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]

Nickel-O-Matic

March 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

coins

[Mike] sent in this project. It’s a robot, designed to print on wooden coins while people watch. It was built to be in the iHobby Expo 08 in Chicago. The main movement is controlled by a BASIC Stamp2, while the ink jet system is run off of a Propeller. The entire system has 4 servos, 3 stepper motors, a DC motor, a hacked breast pump, an ink jet head, and 5 IR sensors. in case you missed that, it has a breast pump. We’re assuming that’s the part that picks up the wooden nickels with suction. He states that the project was meant to be entertaining, so there are lots of superfluous and inefficient actions as you can see in the video after the break. Great job [Mike].

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Autonomous ATV

March 23, 2009 by Adam Harris 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja3ND8Pk_0M&hl=en&fs=1]

A team at UNC Charlotte has been working on an autonomous vehicle to drag a cart that has sensing equipment. Starting with a stock Honda ATV, different systems were added to give a Renesas processor control of the ATV. A model airplane receiver was attached to the Renesas to give remote control for Phase 1 of the project. Basically they’ve turned the ATV into a giant remote controlled car.

Later revisions will incorporate LIDAR, cameras, and multiple GPS units so the ATV can autonomously traverse most terrain with a high level of accuracy. Path planning will become a large part of the project at that point.

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Hexapod Helicopter

March 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 24 Comments

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

[Kiethrobot] built this six legged little helicopter. You can see that it is fairly mobile. You can also see that it doesn’t really make it off the ground really well. He must have gotten more power out of it though because he destroyed it in a crash the day after filming this. It is surprising how much character those six little legs add to the RC helicopter. This thing is almost as cute as something from crabfu.

[via BotJunkie]

The Ponginator

February 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYfybYkB2io]
All bow your heads in reverence to the Ponginator. This bad boy is a performance robot, mounted to the end of a 3 story tall crane. He makes all kinds of noises, flashes all kinds of lights, and shoots ping pong balls at 170 miles an hour. This thing looks like it would be so much fun to play with. listen to it as he’s talking and you’ll pick out all kinds of Sci Fi sound effects, from Portal sounds to Star Trek sounds. Check out the second video on the site to actually see the Ponginator shooting.