LEGO Robot Lays Dominoes Not Eggs

January 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Mattias] brings the awesome once more with his LEGO robot that sets up dominoes. You’ll remember his work from the wooden keyboard case and the mechanical binary adder. This time around he’s still exercising those woodworking skills by making his own domino tiles, but it’s the robot that makes this interesting. In the must-see video after the break the device lays perfectly straight, perfectly spaced dominoes just begging to be upset by a spoiled toddler. The robot is nothing more than handful of LEGO parts powered by a tape deck motor. The parts may be meager, but there’s an abundance of ingenuity tied up in the design.

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TOBI The Tool Bot

January 4, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChmDJ7RSZYE]

[TheGrue] has put together this great writeup on how he built TOBI, the tool carrying robot. Inspired by a story he read about a robot that could follow people around, using heat sensors, he decided he wanted to do something similar. His robot would carry his tools, in this case, the tools of an IT professional. Not only would it carry his tools, but surely it would give him credit as a techno-guru to have a scratch built robot following him around.

His build process is documented quite well. He approached this in a fashion where he set several iterations. Each step would add a feature and carry the old features forward. It looks as if he’s currently working on step 3, which means that the chassis has already been built, the drive train is working, it can be remote controlled, and now has some level of autonomy thanks to a propeller controller. Up next are some range finders and an assortment of other sensors so that TOBI won’t drive off any steps, or into any walls.

[via hackedgadgets]

Lightdrawing Robot

December 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

Long exposure “light drawing” photography has become pretty popular lately. We see images pop up all the time that look pretty cool. [Nils] wasn’t feeling particularly artistic himself, so he made a robot to do the hard work for him. he can program patterns in, and it will replay them by changing the color of the light on top while it drives around. Though it may lack a little of the fluidity of the hand made images, it can probably make up for it with complexity. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this style of photography mixed with robotics, though this one seems fairly more flexible. Tune in after the break to see a video of it in action.

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Office Prank: Death From Above

December 26, 2009 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFVECjF0T5Q]

Unsuspecting office workers beware. You may already be in the cross-hairs of a ping-pong ball launching robot. This covert robot hangs out on the other side of a suspended ceiling, waiting for its operator to unleash the fury. When put into action a hatch in a ceiling tile is raised and balls are launched at a cowering cube-dweller.

It looks like the balls are launched at a reasonable speed and won’t hurt anyone. The next generation of this bot should do a better job of integrating the trap door and be quieter. This would be a lot more fun if the victim couldn’t figure out where the heck that ball just came from.

[via BotJunkie]

Ultrasonically Controlled Instrument

December 26, 2009 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

[vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/8228439]

[Rui] is working on a sequencer to control his robotic gamelan. The software maps out the controllers that operate the musical robot, which play the traditional Indonesian instruments.

The controls use ultrasonic distance sensors that detect the proximity of the musician’s hands. This data is collected by an Arduino and sent to a computer for use with the sequencer. The controller body is an upside down salad bowl from Ikea; cheap, available, and creative!

[via @littlebirdceo]

Four Generations Of Motion Simulators

December 21, 2009 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

We like a good flight simulator but often find the available control schemes lacking. [Roland] not only builds his own controls, but creates full cockpits that add physical motion to the mix. He completed his third generation cockpit last year. It’s pictured above as well as in video after the break. That design uses a belt system to move the tricked out cockpit.

Now he’s started work on prototypes for generation IV. This time he’s using three Sarrus linkages to replace the belt system. We saw these linkages yesterday in an extruder prototype and if they can handle the load they should work well for this application. Video of the prototype is embedded after the break but be warned, the lewd thrusting motions are not for the faint-of-heart. Continue reading “Four Generations Of Motion Simulators” →

Giving An Old Arm New Life

December 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Jarek] found a non-functional robotic arm sitting around and wanted to get it working again. By adding a few custom boards to an Arduino he managed to do just that.

The arm is driven by six stepper motors, each having four control wires. To handle all of these [Jarek] used TIP120 transistors to protect the controller. This still leaves the problem of 24 control wires to connect. By using a couple of 74HC4514 demultiplex chips he cut that number down to just 8 Arduino control pins. He completed the project by interfacing an original Playstation controller as the input device.

Source code for the project is available for download but we didn’t see a schematic for his setup. This shouldn’t be a problem as the low parts count should mean the datasheets for the transistors and demultiplexers are all you really need.