A robotic arm uses artificial muscles powered by water to lift a 7 kg barbell.

Taking A Stroll Down Uncanny Valley With The Artificial Muscle Robotic Arm

October 28, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 24 Comments

Wikipedia says “The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers.” And yes, we have to admit that as incredible as it is, seeing [Automaton Robotics]’ hand and forearm move in almost human fashion is a bit on the disturbing side. Don’t just take our word for it, let yourself be fascinated and weirded out by the video below the break.

While the creators of the Artificial Muscles Robotic Arm are fairly quiet about how it works, perusing through the [Automaton Robotics] YouTube Channel does shed some light on the matter. The arm and hand’s motion is made possible by artificial muscles which themselves are brought to life by water pressurized to 130 PSI (9 bar). The muscles themselves appear to be a watertight fiber weave, but these details are not provided. Bladders inside a flexible steel mesh, like finger traps?

[Automaton Robotics]’ aim is to eventually create a humanoid robot using their artificial muscle technology. The demonstration shown is very impressive, as the hand has the strength to lift a 7 kg (15.6 lb) dumbbell even though some of its strongest artificial muscles have not yet been installed.

A few years ago we ran a piece on Artificial Muscles which mentions pneumatic artificial muscles that contract when air pressure is applied, and it appears that [Automaton Robotics] has employed the same method with water instead. What are your thoughts? Please let us know in the comments below. Also, thanks to [The Kilted Swede] for this great tip! Be sure to send in your own tips, too!

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Drawing Robot Creates Portraits Using Pen, Paper And Algorithms

October 25, 2021 by Robin Kearey 6 Comments

Although the market for hand-drawn portraits largely collapsed following the invention of photography, there’s something magical about watching an artist create a lifelike image using nothing but a pencil, some paper, and their fine motor skills. Watching a machine do the same is a similarly captivating experience, though often the end result is not so great. Trying to fix this deficiency, [Joris Wegner] and [Felix Fisgus] created the Pankraz Piktograph which seems to do a pretty good job at capturing faces. They were inspired by classic picture-drawing automatons, and made a 21st-century version to be used in museums or at events like trade shows.

The operation of the Piktograph is very simple: you stand in front of the machine, look into the camera and take a selfie. If you like what you see, the robot will then begin to draw your portrait on a piece of paper. It does this using two human-like arms which are made from aluminium and driven by two stepper motors. An ordinary ballpoint pen is held in a spring-loaded carrier, which provides just enough pen-to-paper pressure to reliably draw lines without lifting off or scratching the paper. We can’t help but be impressed with the overall look of the machine: with a sleek, powder-coated aluminium case and a stainless steel stand it’s a work of art by itself.

Inside, the Piktograph is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3, which runs a rather sophisticated algorithm to generate a vector image which doesn’t take too long to draw, but still results in a recognizable image of the subject. The makers’ thesis goes into quite some detail to explain the process, which uses Canny edge detection to create an outline drawing, then fills in the empty bits to create bright and dark areas. A certain amount of noise and wigglyness is added to the lines to give it a more “handmade” feel, and the resulting drawing is divided into continuous lines for efficient drawing by the plotter.

We’ve seen several types of specialized art robots before, capable of drawing portraits with a pen, painting them, or even using an Etch-a-Sketch, but [Joris] and [Felix]’s creation seems to win on speed, workmanship, and the quality of the end result. Video embedded after the break.
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RC car without a top, showing electronics inside.

Fast Indoor Robot Watches Ceiling Lights, Instead Of The Road

October 25, 2021 by Donald Papp 15 Comments

[Andy]’s robot is an autonomous RC car, and he shares the localization algorithm he developed to help the car keep track of itself while it zips crazily around an indoor racetrack. Since a robot like this is perfectly capable of driving faster than it can sense, his localization method is the secret to pouring on additional speed without worrying about the car losing itself.

The regular pattern of ceiling lights makes a good foundation for the system to localize itself.

To pull this off, [Andy] uses a camera with a fisheye lens aimed up towards the ceiling, and the video is processed on a Raspberry Pi 3. His implementation is slick enough that it only takes about 1 millisecond to do a localization update, netting a precision on the order of a few centimeters. It’s sort of like a fast indoor GPS, using math to infer position based on the movement of ceiling lights.

To be useful for racing, this localization method needs to be combined with a map of the racetrack itself, which [Andy] cleverly builds by manually driving the car around the track while building the localization data. Once that is in place, the car has all it needs to autonomously zip around.

Interested in the nitty-gritty details? You’re in luck, because all of the math behind [Andy]’s algorithm is explained on the project page linked above, and the GitHub repository for [Andy]’s autonomous car has all the implementation details.

