Robot Bicep Curl Accompanied By Too Much Fanfare

November 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

So this is the world’s strongest robot arm. Great… no really, that’s wonderful. We think lifting a 1000 kilogram dumbbell is a good way to show it off to the public. But with great power came the world’s most over-the top marketing. Well, maybe not as bad as the shake weight but it’s getting there. In the video after the break you’ll see that there is plenty of adrenaline-pumping music and they’ve hired an acrobat to pull a sheet off of the thing. We’ve pointed her out in the image above. [Caleb] noticed that they seem to have programmed in human kinetic to make it bounce and strain as a human lifting a heavy load would. And then there’s the fog machine. Classic. We also enjoy the use of a tap light (which we’ve seen around here before) to activate the demo.

But now we’re getting carried away. The article linked at the top covers a new development for the arm; a motorized base that can move it around. Looks like the base, which uses mecanum wheels, just slips under a stationary frame for the robot and lifts enough to truck it around.

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Maze-solving Robo Mouse

October 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Looking for something to build that will be challenging and interesting to laypersons at the same time? Take some inspiration from this maze-solving robot mouse. It take the idea of a line-following robot, and makes it infinitely more cool. The tiny rover uses sensors to map out a physical maze. Once it figure it out, you put it back at the beginning for a speed run to the finish. We’ve embedded the video below showing the whole process. Looks like the speed-run is completed in just under five seconds.

Now that you’ve enjoyed a virtual mouse in a real maze, check out a real mouse in a virtual maze.

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We Knew We Were Doomed When The T-shirt Cannon Bots Showed Up

October 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

The newest addition to the Skynet armada is this 10-barrel t-shirt cannon. It’s capable of storming the battlements at over twelve feet per second with a firing rate of three T-shirts per second (ooh, is that cotton?).

The members of Team 254, which is hosted by Bellarmine College Preparatory School, built the robot over the summer. This involved a full production cycle; planning, 3D modelling, acquiring the materials, and finishing the build. All of this is well documented in their build blog and for video, check out their media page.

We already know how to customize the T-shirts for use as ammo, now what this needs is some tank treads.

Robot Gripper Uses Coffee To Pick Up Anything

October 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

Picking up a raw egg is not something we’d think a robot gripper would be good at. But this model uses a bulbous tip instead of claw, which makes crushing the object less of a concern.

That tip is kind of like a balloon. It is stretched full with coffee grounds but air can also be pumped in and sucked out. When it comes time to grip an object, a bit of air is pumped in and the bulb is pressed down on its target. Once in place all of the air is sucked out, locking the coffee grounds around the object. Take a look after the break to see just how many things can be gripped with this technique.

Now the real question, can it bring me a beer?

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Tanks Treads For Your Next Robot

October 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

If you ever wanted to incorporate tank treads into one of your build you should check out this guide. The method shown above is our favorite, which uses rubber fuel line hose and #10 machine bolts to hold together two lengths of hollow-pin roller chain. You can see the drive sprocket is keyed into the outer length of chain but the wheels that distribute the vehicle’s weight rest on the rubber tubing. You’ll also find details on building hinged track, molded track, plastic conveyor track, treadmill track, and bicycle chain construction. This should cut down on development time when you finally get around to making that paintball tank.

[Thanks BoKu]

Fully Customized Robots

October 25, 2010 by James Munns 8 Comments

i.materialise, a custom 3D printing fabrication house are looking for talented robotics enthusiasts with the skills to design custom robotics parts such as functional frames, decorative shells, as well as unique parts required by robots to look and perform their best. The best part? They are offering free 3D printing of parts to the people they select with the most interesting or useful ideas. Make sure you check out their blog for details on what they are looking for and how to enter, as well as checking out some of the other cool things they do, such as a fully customizable 3D printed frisbee. Let us know what you design, we would love to show it off!

[via Robots-Dreams]

EvalBot: Arrival And Assembly

October 23, 2010 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

[Chris Muncy] just received his EvalBot from TI and took some pictures of the assembly process. He was one of the lucky folks that picked up the kit for just $25 using a short-lived coupon code. Seeing the kit makes us wish we had ordered one. There is some assembly required but as you can see, it’s pretty much just mechanical assembly of the wheels and the front bumper arms.

We think the wheel design is quite good. It consists of two small gearhead motors mounted on the rectangular PCB parts that you can see on the right portion of the image above. Those mount to the circular mainboard using metal L brackets. The wheels themselves are three circular pieces of PCB, one with a smaller diameter sandwiched in between its two larger cousins. This creates a channel that is perfect for a neoprene O-ring to give the wheel traction. The main board uses an optical sensors and a hole through all three parts to function as a rotation counter.

It’s a fancy piece of hardware and we can’t wait to see what you can do with it! If you’ve got one, we want to hear about your adventures.