5 Legged Locomotion

January 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Rxo6B4EQQ]

When designing legged robots, we generally see an even number of legs. Mainly, we think, it is due to us modelling things after nature. But with robotics, you’re free to do whatever you want. [Iketomu-san] has built this unsettling 5 legged robot out of parts he had lying around. The gait is fairly interesting. He mentions that it could be used for robot fighting, where the odd leg would serve as a prop from behind and the two legs up front could be weapons. What kind of gait or use can you come up with for this thing?

SpiderBot Prompts Laser Envy

January 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Daniel’s] horrifying hexapod makes us wish we were sitting next to a laser cutter. The parts are cut from 4.9mm plywood and include laser-sculpted sections to allow the twenty servos to properly seat in their mounting spaces. We would suggest that you build it in secret so as not to ruin the surprise when your house mates come home to find this romping around their room.

Sadly, we couldn’t find video of this in action but go look at this other hexapod if the still shots aren’t good enough. Adding two legs to the party, you behold the video after the break of the 8-legged spider milled from ABS.

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Robots In Space

January 21, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl6lZbyLkzs]

SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites) are experimental robots made at MIT for the purpose of testing robot locomotion in space. As you can see in the video above, they are capable of maneuvering pretty well. They seem to hold formation fairly tightly. They are using compressed CO2, through 12 different thrusters for positioning. They should be capable of autonomously navigating around each other as well as docking to one another.

Polymorph In Practice

January 19, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxy22VfZq0E&feature=player_embedded]

[Leesam] tipped us off to this cool tutorial for shaping Polymorph. For those who haven’t, it is pretty cool stuff. It is a plastic that comes in little pellets. You can melt it down at relatively low temperatures and mold it to the shape you need. We’ve seen it used on several projects, most notably CrabFu’s swashbot3. Generally, we see it hand shaped, so it is fairly organic and imperfect. It can be used for more precise shapes though. This tutorial walks us through the easiest way to produce sheets of the stuff to be cut and bent into brackets as well as some helpful tips on getting the best results.

The Pololu 3 Servo Hexapod

January 18, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqI-sDJTyuo&w=470]

Here’s a great tutorial on how to make a tiny hexapod walker. While this was written specifically for a kit that is sold by pololu, we like the simple layout. You could implement your own electronics if you prefer something else. If you want to follow along with their components, you’ll end up with a fairly small and decently agile hexapod. Sure the legs aren’t articulated at every joint, but the effect is workable. This is probably the first 3 servo walking hexapod we’ve encountered and we’ve seen a pretty decent amount of hexapods.

[Via HackedGadgets]

Robot Waits For No Man When Recharging

January 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

Yikes, that power connector certainly wasn’t designed by Apple. Ugly as it may be, it’s the charging cable for a robot and acts as a sensor that allows the robot to properly align and plug into a power receptacle.

We’re going to go off on a tangent for just a second. We often think of the Rat Things from Snowcrash when considering robot power. They were nuclear powered (or something) and instead of recharging required constant cooling. Those day’s aren’t exactly around the corner but we think they’ve been realized in the lawn mowing robots that have a little nests to recharge in. Base stations work but they require the machine to return to the same place, or to have multiple charging stations.

The point is, this specialized cable makes base stations for robots obsolete. Now a robot can plug into any outlet it can get near, a great thing for robots roving large facilities. After the break you can see a video of this process. The robot arm zeros in by scanning horizontally and vertically and measuring the magnetic field put out by the AC in the wires of the outlet. Take a look, it’s a pretty neat piece of engineering.

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Animatronics Reference

January 15, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

Anyone who is familiar with animatronics or even most robotics knows that almost every build is a hack if you don’t plan on reproducing it. This gallery is to show off the work of [John Nolan]. However, instead of just posting the final product, he has posted several galleries that show, in detail, the internal structures. Curious how to rig a jaw or an eyebrow? Wanna see the internals of an animatronic baby? How about building giant monster hands that are rugged and have full digit control? It’s all in the gallery.