Robots Hacks

2427 Articles

Learn Engineering And Draw Narwhals

November 22, 2013 by 23 Comments

narwhals

Using LEGO robots and other ‘intro to robotics’ platforms is a great introduction to kinematics and programming, but if you’re teaching a classroom of people who don’t know what a 1/4-20 screw is, perhaps it’s not the right introduction to engineering. That’s the thinking behind NarwhalEdu’s upcoming, Kickstarted online course: give kids a bunch of servos, bolts, and a microcontroller, and they’ll be able to build anything, and not just what the instructions for a Mindstorm’s robot says.

Robots, Drawing, and Engineering is an online course built around a simple SCARA arm robot. It’s made out of laser cut hardboard and powered by three servos and an Arduino Nano with an extension shield. After building this robot in the first hour of the online class, students then learn a little programming and get their robot drawing everything from narwhals to nyan cats and faces.

In the second part of the course, students then tear apart their robot kit and start making other, cooler interesting devices. There’s a contest for the coolest project that will hopefully go a long way to show how creative engineering can be.

Two videos below of the NarwhalEdu SCARA arm in action.

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Hacking Helps Bring Educational Robot Projects In For A Few Dollars

November 21, 2013 by 10 Comments

suckerbot-tedx

Meet  [Dr. Thomas Tilley] and his robot Suckerbot which looks very much like a clear-plastic six-axis controller. His presentation at this year’s TEDxChiangMai is made of the stuff that makes us feel warm inside.

[Thomas] has been using joystick hacks to bring smiles to faces of kids in his part of Thailand. The video below covers some that he has done over the years. These include racing cockpits made out of PVC or bamboo which patch into a cheap joystick to control the action on a traditional gaming console. He’s also spun a different take on multiplayer Guitar Hero by splitting up the fret and strum actuators between several different kids.

But the main topic of his presentation is Lollybot, which is an Americanized version of its original moniker: Suckerbot. This was his entry into a 2012 contest which tasked hackers to build a robot that would cost under $10 to replicate in the classroom. That’s quite a challenge but he actually did it with enough to spare for a snack afterwards. Suckerbot is so named because he added a couple of candy suckers to the analog joysticks of a knock-off PlayStation controller. They act as inverted pendulums; when the robot runs into something the suckers shake which can be read by the computer controlling the robot. Food container lids wrapped with rubber act as wheels which are spun by the vibration motors from the joystick. And there’s even a set of line-following sensors built from photoresistors and some LEDs. His calculated cost? Just $8.96!

The hope is that robot projects stemming from this contest will help produce the next generation of hackers in Africa. If this stuff gets you excited you can take part. This year’s challenge deadline has been extended.

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Sailing With An Autopilot

November 12, 2013 by 11 Comments

sailboat

After seeing an autopilot for a kayak a few days ago, [Mike] thought he should send in his version of a water-borne autopilot. Compared to something that fits in a one-man kayak, [Mike]’s creation is a monstrous device, able to keep a largeish sailboat on a constant heading.

To keep track of the ship’s bearing, [Mike] is using a very cool digital compass that uses LEDs to keep a steady heading. Also included is an amazingly professional and very expensive 6 axis IMU. To actually steer the ship, [Mike] is using a linear actuator attached to the tiller powered by a huge 60 Amp motor controller. The actuator only draws about 750 mA, but if [Mike] ever needs an autopilot for a container ship or super tanker, the power is right there.

For control, [Mike] ended up using an Arduino, 16-button keypad, and an LCD display. With this, he can put his autopilot into idle, calibration, and run modes, as well as changing the ship’s heading by 1, 10, and 100 degrees port or starboard.

From a day of sailing, [Mike] can safely say his autopilot works very well. It’s able to keep a constant heading going downwind, and even has enough smarts to tack upwind.

Videos below.

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Self-Balancing Robot Keeps Getting More Features

November 10, 2013 by 18 Comments

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It’s a lot of fun to see a self-balancing robot project. Rarely do they go much further than being able to keep themselves upright while being piloted remotely and annoyingly shoved by their creator as proof of their ability to remain standing on two wheels. This little anthropomorphic guy is the exception to the rule. It’s the product of [Samuel Matos] who says he didn’t have a specific purpose in mind, but just kept adding features as they came to him.

