The folks at Revision3 really know what gets our pulse going. In this episode, they show us how they built a radio controlled keg. Not only is the system built sturdy enough to cart around the keg, it is also built with the capability for the driver to control the beer flow. This isn’t too shabby for a pretty quick project, but it still can’t compare with Bar2D2.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bQRXfLwBgU]
Theres an interesting thread going on at RoboterNetz.de (translated) about building delta robots. For those who haven’t seen delta robots before, be sure to check the video after the break for some really impressive agility displays. A delta robot usually has 3 arms connected to a single point at the end. This configuration allows the end point to maintain its “level” while the whole unit is moved, usually very quickly. There are a few people building them in this forum. The one pictured above is [Asurofilmchen]’s version, but you should also check out [Radbruch]’s posts of a robot made by [Jamison].
The Big Picture is Boston.com’s daily news photo blog. Each day they pick a particular story and feature some of the best news photography around. Today they chose robots and have 36 photos highlighting current robot research. This is a followup to a similar post from March. It’s interesting to see all the different forms and tasks robots are taking.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI9H4FoA0b4]
According to the video, Ecce Robot is a new paradigm in robotics. We don’t know if that’s true or not, but we really enjoy the drive system. They have mimicked the biological structures in humans using elastic cables and cheap drill motors as muscles. It is intriguing to watch the complexity that even a simple arm lift requires. This does show inefficient this type of set up is, but we still think it is cool. We don’t understand the desire to use cheap drill motors though. Cost aside, the control problem they mention seems like it could be resolved with a little better motor setup. Then again, we’re sure they thought of that. This seems like a perfect time to bring up a common question. Is it worth the inefficiency of trying to mimic our natural biological structures with hobby robotics pieces? What technology would have to be present to make it worth the complexity?
[via Engadget]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcoAqKhdL4]
[Shachar Geiger] sent in an interesting project that he worked on with [Tal Avivi] at the Bezalel academy in Jerusalem. They were given the task of designing a 1-person electrical urban vehicle. They took some cues from MIT’s Transology and designed the OmniDirectional Research Platform (ODRi). There’s a video of it embedded above. It can be driven using three different input styles: an accelerometer joystick, a traditional gamepad, or body mass shift. They started with an Arduino, but needed more I/O and had to switch to a Wiring board (this was before the Mega). The platform is built mostly from scrap. The accelerometers were placed in an old Microsoft Sidwinder. The standard joystick is from a Sega Mega Drive. The weight sensors are out of cheap home scales.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nEeVA02MM]
These Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are all competing in the 12th annual AUVSI competition. They have to complete an underwater obstacle course that involves some tight maneuvering, retrieval of a briefcase, dropping bombs, and firing torpedoes. We’ve seen several UAVs before, but we haven’t ever seen them weaponized and in action. Yeah, those weapons don’t look lethal, but isn’t that just a matter of ammunition?
Introducing ERP: Experimental Robotic Platform. This is an open source, modular robotics platform that, as you can see above, didn’t fair too poorly in the Robogames 2009. [John] has been working on this platform for roughly 2 years and states that it will never be “finished”. It is a development platform, and is always changing and being updated. You can follow along on the project page to see the major design changes as they happen, such as the wheel suspension system cut from a single piece of plastic. All of the pieces, schematics, and software are available for download. Be sure to scroll down and see ERP’s reaction to some of crabfu’s inventions.
