Ultra-Mobile Little Robot Will Climb The Walls

September 7, 2020 by Brian McEvoy 6 Comments

Can it crawl? Can it climb? Can it roll? Can it skate? Can it draw? Naminukas by [Mykolas Juraitis] can do all of those things, and it is the size of a winter boot. Roving robots generally fall into one locomotion category, and the fanciest are amphibious. We categorize this one as transforming between three modes.

The first mode is like an inch-worm and a robot arm. Using a vacuum cup at the hub of each wheel, it sticks one end to the ground then heaves itself in the direction it wants to go and repeats. Its second form is a two-wheel balancing robot, which is the fastest configuration, and it can even carry things on its suckers. For the finale, it can hybridize all the tricks and use a camera dolly like a skateboard. One end sticks to the dolly, and the other is a propulsion wheel.

Naminukas is not just about scooting around the floor, because it can use tools with enough dexterity to write legibly on a whiteboard, climb walls, and even move around the ceiling. If these become sentient, there will be no place to hide, except a room with shag carpet, and is that any way to live?

We enjoy multi-terrain vehicles from soaring seaplanes to tidal tanks.

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Biped Bob Walks And Dances

June 14, 2017 by Al Williams 5 Comments

If you have a few servo motors, an Arduino, and a Bluetooth module, you could make Biped Bob as a weekend project. [B. Aswinth Raj] used a 3D printer, but he also points out that you could have the parts printed by a service or just cut them out of cardboard. They aren’t that complex.

Each of Bob’s legs has two servo motors: one for the hip and one for the ankle. Of course, the real work is in the software, and the post breaks it down piece-by-piece. In addition to the Arduino code, there’s an Android app written using Processing. You can build it yourself, or download the APK. The robot connects to the phone via BlueTooth and provides a simple user interface to do a few different walking gaits and dances. You can see a few videos of Biped Bob in action, below.

This wouldn’t be a bad starter project for a young person or anyone getting started with robotics, especially if you have a 3D printer. However, it is fairly limited since there are no sensors. Then again, that could be version two, if you were feeling adventurous.

We have mixed feelings about the BlueTooth control. BlueTooth modules are cheap and readily available, but so are ESP8266s. It probably would not be very difficult to put Bob on WiFi and let him serve his own control page to any web browser.

If Bob meets Jimmy, he may find himself envious. However, Jimmy would be a little more challenging to build. We’ve actually seen quite a few walking ‘bots over the years. Continue reading “Biped Bob Walks And Dances” →

This Robot Goes Through Life Sideways

December 4, 2016 by Steven Dufresne 12 Comments

We humans walk funny. Pivoting one leg forward at the hip creates an offset that puts us off-balance sideways. We have to compensate for this with each step we take. Many robots handle this by instead taking small, calculated steps. Enter NABiRoS, the Non Anthropomorphic Bipedal Robot System (link to the video below). The ‘Non Anthropomorphic’ means that it doesn’t walk like a human, and yet the ‘Bipedal’ means it still walks on two legs. The difference is that it walks sideways.

Here’s how the folks from RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) at UCLA did it. Imagine you rotated both your legs 90 degrees such that they were facing in opposite directions. Then you rotate your upper body 90 degrees to face one of your legs. You can now move your legs to walk in the direction you’re facing and there’ll be no more tilting sideways each time you take a step. The joints are also simpler as only a single degree of freedom is needed in each of the knee and hip joints. The ankles and feet are done with a compliant, or an elastic, joint much as you see with a lot of prosthetic legs. As you can see in the video below, in addition to walking, they can do some surprisingly active things such as hopping up and down and what we can only call skipping. In fact, the result is sometimes very human.

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