Starting with a couple of carbon fiber plates [Samuel] cut the design by hand, using stand-offs to mount the NEMA 17 stepper motors and to connect the two halves of the chassis. It looks like he used some leftover material to make a nice little stand which is nice when coding at his desk as seen above. There’s also a carbon-fiber mask which makes up the face atop an articulated neck. It has two ultrasonic range-finding sensors as eyes, and the Raspberry Pi camera module as the nose. The RPi board powerful enough to run OpenCV which has kept [Samuel] busy. He set up a course in his living room containing tags directing where the little guy should go. It can also follow a tennis ball as it rolls around the room. What we found most impressive in the clip after the break is its ability to locate the next tag after making a turn.

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Morph: Adaptive Spaceframe

November 10, 2013 by 17 Comments

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[William Bondin] is working on a rather interesting project, a tetrahedron morphing robot called Morphs (Mobile Reconfigurable Polyhedra). 

It is able to move by the extension of each of its telescopic edges, and as it morphs, the centre of gravity shifts, allowing it to roll over. It is far from an efficient way to move, but it is quite entertaining to watch!

The custom two-directional linear actuators were designed to ensure the weight is symmetrically distributed on each axis, and they were able get the current draw down to about 200mA during actuation, which means with a few strategically placed battery cells, it’ll be able to go wireless too. The prototype unit is controlled by a single Arduino, which sends the commands to each motor-encoder couple.

[William] is hoping to develop it into a full scale architectural prototype, and by 2015 hopes to have these interactive robotic structures rolling around public parks. The architectural end goal is to allow for buildings to respond to environmental inputs, like daylight and temperature.

Confused? Check out the video after the break.

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Building A Ball-Balancing Robot

October 24, 2013 by 16 Comments

robotBallBalance

If you want a different kind of feedback systems challenge, ditch the Segway-style robots and build one that can balance on a ball. UFactory is a startup in Shenzhen, and this impressive little guy is a way of showing their skills applied to the classic inverted pendulum. At nearly 18 inches tall and weighing just over six pounds, the robot boasts a number of features beyond an accelerometer and gyroscope: it has both a WiFi module and a camera, and can be controlled via a homemade remote control or a Kinect.

The build uses plastic omni-directional wheels attached to 3 brushed dc motors, which attach to the base of the robot with custom-made aluminum brackets. The UFactory gang constructed the robot’s body out of three acrylic discs, which hold the electronics directly above the wheels. The brain seems to be an STM32 microcontroller that connects up to the motors and to the sensors.

You won’t find the code on their Instructable yet, but according to the comments they have plans to make the entire project open source. If you’re desperate for more details, the UFactory team seems willing to provide source code and other information via email. Make sure you see the video after the break, particularly the end where they demonstrate interference and carrying loads. This isn’t the first ball pendulum we’ve seen; take a trip down memory lane with the BallP ball balancing robot from 2010.

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Inexpensive Robot Tracking System Is Swarm Ready

October 23, 2013 by 4 Comments

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[Ladvien] has figured an inexpensive way to control a robot from a remote PC with a static webcam. Inspired by swarming robot videos such as those from the UPENN Grasp lab, [Ladvien] wanted to build his own static camera based system. He’s also managed to create one of the more eclectic Instructables we’ve seen. You don’t often find pseudo code for robot suicide mixed in with the project instructions.

Fixed cameras are used in many motion capture systems, such as the Vicon system used by numerous film, game, and animation studios. Vicon and similar systems cost tens of thousands of dollars. This was a bit outside [Ladvien’s] budget. He set about building his own system from scratch. The first step was the hardest – obtaining permission from his wife to screw a webcam into the ceiling. With that problem overcome, [Ladvien] brought openCV and python to bear. He created Overlord, his webcam vision and control system. A vision system with nothing to control would be rather boring, so [Ladvien] created DotMuncher, Overlord’s radio controlled robot slave.

The basic processing system is rather simple. DotMuncher carries a magnetometer on board, which it uses to send heading information to Overlord. Overlord is pre-calibrated with an offset from magnetic north to “video game north” (toward the top of the screen). Overlord then uses openCV’s color detection to find DotMuncher in the current scene.
Overlord finally generates a virtual “Dot” on screen, and directs DotMuncher to drive over to it. When the robot gets to the dot, it is considered munched, and a new dot is generated.

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