing line — what’s the point? You’re going to want to inject some CNC code or something and have it carve you a sculpture! Or pour you a mixed drink I guess…

Maybe [Madeline] has the answer. Working as an artist in residence at Pier 9, she’s created wearable markers and a motion capture system that allows a giant ABB robot to see, and respond to your movements in a shared space.

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MIT Robots Fight With Lightsabers

December 18, 2015 by 9 Comments

Students of the MIT Robotics Lab decided to have some fun this holiday season with the big release of Star Wars. They built a lightsaber wielding delta-bot, and some very interesting hip-mounted lightsaber robot arms, akin to General Grievous.

First up in the video though is their Jedi Training robot, which is a variation of the delta-bot robot we’re all familiar with thanks to 3D printers. With a lightsaber mounted on top, it’s not too fast, but has a large range of motion to allow you to practice your lightsaber form. They call it the Triple Scissor Extender — and as you can imagine, it was built for something completely different. You can check out the designer’s personal blog here, though he doesn’t have any info on this particular project — yet.

Second is a robot they designed for a project called Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRL), which is literally designed to give you extra robotic arms — it was the next logical step to give them lightsabers…

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Self-Driving Acura, Built In A Garage

December 17, 2015 by 36 Comments

[George Hotz], better known by his hacker moniker [GeoHot], was the first person to successfully hack the iPhone — now he’s trying his hand at building his very own self-driving vehicle.

The 26-year-old already has an impressive rap sheet, being the first to hack the PS3 when it came out, and to be sued because of it.

According to Bloomberg reporter [Ashlee Vance], [George] built this self driving vehicle in around a month — which, if true, is pretty damn incredible. It’s a 2016 Acura ILX with a lidar array on its roof, as well as a few cameras. The glove box has been ripped out to house the electronics, including a mini-PC, GPS sensors, and network switches. A large 21.5″ LCD screen sits in the dash, not unlike the standard Tesla affair.

Oh, and it runs Linux. Continue reading “Self-Driving Acura, Built In A Garage” →

Feeling Force Through A Servo

December 15, 2015 by 44 Comments

Using force sensors it’s possible to chain a series of servo motors together so they not only move as one, but can detect and simulate the force that another feels. Which means if you built up a tele-presence robot with a servo-driven robotic arm, using the local control arm you could feel exactly what it feels like on the other side!

[Wolf Tronix] saw our post last week on Series Elastic Actuators, and shared what he was working on in the comments. As one tipster pointed out — it deserves its own feature!

He’s been designing his own Real Time Motion Control System and Mini Servo board, or RTMCS2 for short and shown off a short video of it in action. By adding a force feedback sensor to each servo, not only do they copy each other, but if you put a load on one, you’ll feel it on the others!

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FIRST Robotics Gives Us Hope In The Next Generation Of Hackers

December 13, 2015 by 53 Comments

A top scoring team in FIRST Robotics shows off just what some high-school students are capable of. Called the Simbot SideSwipe, their 2015 robot is a slick piece of mechatronic genius, which according to our tipster was built in just six weeks by the students.

The robot is essentially a remote controlled palletizing forklift, capable of collecting and stacking six recycling totes, and a green bin. It’s an impressive combination of mechanical control and fabrication — though it is worth noting, these bots are remote controlled — not autonomous.

To encourage learning, the team has posted their engineering report, and even the CAD model online. They obviously had quite a bit of funding judging by their component selection, but regardless, we’re seriously impressed with both the design and execution of manufacturing their robot — especially if it was really built in just six weeks. Just take a look at the following videos:

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Industrial Automation In Action: Steam Controller Assembly

December 12, 2015 by 63 Comments

Right up front, we’ll cop to the inevitable “not a hack” comments on this one. This video of the Steam Controller assembly plant is just two minutes of pure robotics porn, plain and simple.

From injection molding of the case parts through assembly, testing and final palletizing of packaged controllers for the trip to distributors, Valve’s video is amazingly detailed and very well made. We’d wager that the crane shots and the shots following product down conveyors were done with a drone. A grin was had with the Aperture Labs logo on the SCARA arms in the assembly and testing work cell, and that inexplicable puff of “steam” from the ceiling behind the pallet in the final shot was a nice touch too. We also enjoyed the all-too-brief time-lapse segment at around 00:16 that shows the empty space in Buffalo Grove, Illinois being fitted out.

This may seem like a frivolous video, but think about it: if you’re a hardware hacker, isn’t this where you want to see your idea end up? Think of it as inspiration to get your widget into production. You’ll want to get there in stages, of course, so make sure you check out [Zach Fredin]’s 2015 Hackaday Superconference talk on pilot-scale production.

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