Ostrich Robot Machine-Learns Itself To 5K

August 1, 2021 by Jenny List 43 Comments

Ever since humanity has grasped the idea of a robot, we’ve wanted to imagine them into walking humanoid form. But making a robot walk like a human is not an easy task, and even the best of them end up with the somewhat shuffling gait of a Honda Asimo rather than the graceful poise of a balerina. Only in recent years have walking robots appeared to come of age, and then not by mimicking the human gait but something more akin to a bird.

We’ve seen it in the Boston Dynamics models, and also now in a self-balancing two-legged robot developed at Oregon State University that has demonstrated its abilities by completing an unaided 5 km run having used its machine learning skills to teach itself to run from scratch. It’s believed to be the first time a robot has achieved such a feat without first being programmed for the specific task.

The university’s PR piece envisages a time in which walking robots of this type have become commonplace, and when humans interact with them on a daily basis. We can certainly see that they could perform a huge number of autonomous outdoor tasks that perhaps a wheeled robot might find to be difficult, so maybe they have a bright future. Decide for yourself, after watching the video below the break.

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Create Large Scale Domino Art With A Robot

July 29, 2021 by Danie Conradie 14 Comments

Creating large domino art displays is a long and nerve-racking process, where bumping a single domino can mean starting from scratch. To automate the process of creating these displays, a team consisting of [Mark Rober], [John Luke], [Josh], and [Alex Baucom] built the Dominator, a robot capable of laying 100 000 dominos just over 24 hours. Video after the break.

[Mark Rober] had been toying with the idea for a few years, and the project finally for off the ground after [Mark] mentioned it in a talk he gave at the 2019 Bay Area Maker Faire. To pull it off, the team created an entire domino laying system, including an automated loading station, a precision indoor positioning system, and the robot itself. The robot is built around a frame of aluminum extrusions, riding on three omnidirectional wheels driven by precision servo motors. A large tray mounted to the front of the robot can hold and release 300 dominos at a time. The primary controller is a Raspberry Pi 4, which receives positioning information from a Marvelmind indoor positioning system and a downward-facing IR camera that looks for reflective markers on the floor. The loading system uses a conveyor system to feed the different colored dominos to an industrial Kuka robot that drops them down a grid of tubes that can hold multiple layers at once.

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Tabletop Basketball With Tentacles

July 28, 2021 by Danie Conradie 4 Comments

Unlike football/soccer and foosball, basketball doesn’t really lend itself to being turned into a tabletop game quite that easily. [The Q] has found a way around that, employing tentacle mechanisms to create a two-player, basketball-like game.

Each player uses a pair of two-axis control sticks and a foot pedal to operate a cable-driven tentacle with a gripper on the end. These are two stage tentacles, meaning that the top and bottom halves are independently controlled. The tentacles consist of a series of laminated foam discs clued onto bicycle cable sleeves. The cables are open in the section they control, and operate in a push-pull arrangement. The spring-loaded grippers are operated by the foot pedals, with a single cable running down the center of the tentacle.

The game looks quite fun and challenging, and we can imagine it being even more entertaining with teams of two or three people operating each tentacle. Add a bit of alcohol to adult players, and it might become downright hilarious, although the mechanisms would need to be beefed up a bit to survive that level of punishment.

We suspect [The Q] read [Joshua Vasquez]’s incredibly detailed three-part guide on two-stage tentacle mechanisms. Combine that with his guide to cable mechanism math, and you’d be well-equipped to build your own. Continue reading “Tabletop Basketball With Tentacles” →

Little Quadruped Uses Many Servos

July 26, 2021 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Walking robots were once the purview of major corporations spending huge dollars on research programs. Now, they’re something you can experiment with at home. [Technovation] has been doing just that with his micro quadruped build.

The build runs twelve servos – three per leg – to enable for a great range of movement for each limb. The servos are all controlled by an Arduino Uno fitted with an Arduino Sensor Shield. Everything is fitted together with a 3D printed chassis and limb segments that bolt directly on to the servo output shafts. This is a common way of building quick, easy, lightweight assemblies with servos, and it works great here. Inverse kinematics is used to calculate the required motions of each joint, and the robot can take steps from 1 to 4cm long in a variety of gaits.

