Sweat Bot

January 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

sweatbot

The future is here ladies and gentlemen, robots are truly making our lives better. The grueling job of sweating into clothing has been taken over by the latest in technology: the sweat bot. With water heated fake skin, and robotic sweat glands, this machine works tirelessly to test clothing. While emulating walking or jogging, it sweats into the clothing. This helps in the design of more breathable and sweat resistant fabrics. Though we know it is just a machine, choosing to put the water hoses through its face was just plain creepy.

[via BotJunkie]

Forknife, Android G1 Controlled Robot

January 25, 2009 by Eliot 11 Comments

g1bot

When we first saw [Jeffrey Nelson]’s G1 based robot we immediately wondered what the transport for the controls was. The G1‘s hardware supports USB On-The-Go, but it’s not implemented in Android yet. It turns out he’s actually sending commands by using DTMF tones through the headphone adapter. The audio jack is connected to a DTMF decoder that sends signals to the bot’s Arduino. He wrote client/server code in Java to issue commands to the robot. You can find that code plus a simple schematic on his site. A video of the bot is embedded below.

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M-CLE: Hacked Smart Cycle

January 16, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

smartcycle

M-CLE, described as ” a physical learning environment in which synergistic artificial intelligence through the use of robots(creative agents) is employed to embellish the creativity of the child”, looks like a pretty fun toy. For those of you who haven’t figured out what it does from that quote, it is a toy that kids ride on to control a robot. That robot draws on the floor while other robots interact with it using AI. This is all made to “embellish” the child’s creative work.

To control the robot, a child rides on a Fischer Price Smart Cycle. The factory electronics were replaced with an ATMEGA168. A wireless transmitter connects to the robot, which is also powered by an ATMEGA168. While one robot is controlled by the child, the others are packed with sensors to allow them to interact with it. They use touch, ultrasonic ping detectors, and IR line detectors. You can see it all in action in the video summary.

The design is interesting, everything is bright and colorful, and the shark fins on the robots are a nice touch. We have to wonder though, with a toy to ride on, a robot to control, and 3 other robots to watch in wonder, is the child going to be too distracted to be very creative?

Power Suit For Japanese Farmers

January 15, 2009 by Eliot 24 Comments

power_suit

Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have been demoing a new power suit. It’s intended to be used by people hand harvesting in the farm industry. The 55 pound device supports the worker’s joints as they squat and reach. Within three years, they hope to have the cost within $10K. We’ve seen quite a few power suit devices this year, but research has been going on for many years, as you can see in our power suit roundup.

[Thanks Lane]

Oomlout’s Guide To Kitting

January 14, 2009 by Eliot 14 Comments

oomlout

The team at oomlout has continued to post all the methods they use in their manufacturing process. This time around it’s the kitting process: how they actually packaged 30 identical SERB kits in an efficient fashion. We covered their wire cutting bot before, but they’ve got other dedicated machines like a sticker cutter. The stickers are used to remove all the cut acrylic pieces from the laser cutter as one unit. They’ve got some other tricks like using a scale to count bolt quantities, and an egg timer to keep track of the laser cutting. All of their envelopes are printed using a parallel port inkjet that has been modified to work with any thickness paper.

We love when hackers bother to post this much detail about their process. One of our favorites is [ladyada]’s full rundown of how the Minty Boost was created.

Rickshaw Pulling Robot

January 13, 2009 by Eliot 21 Comments

rickshaw

[Wu Yulu] is a Chinese farmer with no formal mechanical training. He’s been building various contraptions over the years and even accidentally burned down his house at one point. Pictured above is a walking, talking rickshaw pulling robot he built to haul himself around town. You can see a video of the mechanical man on Reuters.

The design reminds us of [Bob Schneeveis]’ Schwarzenegger towed solar chariot we saw at Maker Faire.

[via DVICE thanks cnelson]

Illuminato

January 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

illuminato

[Matt] sent us this very cool looking project called Illuminato. After brainstorming on how to improve upon the Arduino, and receiving lots of input on his ideas, [Matt] has put together this board that has several nice improvements. It has more I/O, more code space, faster serial communication speeds, built in PWM, and works with existing Arduino shields. Not only does it make these improvements, but it does it with style. The finish is quite nice, the layout is pleasing and it even has two rows of SMD LEDs on the back for some added geek cred. You can see a couple videos of it in action after the break.

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