Look, It’s A Helicopter! It’s A Plane! It’s A Rolling Robot!

November 4, 2011 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

The helicopter-plane-ball-bot sounds like a creation [Homer Simpson] would come up with, but it’s a fairly accurate description of what this machine can do. It was developed by researches at Japan’s ministry of defense. The single propeller lets it operate much like a helicopter. But when it needs to get somewhere quick, the body repositions itself with the propeller at the front, while those black panels function as wings. Finally, the spherical body lets it travel along surfaces, vertical or horizontal. It can even roll along the ground.

After the break you can see a flight demo video from the 2011 Digital Contents Expo. It makes us wonder about the control interface. Which part of this is the front side, and how does it know which direction the operator intends to steer it? Perhaps there is feedback on the cardinal orientation of the control unit? We don’t have the answers to these queries, but we think there’s something very Sci-Fi about it. It brings to mind the Dog Pod aerostatic defensive grid from Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age.

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Bomb Disposal Robot With Lego Gripper

November 3, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

[Krash] had a lot of fun hacking up his Spy Gear TRAKR; we’re just lucky he was able to move a suspicious Shrek doll before it detonated.

The now discontinued Spy Gear TRAKR serves as the basis for [Krash]’s build. This tiny remote-controlled toy transmits video back to its remote and makes us very jealous of the awesome toys our nephew has. Thankfully, the engineers behind the TRAKR made it extremely hackable, as proved by Hack A Day’s very own [Phil Burgess].

[Krash] began his build by putting a few male headers in the GPIO pins on the TRAKR’s board. After that, the TRAKR SDK was downloaded. He used a few Snap Circuits to verify his TRAKR software was working, then set off to build a Lego gripper arm. The arm is powered through an H-bridge IC [Krash] found alongside the rest of his Snap Circuits stuff.

Not a bad build for what amounts to a pile of toys. Check out [Krash]’s video of his bomb disposal bot after the break.

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Motor Drivers: Half H-bridge With Brake And More

October 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Here’s a nice little circuit that will drive a motor and allow you to stop its rotation, giving your robot a set of brakes. It’s part of [JM’s] post about the in’s and out’s of building microcontroller friendly motor controllers (translated).

This particular setup is a half H-bridge. It allows you to drive the motor in one direction only. The MOSFET used on the ground-side of the motor doesn’t actually need to be there. This is the brake which let you electronically stop the motor from spinning. Without it, the motor will keep turning under its own momentum when the half-bridge is shut off. Depending on the application this can be a big problem. There’s a great demonstration of the circuit braking a fast spinning motor in the video clip below the fold.

It is possible to use this driver with PWM, but [JM] has some warnings about inbuilt functions like FastPWM. Make sure you read his admonition, and if you need a refresher don’t miss this Hackaday video segment.

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A Very Simple Android Recon Vehicle

October 21, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

Desperately in need of a graduation paper, [Andrei] decided to build a few computer controlled recon vehicles (PDF warning), and we’re really impressed with the minimalist approach [Andrei] took.

The Computer Operated Recon Entity (C.O.R.E.) mk. I is based around a laptop. Instead of an Arduino, [Andrei] used a car stereo amp to control the motors. The two channel amp [Andrei] picked out has four outputs. Tying a motor to each output gives a four-wheel drive robot that’s really clever in its simplicity. With an onboard webcam, [Andrei] can do live video streaming from his remote vehicle. Outputting a specific tone with the sound card allows for full control of the robot.

The C.O.R.E. mk. II uses a Samsung Galaxy I5500 phone – the cheapest Android phone [Andrei] could find. The setup is similar to the mk. I C.O.R.E. with a WiFi connection sending video back to a base station. Control of the two motors is still handled by playing sound files and sending that to a stereo amp connected to the motors.

Check out the C.O.R.E. mk. II going Bach and forth after the break.

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Animatronics In A Box

October 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

[Knife141] built an impressive animatronic head. He uses it mostly for volunteer activities, like getting school children excited about technology. He built a carrying trunk that fits the puppet just right, making it easy to store and to transport.

He started by making the parts for the head out of cardboard to make sure they would fit together and operate properly. These were then used as templates to cut the pieces out of half-inch plywood. A series of servos, connected either directly or with linking rods, move the mouth, eyes, eyelids, eyebrows and neck via a servo controller board.

Sound is played by a single-board computer called a RAPU via a pair of computer speakers. This board is also what sends commands to the servo controller. When [Knife141] wants to create a new act for the animatronics, he starts by writing the dialog and having a text-to-speech program turn it into an MP3. He then goes through the tedious process of choreographing the puppet to the dialog, a process that generally takes him an hour for each minute of run-time. It’s worth it though, see for yourself by watching one of his acts in the video after the break.

Looking for something a little bit more your speed? Check out this animatronic head which you can build in no time.

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Robotic Farming Means More Corn For Everyone

October 20, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 82 Comments

You know we’re all going to starve, right? If the world’s population keeps growing exponentially and food production grows linearly, we’re eventually going to find out what Soylent Green is made of. This is where [David Dorhout]’s Prospero robot farmer comes in. [David] has come up with the idea of using small autonomous robots to plant, tend and harvest fields. Right now, he’s working on stage 1: planting seeds.

A swarm of six-legged Prospero robots are dispatched to a field. There, each member of the swarm plants seeds one at a time. The robots keep in contact with each other over a wireless connection to ensure the optimal planting pattern for an entire field.

The Prospero prototype is based on the Parallax Propeller with a Ping ultrasonic sensor used to avoid obstacles. Each hexapod is equipped with a bunch of seeds, a small auger, and a supply of fertilizer for the future corn plant. The next step in the plan is to build a ‘tending’ robot that will monitor and apply nutrients if needed. Check out the Prospero video after the break.

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Creepy Delta Bot Follows Your Every Move

October 20, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

tim_tracking_interactive_mechanism

The creation you see above is the work of art student [Daniel Bertner] who is wrapping up his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He calls the incredibly intriguing, yet somewhat disturbing device “TIM”, which is short for Tracking Interactive Mechanism.

A culmination of different projects he has tinkered with over the last year or so, TIM is an interactive delta bot with an attitude. Mounted on the wall of the Art Institute’s Sullivan Galleries, TIM is as interested in you as you are in it. While passers by investigate the curious device, it watches them back, following their every movement.

The robot’s motors are controlled using an Arduino, and its ability to track people standing nearby is provided via a video stream processed with Open CV.

It really is a cool project, and we think it would make for an awesome prop in some sci-fi horror flick. Check out the video below to see TIM’s personality in action – he doesn’t like it when people stand too close!

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