“Killer Zombie Drone” Is Awesome And Recycled

October 6, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

Usually, when someone mentions military drones, we think of something much smaller and less intimidating than this monster. This is an Airforce Phantom II, retrofitted to be a computer controlled killing machine. Able to carry 18,000 pounds of stuff that goes boom, a single computer can control up to 6 of these in formation.

Sounds scary doesn’t it? Actually, though these are capable of being offensive, they are mainly used for target practice. These are decommissioned units that have been fixed up and modified to be radio controlled.

[via BotJunkie]

ArduPilot Pro Autonomous Drone

October 5, 2008 by Jason Rollette 10 Comments

We wrote about [Chris Anderson] before when he released the Arduino based autopilot. He has since crashed his first Predator UAV, due to an underpowered motor and poor control of the v-tail only steering. He has since released a pro version of the autopilot controller, and is modifying this UAV Predator drone kit to work with it. One ATMega168 processor handles flying and the other handles GPS navigation, but because they work together, it results in a fully autonomous drone. He also has a BlimpDuino version we have covered before.

Autonomous Hovering Drones Invade Germany

October 1, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

We welcome the swarm of autonomous hovering robot overlords being made by students at Humboldt University. The goal of this project is to build an autonomous hovering platform that is controlled via adapted insect behavior. Navigation comes from monitoring real time inputs, such as air pressure and optical sensors, not by predefined paths and GPS coordinates. Some examples of this adapted behavior are: navigation via polarized sun light like African ants, and optical flow similar to bees.

You can see the platforms in action on Spiegel Online, but unless you understand German, you won’t get much else out of it.

If any of this seems familiar, it’s because we covered CCCamp 2007, which was near Berlin and had some very similar quadcopters. While the large quadcopter platforms have been around for a while and are steadily coming down in price, there are some new alternatives out there that are quite tempting. Anyone want to build some autonomy into this little baby?

[thanks fh]

Arduway: A Mini Segway Using The Arduino

October 1, 2008 by Jason Rollette 11 Comments

[Joe L] sent in the Arduway on the tipline. It is a robot made of Arduino and Lego NXT components based on the Segway. A software library to control LEGO NXT motors and a few sensors he used is available on SourceForge. This robot does a good job of balancing itself while moving forwards and backwards.

There is a YouTube video of it in operation after the break.
Continue reading “Arduway: A Mini Segway Using The Arduino” →

Cheap XY Table Using Hobby Servos

September 30, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

[CarlS] wanted to build a low cost x y table for display on teletoyland.com. He realized that to keep cost low, he could use hobby servos instead of stepper motors. Exact precision wasn’t a big issue here, so the hobby servos would be perfectly acceptable.

Though Linear hobby servos are available, he decided that the cost was prohibitive. He used normal hobby servos, but had to modify their internals to get the exact amount of travel necessary. Many people modify the hobby servos for continuous rotation, but this would cause a loss in the ability for exact positioning. Instead, he replaced the potentiometer that measures the position of the servo with a 10 turn potentiometer. This allowed him 10x the travel.

Continue reading “Cheap XY Table Using Hobby Servos” →

The Pinnacle Of Modern Robotics: Bar2D2

September 29, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

[Jamie Price] directed us to this photostream of the build for Bar2D2. Though it isn’t the first bartender bot we’ve covered. It very well could be the best executed. Bar2D2 can travel around the party dispensing bottles of beer, shots, and even cans. The construction looks fantastic. You can follow along in the photostream from the very beginning. It is currently radio controlled and can party for about 8 hours per charge. The next planned upgrade is a system that allows you to choose a mixed drink from a database and Bar2D2 will mix it up.

As you can see from the pictures, Bar2D2 is the life of the party, attracting pretty girls and cheesy sci-fi tv pirate astronauts too.

Underwater ROV

September 24, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[SpaceShipOne] has built this very nice looking under water ROV. It is still a work in progress, but nearly complete. This ROV is a fairly simple construction. most of the body parts are held together using zip ties. There’s no microcontroller and no custom boards. He’s using a radio control transceiver that was intended for airplanes to control some standard speed controllers and servos. For thrust, he pulled the motors out of some bilge pumps and fitted them with propellers. He’s only tested it once, but promises videos from the lake soon. He mentions [Jason Rollette] several times since [Jason] has done both simple and complex designs in the past.