FIRST Robotics Gives Us Hope In The Next Generation Of Hackers

December 13, 2015 by James Hobson 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 Dan Maloney 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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Beautiful Sidewalk Graffiti Machine

December 11, 2015 by Elliot Williams 22 Comments

Our hero [Alex] just built a sidewalk graffiti machine, and it’s a beauty to behold, so make sure you check out the video below the break. But don’t neglect [Alex]’s blog, and the build videos throughout. (Nice t-shirt in the wheel-making video, BTW.)

The machine itself is basically a two-meter wide printer where the roller is replaced with drive wheels. The frame, made of plywood, looks great and helps keep the machine light weight. Everything is done with DC motors and timing belts, which means motor encoders and closed-loop control in the firmware. It connects via a WiFi serial bridge, made with an ESP8266, to [Alex]’s cell phone.

Everything, from plans to software, is available on [Alex]’s GitHub for the project.

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Robot Listens To Commands–Literally

December 10, 2015 by Al Williams 14 Comments

Where you might see a can, [Adam Kumpf] sees a robot. [Adam’s] robot (named [Canny]) doesn’t move around, but it does have expressive eyebrows, multicolored eyes, and a speaker for a mouth. What makes it interesting, though, is the fact that it receives audio commands via the headphones it wears. You can see [Canny] in action in the video below.

The headphones couple audio tones to [Canny’s] microphone using AFSK (audio frequency shift keying). [Canny] uses an opamp to bring the microphone level up and then uses a 567 PLL IC to decode the audio tones. [Adam] selected two clever frequencies for the mark and space (12345 Hz and 9876 Hz). In addition to being numerically entertaining, the frequencies are far enough apart to be easy to detect, pass through the headphones with no problem, and are not harmonically related.

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Creating Art In A Robot That Tastes With Its Feet

December 8, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

[Sarah Petkus] started off her career as a visual artist with traditional mediums. She has a webcomic called Gravity Road, but somewhere along the line she wanted her creations to come alive. These characters are robots – artistically designed robots – and turning this type of art into a real object isn’t something that happens very often.

Robots usually aren’t art. A Roomba is just a vacuum cleaner that’s meant to turn on a dime, thus the circular shape. The welding robots in a car factory aren’t art, they’re only tools to assemble cars. These are just devices built for a single purpose, and art is for any or every purpose. It’s not something you can really design, but you can engineer a few interesting solutions.

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Shark Vs. Robot

December 7, 2015 by Gregory L. Charvat 17 Comments

In laymen’s terms they built a shark-chasing robot. You can guess what happened next…

The back story is a little more reputable. I recently attended the Center for Marine Robotics meeting at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and learned about a very interesting robot. For the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week the network partnered with [Amy Kukulya] at WHOI to develop an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that locates, follows, and films sharks in their natural habitats, swimming, patrolling, doing their thing.

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Hacklet 87 – Roomba Projects

December 5, 2015 by Adam Fabio 23 Comments

First introduced in 2002, The iRobot Roomba was conceived as a robotic vacuum cleaner. Just about every hacker, maker, and engineer out there immediately wanted one. The Roomba proved to be more than just a vacuum though; it was the perfect base for any household robotics project. Before long Roombas were being hacked to do way more than sweep your floor. iRobot recognized this, and added a hacker friendly serial port to later model Roombas. They even released a vacuumless version called the iRobot Create. Thousands of projects have literally ridden on the wheels of the Roomba. This week’s Hacklet is all about Roomba projects.

We start with [fuzzie360] and Poor Man’s Raspberry Pi Turtlebot. [Fuzzie360] has their Roomba running Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS actually is running on an on-board Raspberry Pi. While Willow Garage may be out of business, ROS lives on as an open source project run by Unbounded Robotics. Installing it can be a chore though. While [Fuzzie360] hasn’t given a full tutorial, they have offered to give advice if and when you get stuck.

A Raspberry Pi would be overkill for the simple suite of sensors built into the Roomba, but it’s perfect for [fuzzie3680’s] modified setup with a Microsoft Kinect. [Fuzzie360’s] goal is to have a robot that can vacuum the hostile territory of a university apartment.

Next up is [Sircut] who upgraded his Roomba’s power cell. Early Roombas were designed to use Nickle Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. The individual cells are built into a proprietary iRobot battery pack. NiMH can’t hold a candle to Lithium Ion batteries though. Lithium Ion cells are very common these days in devices like cell phones and laptops. In fact, [Sircut] used 18650 sized laptop cells for this upgrade. [Sircut] also added the essential LiIon battery protection circuit to make sure those cells stay happy. A voltmeter provides a visual reference that the batteries aren’t becoming overcharged. An upgrade like this will likely double the Roomba’s runtime, but it does come at a cost. Roomba’s original charge dock can no longer be used as the on-board charge circuitry isn’t designed for LiIon battery charge algorithms.

Next is [Marcel Varallo] with Robot Wars for the Commuter. How does the IT department blow off steam? Fighting robots of course! Unfortunately, [Marcel’s] coworkers aren’t all programming mavens. Hopefully some programming is in the cards for them down the road. For now though, [Marcel] has created a robot fighting league using nearly stock Roomba robots. Each bot gets a set of 3 balloons and 3 pins. A balloon represents a life. Once your lives are all popped, you’re dead! [Marcel] also created an upgrade system where winning ‘bots can move on to stronger weapons like flamethrowers. During his research, [Marcel] found out that the brushes in his Roomba are powerful enough to sweep dust and debris up without the vacuum enabled. So he’s disabled the vacuums for longer ~~cleaning~~ battle times.

Finally we have [Fredrik Markström] and ESP8266 controlled Roomba. [Fredrick] is hacking an ESP8266 module to be the main computer of this little Robot. Of course, a ‘8266 means it will be carrying WiFi, so this robot needs to have a web interface. [Fredrik’s] first problem was powering the ESP8266. The Roomba’s battery runs around 15 volts, which is definitely not friendly to the 3.3 volt ESP8266. A switching DC to DC converter was in order, and [Fredrik] found the perfect candidate on eBay. The ‘8266 will control the Roomba through the serial interface included on all the current models. [Fredrik] has big plans for this ‘bot, including navigation and advanced vacuuming algorithms.

If you want to see more Roomba projects, check out our new Roomba project list! If I missed your project, don’t be shy, just drop me a message on Hackaday.io. That’s it for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!