Here’s a good rule of thumb: “Don’t update your firmware five minutes before you’re going to fly an autonomous robot ten feet away from a former Vice President of the United States.”
That was one of the afterthoughts of [Chris Anderson] after presenting his Arduino controlled blimp at TED. (I might have to squeeze TED into my con schedule next year.) The project itself is somewhat documented here, with some hi-res photos, parts list, and some firmware. Apparently the blimp was overcome by the A/C in the auditorium, but I still dig it.
Robots Hacks2457 Articles
DIY CD Changer
[nophead] put this creation down to its final resting place, but it still deserves some attention. A Motorola MC6809 ran the show while a stepper driven robotic arm tipped with a suction cup fetched the selected disc. [nophead] has an interesting blog covering his work on building a 3d prototyping machine. The goal is to use it to produce a reprap, but he does a nice job of covering design problems and his attempts to solve them.
Cellular Data Controlled Robot
[Jatinderjit] sent along the latest in LEGO robotics. The cell phone controlled robot. It’s based on a LEGO Excavator kit with a few spare parts via ebay. The controller is a Nokia phone running a small webserver. A PIC 24F microcontroller runs the show as it receives commands via the phones IR interface. The phone uploads images from the on-board camera as fast as it can update it. Think of it as a poor mans mars earth rover.
FYI, This puppy made engadget while I was working it over, so the site might get a bit overloaded in the near future.
Cesar: Geek Out Your Powerwheels
[Zack Anderson] built this computer controlled autonomous robot (back in 2003) out of an old, ugly powerwheels Jeep. It’s got a full onboard computer with wifi, video camera, SONAR sensors, a robotic arm and it can self-navigate. He’s provided server and client code (I haven’t tried it yet), and The project shouldn’t be a surprise, since he’s been working on entries for the DARPA challenge for a while.
Vexplorer Computer Control
[kernsy] sent in this nice little PICAXE based hack to provide computer control of a VExpolorer kit robot. The PICAXE takes serial commands and outputs the pulse commands normally generated by the controls directly to the RF chipset in the remote.
Another High Altitude Project
[Jock] sent in HALO, a nice diy high altitude recon project. Taking a page from the Kite Arial Photography guys, they mounted the camera on a servo tilt mechanism, had radio modem control and SMS gps position updates. I’m waiting for someone to put together a similar package that glides back to home base after the balloon is released.
By the way, if you’ve got a newer CRT RPTV, you might be interested how I fixed mine.
Bowling, Industrial Robot Style
If you like things like coil gun armed robosapiens, then you’ll thank [Aaron] for sharing his teams quest for the ultimate in stupid robot tricks. They hauled a 2800 pound industrial robot to the desert and used it to toss bowling balls… at an innocent RV. To top things off, they even lit one on fire. He even had to call the manufacturer up and sweet talk them into telling him how to speed up the robot so they could throw the balls even harder. The fire I can understand, but I’ve got no explanation for the roman gladiator or the bunny suit. Videos embedded after the break.
