Hackaday Prize 2022: A Hefty Hoverboard Rover

August 3, 2022 by Danie Conradie 7 Comments

Popular consumer products often become the basis of many hacker projects, and hoverboards are a good example of this. [Tanguy] is using the drivetrain from a pair of hoverboards to build a beefy little rover platform with independent suspension.

Since hoverboards were designed to move around fully grown humans, the motors have the torque to spare for this 25 kilogram (55 pound) rover. For rough terrain, each of the four motor/wheel combos is mounted to arms bolted together with 3D printed parts and thick laser-cut aluminum. Suspension is simple and consists of a couple of loops of bungee cord. The chassis uses aluminum extrusion bolted together with aluminum plates and more printed fittings.

It doesn’t look like the rover is running yet, but [Tanguy] intends to power it with an electric scooter battery and control it with his own Universal Robot Remote. He also added an E-stop to the top and a cheap indoor PTZ camera for FPV. We look forward to seeing the functional rover and how it handles terrain.

We’ve seen hoverboard motors get used in other rover projects, but also for scooters, skateboards, and even a hydroelectric turbine. It’s also possible to use them as is by mounting them to existing chassis’ to create electric carts.

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Dead Spider Becomes Robot Gripper: It’s Necrobotics!

August 1, 2022 by Lewin Day 46 Comments

Robot arms and grippers do important work every hour of every day. They’re used in production lines around the world, toiling virtually ceaselessly outside of their designated maintenance windows.

They’re typically built out of steel, and powered by brawny hydraulic systems. However, some scientists have gone for a smaller scale approach that may horrify the squeamish. They’ve figured out how to turn a dead spider into a useful robotic gripper.

The name of this new Frankensteinian field? Why, it’s necrobotics, of course!

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Industrial Robot Repurposed To Make S’Mores

July 31, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 14 Comments

It’s summer time in the Northern Hemisphere, and that means campfires for cooking hot dogs, keeping the mosquitoes away, and of course, making s’mores. For our far-flung friends, that’s a fire roasted marshmallow and a square of chocolate smashed between two graham crackers. So called because when you’re done, you’ll want s’more. It’s an easy enough recipe that any child can tell you how to make it. But what if you’re not a child? What if you don’t even have hands, because you’re an industrial robot? This is the challenge that [Excessive Overkill] has taken on in the video below the break.

Starting with a Fanuc S-420 i W industrial robot built in 1997, [Excessive Overkill] painstakingly taught his own personal robot how to make S’Mores. Hacking the microwave with pneumatic cylinders to get the door open was a nice touch, and so are the vacuum grippers at the business end of the S’More-bot.

We know, we said you were supposed to make them on a campfire — but who wants to risk cooking their vintage robotic arm just to melt some chocolate?

There’s a lot of story behind this hack, and [Excessive Overkill] explains how they acquired, transported, and three phase powered an out of date industrial robot in another of their videos. Of course, this is Hackaday so it’s a subject that’s come up before in the reverse engineering of an industrial robot that we covered some time back.

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When [Carl] Says Jump, PCBs Say “How High?”

July 30, 2022 by Al Williams 4 Comments

We’ve noticed that [Carl Bugeja] likes flexible PCBs. His latest exploit is to make PCB-based springs that combine with some magnets to create little devices that jump. We aren’t sure what practical use these might have, but they are undeniably novel and you can see them — um — jumping around, in the video, below.

[Carl] did many experiments with the spring construction and design. You can see several of the iterations in the video, not all of which worked out well. A PCB coil in the base becomes magnetized when current flows and this repels or attracts the magnets at the other end of the spring. What can you do with a PCB spring? We aren’t sure. Maybe this is how your next microrobot could climb stairs?

Adding stiffeners produced springs too stiff for the electromagnet to attract. We wondered if a different coil design at the base might be more effective. For that matter, you might not have to use a flat PCB coil in that position if you were really wanting to optimize the jumping behavior.

Usually, when we are checking in with [Carl] he is making PCB-based motors. Or, sometimes, he’s making PCB heaters for reflow soldering. We’ve seen jumping robots, before, of course. we will say the magnets seem less intense than using compressed air.

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Omnidirectional Walker With Wheeled Feet

July 26, 2022 by Danie Conradie 4 Comments

[James Bruton] is on a quest to explore all the weird and wonderful methods of robot locomotion, and in his latest project created an omnidirectional walker that can move in any direction instantaneously.

The walker actually makes use of three independent four-legged Strider mechanisms, connected in a triangle at 120deg. Wheels are attached to the bottom of each leg, oriented at a right angle to the leg’s plane of motion to allow the foot to slide. Varying the relative speed and direction of each of the mechanisms lets the robot move in any direction, similar to his ball-wheeled robot. Each strider mechanism uses a single motor and looks similar to Strandbeest walkers, but it lifts its feet to traverse rougher terrain. [James] demonstrates this with some obstacles, and found that moving in such an orientation that all three sets of legs provide the best results.

[James] planes to build a larger rideable version, but we think he should mount a chest of Sapient Pearwood to carry all his stuff and name it The Luggage.

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Complex Movements From Simple Inflatables, Thanks To Physics

July 24, 2022 by Donald Papp 5 Comments

Inflatable actuators that change shape based on injected pressure can be strong, but their big limitation is that they always deform in the same way.

The Kresling pattern, which inspired the actuator design.

But by taking structural inspiration from origami, researchers created 3D-printed actuators that show it is possible to get complex movements from actuators fed by only a single source of pressure. How is this done? By making the actuators physically bi-stable, in a way that doesn’t require additional sources of pressure.

The key is a modified design based on the Kresling pattern, with each actuator having a specially-designed section (the colored triangles in the image above) that are designed to pop out under a certain amount of positive pressure, and remain stable after it has done so. This section holds its shape until a certain amount of negative pressure is applied, and the section pops back in.

Whether or not this section is popped out changes the actuator’s shape, therefore changing the way it deforms. This makes a simple actuator bi-stable and capable of different movements, using only a single pressure source. Stack up a bunch of these actuators, and with careful pressure control, complex movements become possible. See it in action in two short videos, embedded just below the page break.

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Robot Arm Has The Touch

July 17, 2022 by Al Williams 5 Comments

[Maurizio] built a robot arm, which is always a great accomplishment. But his project includes a very cool touch interface for an Android device that sets it apart from many other similar projects.You can see a very fast summary of the construction in the video below.

The design uses Fusion 360 and there are good explanations of each step in the process. The gripper is adapted from an existing design. Various 3D printed parts make up the wrist, shoulder, elbow, and rotating base.

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