The system is location-dependent, but it works so well that [Andy] considers track localization a solved problem. Watch the system in action in the two videos embedded below.

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Mechanical Linkage CAD For Everyone

October 21, 2021 by Al Williams 32 Comments

As much as some of us don’t like it, building things for real requires some mechanical component. Maybe it is something as simple as an enclosure or even feet for a PCB, but unless you only write software or play with simulators, you’ll eventually have to build something. It is a slippery slope between drilling holes for a front panel and attempting to build things that move. Sometimes that’s as simple as a hinge and a spring, or maybe it is a full-blown robot articulated arm. That’s why [RectorSquid] built Linkage, a “program that lets you design and edit a two-dimensional mechanism and then simulate the movement of that mechanism” (that quote is from the documentation.

The program has had a few versions and is currently up past 3.15. To get an idea of the program’s capabilities, the first video below shows an older version simulating a ball lift. The second video shows the actual mechanism built from the design. The associated YouTube channel has more recent videos, too, showing a variety of simulations.

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Quit Hunching Over Your Screen With A Little Robotic Help

October 20, 2021 by Dave Rowntree 8 Comments

[Norbert Zare] has identified a problem many of us suffer from – chronically bad posture. Its very common to see computer users hunched forwards over a screen, which eventually will lead to back problems. He mentions that most posture correction devices are pretty boring, so the obvious solution to [Norbert] was to build a simple robot to give you a friendly nudge into the correct position.

This simple Arduino-based build uses the ubiquitous MPU-6050 which provides 3-axis acceleration and 3-axis gyro data all processed on-chip, so it can measure where you’re going, which way you are orientated and how fast you are rotating. This is communicated via the I²C bus, so hooking into an Arduino or Raspberry Pi is a simple affair. There are plenty of Open Source libraries to work with this very common device, which helps reduce the learning curve for those unfamiliar with programming a fairly complex device.

At the moment, he is mounting the sensor on his body, and hard-wiring it, so there’s already some scope for improvement there. The operating premise is simple, if the body angle is more than 55 degrees off vertical, move the servos and shove the body back in to the correct position.

The project GitHub has the code needed, and the project page over on Hackaday.io shows the wiring diagram.

We have seen quite a few projects on this subject over the years, like this one that sends you mobile notifications, an ultrasonic rangefinder-based device, and one that even uses a webcam to keep an eye on you. This one has the silliness-factor, and we like that round these parts. Keep an eye on [Norbert] we’re sure there more good stuff to come!

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LEONARDO, a hybrid drone and bipedal robot

LEONARDO: The Hopping, Flying Bipedal Robot

October 7, 2021 by Dan Maloney 22 Comments

We appear to have a new entry atop the “Robots That Creep Us Out” leader board: meet LEONARDO, the combination quadcopter/bipedal robot.

LEONARDO, a somewhat tortured name derived from “LEgs ONboARD drOne,” is actually just what it appears to be: a quadcopter with a set of legs. It comes to us from Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies, and the video below makes it easy to see what kind of advantages a kinematic mash-up like this would offer. LEO combines walking and flying to achieve a kind of locomotion that looks completely alien, kind of a bouncy, tip-toeing step that really looks like someone just learning how to walk in high heels. The upper drone aspect of LEO provides a lot of the stabilization needed for walking; the thrust from the rotors is where that bouncy compliance comes from. But the rotors can also instantly ramp up the thrust so LEO can fly over obstacles, like stairs. It’s also pretty good at slacklining and skateboarding, too.

It’s easy to see how LEO’s multimodal locomotion system solves — or more accurately, avoids — a number of the problems real-world bipedal robots are going to experience. For now, LEO is pretty small — only about 30″ (76 cm) tall. And it’s rather lightly constructed, as one would expect for something that needs to fly occasionally. But it’s easy to see how something like this could be scaled up, at least to a point. And LEO’s stabilization system might be just what its drunk-walking cousin needs.

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Meet The Winners Of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots

October 7, 2021 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

The judges’ ballots are in and we’re proud to present the ten winners of the fourth round of the 2021 Hackaday Prize. We love robots, and it’s obvious that you do too! The number and range of projects submitted this year were overwhelming.

No robotics round is complete without a robot arm, and while a few of them were in the finals, we especially liked CM6, which really pulled out all the stops. This is research-grade robotics on a not-quite-student budget, featuring custom compliant mechanisms so that it can play well with its fleshy companions.

With six degrees of freedom, and six motors, the drivetrain budget can quickly get out of hand on builds like these, so we’re especially happy to see custom, open, brushless-motor driver boards used to reduce the cost of admission. Even if you’re not going to make a 100% faithful CM6 clone, you’ll learn a lot just from going through the build. Oh, and did we mention it has a software stack? Continue reading “Meet The Winners Of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots” →