We’d love to see a few sensors and a battery pack added on to allow the ‘bot to explore further in an untethered fashion. [Technovation] has left some provision to mount extra hardware, so we look forward to seeing what comes next.

We’ve seen bigger quadrupeds do great things, too. Video after the break.

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Why Make Coffee When You’re Tired? Let A Robot Do It For You

July 25, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

Like us, [Alberto] doesn’t compromise when it comes to a good cup of coffee. We figure that if he went to an office in the Before Times, he was the type of coworker to bring in their own coffee equipment so as not to suffer the office brew. Or perhaps he volunteered to order the office supplies and therefore got to decide for everyone else. Yep, that’s definitely one way to do it.

But like many of us, he is now operating out of a home office. Even so, he’s got better things to do than stand around pouring the perfect cup of coffee every morning. See, that’s where we differ, [Alberto]. But we do love Cafeino, your automated pour-over machine. It’s so sleek and lovely, and we’re sure it does a much better job than we do by hand — although we enjoy doing the pouring ourselves.

Cafeino is designed to mimic the movements of a trained barista’s hand, because evidently you’re supposed to pour the water in slow, deliberate swirls to evenly cover the grounds. (Our kettle has a chunky spout, so we just sort of wing it.) Cafeino does this by pumping water from an electric kettle and pouring a thin stream of it in circles with the help of two servos.

The three buttons each represent a different recipe setting, which specifies the amount of water, the hand pouring pattern, and the resting times between blooming the grounds and actually pouring the bulk of the water. These recipes are set using the accompanying web app via an ESP32, although the main brain barista is an Arduino Nano. Grab a cup and check out the demo after the break.

Got an old but modern coffee robot lying around? You could turn it into a planter with automated watering.

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Monowheel Balancing Robot Can’t Turn (Yet)

July 24, 2021 by Danie Conradie 21 Comments

Self-balancing robots have become a common hobby project, and they usually require two wheels to work. [James Bruton] has managed to single wheel balancing robot by adding gyroscopic stabilization.

[James] has done other self-balancing robots, like his Sonic robot, but recently started experimenting with gyroscopic stabilization. In that project, he proposed the idea of combining the two stabilization methods to create a monowheel robot, and he followed through on that idea. The wheel is powered by a brushless motor and is stabilized conventionally around the wheel’s axis. Side to side balancing is achieved using a phenomenon known as gyroscopic precession, by tilting a pair of heavy spinning wheels. This is not to be confused with reaction wheels, which use rotational inertia for control. It appears the actuating the gyroscopes also affects the front-to-back stabilization, so at the moment the robots won’t stay on one spot. [James] plans to implement a second observation controller in software to solve this.

Another challenge with this robot is that it cannot turn at the moment. The gyroscopes are not in the correct orientation to effect rotation around the vertical axis, and changing their orientation would cause other problems. A fan, which works like a helicopter’s tail rotor is one option, and a reaction wheel on top might also work. We’re partial to the reaction wheel idea. Having a different mechanical control mechanism for each axis would make it quite an interesting robot.

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Tardygrade Walker Is A Lesson In 3D Printed Design

July 23, 2021 by Danie Conradie 12 Comments

The ability to quickly create complex parts with 3D printers has created a platform to show off mechanical design skills. This is true in the case of [Dejan Ristic]’s capable little Tardygrade walking robot, which uses only two servos and a bunch of clever 3D printed parts.

The robot’s chassis is split into two subassemblies, each with a pair of feet on diagonal corners. As one pair of feet lifts the robot, the other section of the robot can rotate before coming back down, allowing the robot to turn. One servo handles the actuation of the feet, while the other rotates the body as required. An ESP32 based controller creates a web server user interface, and power comes from a lipo cell.

The interesting part of this robot is in how [Dejan] designed it for printing and assembly. All the parts can print without support, and in the correct orientation to optimize strength. There are only six screws in the assembly holding the servo and servo horns, while everything else uses snap fits or short pieces of filament. Take a look at the videos after the break to gain some appreciation of the design effort and attention to detail that went into this robot. Even the contact surfaces of the feet were carefully designed for optimum walking over flat surfaces and small obstacles.

This reminds us of [gzumwalt]’s little 3D printed creations, like the fridge crawler and mechanical edge-avoiding robot.