Tweenbots Rely On Human Help

April 11, 2009 by Eliot 45 Comments

tweenbots

[Kacie Kinzer] put together an interesting social experiment: Could a robot navigate purely by the help of strangers? She constructed an inexpensive Tweenbot robot that would drive in a straight line. A flag was attached to the top with a plea for help and a destination. Surprisingly, on the first run it was able to traverse through Washington Square Park in just 42 minutes with the help of 29 people. You can see a video of the first run below. This is part of [Kacie]’s thesis work at ITP and she has many other bots planned. While it’s a great demonstration of human kindness, there’s another lesson: If you don’t think your public project looks innocuous enough, draw a smiley face on it.

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Jak, The Blackjack Robot

April 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ELGFunfbs]

[Paul] sent in this Robotfest 2009 exhibition competition entry. This is Jak, the blackjack robot. This seems to be a convergence between a digital game of blackjack and a physical game. The robot scans each card as it deals them and feeds the data to a piece of software that tracks each players hand. The players select their next step on the screen and the robot responds appropriately. They have won 1st place in the Ontario competition and are now going to the international level. Jak wins a round in the video, but we didn’t see him celebrating. Come on guys, make him flash some lights or talk some trash.

A-pod

April 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 39 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jyBiECoS3Q]

We know it was just two days ago that we were ranting about the hexapods known as Phoenix, and their creator [Zenta]. In the comments on that post, [Bluehash] pointed us to [Zenta’s] latest creation. This is A-pod. The sheer articulation and believable motion here made this robot worthy of a post all it’s own. A-pod has a 2 dof “tail” and a 3 dof head with a total of 25 servos to drive it. The addition of the head adds so much character, add some face tracking and it would really blow us away. Well, after it fetched us a beer. He notes that he’s still working on the leg mechanicals, so it doesn’t do much walking yet.

Your Face On A Bot

April 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLoRpRu_KPo]

We’ll file this one under “creepy yet amusing”. You can now order a MechRC robot with a 3d replica of your own head mounted to it. The site thatsmyface.com is offering this as a product. Simply take some pictures of your face upload them and mark some options. They’ll send you your robotic replica, ready to go. As they point out at botjunkie, they’ll put any face on there that you have some decent pictures of. That’s even creepier.

Wiimote Controlled Hexapods

April 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBj7koZ9lk]

The Phoenix is a very impressive hexapod robot platform. It has 18 servos which gives each leg 3 degrees of freedom and a BasicAtom Pro 28 for the brains. Interestingly, the design started as a personal project of a forum member on the Lynxmotion forums. It turned out so well, it has become an actual product. We’ve seen videos of these before and they always have some pretty fluid and organic seeming motion. They seem almost alive in this configuration. The only thing that might make them scarier would be to add Lou Vega’s decapitated head, well maybe that plus some really nice face tracking. In the video above, you can see where someone paired one up with a Wiimote for a pretty intuitive control scheme. Yeah, we realize the video is nearly a year old, how did we miss this one? You can see a video of it walking around after the break, and another controlled by a ps2 controller.

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Arduino + Wii Nunchuck + Servos

March 30, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phcsDNOglLI]

[Yezzer] has posted a video of a cool little project he’s working on. He has interfaced the Arduino and the Wii Nunchuck to control some servos. He mounted a standard USB webcam on it for good measure. There isn’t a whole lot of information, but he does include a few links to code he modified for the project. The movement is quite natural looking and seems like it would be a cheap way to get some good animatronic controls started. This might actually be a great way to control a robot for the Crabfu challenge, if they ever have another one.

Update: As [dokument] points out in the comments below, it looks like we’ve seen a set up that could be almost identical in the past.

[via the Hack a Day Flickr pool]

Opensource Robotic Arm

March 25, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

arm

[oomlout] has released this Opensource robotic arm. It is 5 axis, using cheap hobby servos. The total cost, including having it cut at thingaiverse.com is roughly $150. The plans include all the pieces, down to the servo controller. This means that you’ll have to supply your own microcontroller and programming. They do state “We can guarantee it is loads of fun to play with, and we think potentially very useful for more serious pursuits.” and we would like to test that guarantee. We’ve been keeping an eye out for this ever since the servo switch assemblies.

[via Hack a Day flickr pool]