Roomba With Dustpan Style Grasper

May 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCa8NeG3ypc]

Remember El-E, the service robot that would retrieve things that you spotted with a laser? The creators of El-E are doing research into other methods of making assistance robots. Their latest contraption is an iRobot Create, basically a Roomba, with a custom grasping hand. Instead of complex multi DOF assemblies, they have made something that works on the same principle as a dustpan. It has a thin wedge and a sweeping arm that loads items onto it. As you can see in the video, it is quite effective.

[thanks Travis]

Drawing Robot, Lego Style

May 6, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

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

Here’s a pretty cool project done with the Lego NXT system. It’s a robot that will draw you a picture. Yes, we know it could be done cnc style, but this is much more fun. You load a picture into the software, adjust the levels so the software can create the vector version more easily, then let it rip. Now they need to add face recognition.

Robotic Sheep Shearing

May 4, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 46 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAh2zv7TMM]

This contraption was made in the late 80’s, expressly for shearing sheep. For some reason, it never really took off. We’re guessing because it takes forever and still requires a person to wrangle the sheep on to the holding rack. Having that person just shear the sheep themselves might be much quicker. We think they need to refine it a bit. It should be fast, and not require a person to load it. Maybe something like a modified version of this.

Robotic Guitar Like Instrument

April 29, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxLTJmmyqn4]

This guitar bot is part of the Legue of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, or LEMUR. As you can see in the video, it has 4 strings, each mounted on it’s own unit. The pitch is controlled by a sliding bridge, while the strings are plucked by a series of picks mounted to motor. The sliding bridge is quite fast, being able to shift 2 whole octaves in a quarter of a second. The final effect is quite nice, we would listen even if we weren’t watching a robot work. This is the kind of thing we should expect to see at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Rovio Fire Extinguisher

April 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

rovio1

[Colt45] shows us some pictures of his Rovio fire extinguisher mod. Being a fan of model building, he built a new shell for the Rovio and mounted a halon distribution system to the top of it. He says he loaded some custom software for identifying and extinguishing flames, which he’ll upload eventually. We really wish we knew more, or at least had a video of it working. We’re a little bit surprised we haven’t seen more done with these things.

[Thanks Robert]

Plant Fasting: Robotic Gardening

April 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 37 Comments

[flickr video=3479713449]

This art display system was created by [Peter Sand]. It is called Plant Fasting and is comprised of a giant robot with interchangeable tools for various gardening tasks. Though the system is mostly automated, it can be controlled via a game pad. It has an Arduino as its brain and it looks like he’s done a completely custom setup for powering the interchangeable pieces.

Flying Penguins Are Awesome

April 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5JHMpLIqO4]

Festo, people who brought us the Manta Ray blimp are back with giant flying penguins. Actually, there’s lots of cool stuff in this video. The flying penguins are nice, but the swimming versions are amazingly believable. They need to sell these as pool toys. There’s also an interactive wall sculpture and a dangling grabby hand that apparently solves the age old riddle; “How many weird dangly grabby things does it take to randomly place several light bulbs in different sockets?”. The answer is, one. Just like last time, they’re sharing some details in PDF form for both the air penguins and the aqua penguins.