Intelligent Autonomous Vehicle Makes It To Maker Faire

October 3, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

A few guys from Rutgers showed up at Maker Faire with Navi, their vehicle for the 2012 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Powered by two huge lead acid batteries, Navi features enough high-end hardware to hopefully make it through or around just about any terrain.

Loaded up with a laser range finder, a stereo camera setup, compass, GPS receiver, and a pair of motors capable of pulling 40A, Navi has the all the hardware sensors required to make it around a track with no human intervention. Everything is controlled by a small netbook underneath the control panel, itself loaded up with enough switches and an 8×32 LED matrix to be utterly incomprehensible.

In the videos after the break, the guys from Rutgers show off the systems that went into Navi. There’s also a video showing off Navi’s suspension, an impressive custom-built wishbone setup that will hopefully keep Navi on an even keel throughout the competition.

Also of note: A PDF design report for Navi and Navi’s own blog.

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Hand Cranked Electric Toy Has No Batteries Or Power Supply

September 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

We think this hand cranked robot design is nothing short of absolute brilliance. The toy is remote-controlled through a short section of wire. It can drive forward and turn, but not at the same time. Still that’s impressive considering it uses no battery or power supply and, of the two servo motors, only one is actually in the robot itself.

The second servo, which is visible to the right, acts as a dynamo. When you crank it electricity is generated. The inputs of that servo are connected to the inputs of the one in the robot to power it. If you crank in one direction the colorful toy will drive forward. But there is a one-way catch on one of the side wheels so when the servo is cranked backward the little guy actually executes a reverse turn. The magic of building a project like this is perfect for a weekend activity with the kids. Don’t miss the demo embedded after the jump.

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Astounding Papercraft Skills Result In This Working Robot

September 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

It would have been very hard to believe this is made from paper if we hadn’t seen all the parts being built. As a still image it looks neat, but the speed at which those paper gears turn in the video after the break will certainly leave you slack-jawed. It really is a walking robot made using papercraft (translated).

These are actually being sold as kits, but there’s not much in the way of materials. You’ll get six sheets of paper, some skewers which act as the axles, and a bit of elastic band which stores potential energy when winding-up the model. The genius is in the design, which is printed on those sheets of paper. The build process involves plenty of delicate work. Dozens of cuts lead into hundreds of folds, and that’s before assembly even starts. We’ve never considered building a ship in a bottle, but this might be right up our alley. If you need to give a gift to a tinkerer this should show up high on the idea list.

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Robotic Odometry From An Optical Mouse

September 15, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

One of the problems future engineers spend a lot of class time solving is the issue of odometry for robots. It’s actually kind of hard to tell how far a robot has traveled after applying power to its wheels, but [John] has a pretty nifty solution to this problem. He converted an optical mouse into an odometry sensor, making for a very easy way to tell how far a robot has traveled regardless of wheels slipping or motors stalling.

The build began with a very old PS/2 optical mouse he had lying around. Inside this mouse was a MCS-12085 optical sensor connected to a small, useless microcontroller via a serial interface.

After dremeling the PCB and discarding the microcontroller, [John] was left with an optical sensor that recorded distance at a resolution of 1000dpi. It does this by passing a value from -128 to 127, rolling over every time the sensor moves more than 3.2 mm.

As far as detecting how far a robot has moved, [John] now has the basis for a very simple way to measure odometry without having to deal with wheels slipping or motors stalling. We can’t wait to see this operate inside a proper robot.

Bits And Pieces Robotic Arm

September 10, 2012 by Richard Steele 3 Comments

[V0R73X], who is 17 has been working on a project, to build A robotic arm. This project started out as a challenge put forward from one of his school teachers to build a robotic arm for $200. [VoR73X] accepted, and the challenge began.

He came up with a robotic arm that can be controlled from his mobile phone and other bluetooth enabled devices. He also designed it so that he can control it from the infrared remote control of an old tv set. [VoR73X] decided to kept the design simple, to make it easy for others to build. [VoR73X] has shared the code and a step by step process of how to build in the hopes that others would also like to take up the challenge. Watch the video after the break for further details on his project.

via[Instructables]

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Sexy Six Axis Robotic Arm Is A Work Of Art

September 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

We don’t know if it’s a mid-life crisis or just the result of way too many solder fumes, but [sparten11] on Instructables is building one of the coolest robotic arm we’ve ever seen, and we thank him for that.

The build began with a set of brushed DC motors running capable of running on 60 volts at up to 8 amps. These motors were attached rotary encoders that, with the gearing [sparten11] is using, provide 400,000 steps per revolution.Combined with a heavy duty motor controller, [sparten]’s arm has more than enough power and control for just about any industrial process.

Of course muscles are useless without a skeleton or brain, so [sparten] milled the structural and mechanical members of his arm in his home machine shop. It’s an impressive bit of kit; the base of his robot tested the capacity of his lathe, and the waterjet-cut arms form a graceful skeleton of an absurdly powerful robotic arm. The electronics for the build consist of a Pico PC running Windows XP with servo control board etched from a copper clad board.

The build isn’t quite done yet, but judging from the videos after the break, [sparten] will have a fabulous robotic arm shuffling around his workshop in short order.

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Wireless Upgrade For A Heathkit HERO 1 Robot

September 9, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 15 Comments

For those of you that don’t know, the Heathkit HERO (Heathkit Educational Robot) was a ‘bot built in the early 1980s. [Rick] wasn’t satisfied with his model ETW-18’s programming interface, so decided to upgrade it to be able to run Python using a hacked wireless router. We’d agree that things have advanced since then, since this little guy was originally programmed in machine code using an onboard keypad. As [Rick] points out, it’s “exactly as awful” as it sounds!

To begin restoring and upgrading his robot, a kit was obtained from [hero-1] to allow for a serial programming interface. Although an improvement, the desire was to be able to program this robot using Python, and to not have to have a cable running across the floor all the time. A router with a serial port was obtained from a thrift store, then hacked using [OpenWrt]. After fitting the components into the robot, [FR3DDY] was born, “A ~30 year old robot, accessible through wifi, capable of running Python.”

Be sure to check out his site, which has some videos we weren’t able to embed. He’s also included some Python code that he used to program it. If this has made you curious about the Python language, why not check out this recent post about learning it the hard way?