[Jerome] sent in this awesome Muffin maker (yes, muffins) that [Carl Boucher] and [Dominic Dussault] built for [Carl]’s final project in his Industrial Electrical Technician program. No real technical details, just some tasty inspiration. If you prefer cookies, you might want to check out fabbing with Nutella.
Robots Hacks2427 Articles
Simple Linux Robot With IR Camera
Here’s something else we found while writing up our duplicate Ikea Linux Cluster post. [Janne] also built this simple linux robot. The robot uses the Qwerk robot controller, a webcam with the IR filter removed (something like this one), a usb WiFi card, an IR spotlight, and a set of repurposed model airplane wheels. The WiFi adapter and webcam attach directly to the Qwerk via its on-board usb ports; the servo motors are also connected via built-in ports. Although [Janne] doesn’t post specific instructions, the Qwerk platform seems fairly easy to work with. Have a look at the Qwerk overview for more information.
PIC Controlled Spray Paint
Most people make LEDs light up for their first microcontroller project. [Alex] built a “large scale dot matrix printer.” This beast is a PIC controlled ground graffiti machine. As it rolls across the ground it deposits strategically located bits of spray paint. Rather than use actual spray paint, he opted for a set of solenoid controlled nozzles that shoot the paint downward.
The Chief Cook Robot
We feel the need to apologize immediately for the use of Yakkity Sax in the preceding video and recommend you watch the longer, yak free, video below. It shows researchers at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory teaching a robot how to make a ham and cheese omelet. Each working area and food item is labeled with a machine recognizable tag. The researcher demonstrates the task by guiding the robot’s hand. The robot combines multiple demonstrations to generalize the skill. It can then adapt the learned skill to the specific task. You can see this in the video when the robot adjusts to the location of the bowl and cutting board when they’re moved around. Teaching through demonstration would make the use of robotics much easier for the general population.
Modular Reconfigurable On The Fly Robot Demo
[Erik] Sent in this modular robot video. It’s not as mentally disturbing as the snake robots we featured before, but it’s still pretty cool. It looks like it’s using M-TRAN modules. Details are completely lacking, so if you’ve got some, share ’em.
Voice Controlled Wheel Chair
[Amnon] sent in this demo of his groups voice controlled wheel chair. I couldn’t find any details, but sometimes just a demo is enough to find some new inspiration. They connected a hm2007 speech recognition kit to an Innovation FIRST controller board on an electric wheel chair chasis. Additional sensors detect stairs and other obstacles.
Swarm Robotics
Uber-geek [James McLurkin] was in Austin recently demoing his robot swarm. He’s on tour with EDA Tech Forum. [McLurkin] has multiple degrees from the MIT AI lab and worked at iRobot for a couple of years. Lately, he has been working on distributed robot computing: robot swarms.
[McLurkin] was an entertaining speaker and had an interesting view of robotics. He is optimistic that robot parts will become more modular, so it will be easier to build them, and more importantly, faster to design them.
Some quotes:
- “There’s more sensors in a cockroach’s butt than any robot”
- “12 engineer years to design, 45 minutes to build”
- “If it can break your ankle, it’s a real [rc] car.”
