Tennis Ball Fetcher

November 22, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

tennisball

Reader [Julian von Mendel] and his team built this tennis ball fetching robot for a competition (translated). The first version used distance sensors to locate the tennis balls for pick-up, but they changed to a camera based approach. The robot has three omniwheels and is designed to calculate the shortest path to the ball despite orientation since it can rotate while traveling. The wheels are monitored using rotation sensors from PS/2 mice. The control is provided by 3 Atmel microcontrollers that communicate via SPI. The multiprocessor design is fairly generic and could be reused for a different style of robot. While their robot performed fairly well, there were some shortcomings. The limited storage space meant frequent trips to drop off balls. The tilting bucket kept them from picking up tennis balls that were against the wall. Also, the bot had to be disassembled for battery swaps. The project is very well documented and they’ve released all of their control code. You can see the robot retrieving a ball after the break. Continue reading “Tennis Ball Fetcher” →

Cythbot, Pneumatic Guitar Hero

November 22, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

cythbot

Here’s yet another robot hoping to dominate the human race through the power of ROCK. Cythbot was built to demonstrate Cyth Systems machine vision systems. The device uses a camera to watch the Guitar Hero monitor and identify notes for button presses. The strum bar is then triggered after a delay. The notes are identified solely by pixel intensity since star power can cause them to change shape and color. All button presses are done using pneumatics. The whole system is self-contained and doesn’t require a separate computer for processing. Our favorite part is that the controller remains completely unmodified and the industrial light tree used to indicate notes. The team says that the pneumatics aren’t quite fast enough to hit 100%, unlike some humans. Video of the bot in action after the break. Continue reading “Cythbot, Pneumatic Guitar Hero” →

Simple Servo Bot Plans

November 22, 2008 by Eliot 6 Comments

had_arduino_servo

oomlout has posted some interesting plans for a simple robot. It’s based around an Arduino and is a platform similar to the Parallax Boe-Bot. The Arduino sends PWM signals to continuos rotation servos that drive the two main wheels. All of the structural components are laser cut from acrylic with slots to hold standard hex nuts. It’s an interesting technique, but the design has a lot of potential for improvement. Right now it uses two different power supplies and a breadboard for simple connections. From the video below, you can see that the balance could be improved as well. Continue reading “Simple Servo Bot Plans” →

Robot Mimic

November 21, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSj0lNweq-c]

Here’s a video of a student submission to the 2008 NHK RoboCon competition. The robot, who vaguely looks like a giant lego minifig, is controlled via a suit. The robot mimics the moves of the wearer. We can’t help but have visions of the clown from F/X2.

[via ROBOTS DREAMS]

Guardian Hack Day

November 18, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 1 Comment

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/2276648%5D

The Guardian’s technology department hosted its first Hack Day last Thursday. Developers were freed from the drudgery of their everyday jobs to make fun toys and tools. Many of the hacks that developed played around with the website, like the Guardian commenter blocker, or the Guardian Button integrated into the Google Toolbar. We liked the Guardian Politics Page LED Swingometer, created by [Tom Armitage], which scanned the Guardian’s politics RSS feed for mentions of “Conservative” or “Labour” to yield the “swing” of a page to an Arduino. We wanted to see more of the Java-enabled Robot Dude. You can track Fhe Guardian’s Hack Day activity on Twitter with the tag #ghack1 or check out their photos on Flickr.

If you want to participate in a Hack Day, Last.fm is hosting one this December.

Autonomous Cookie Monster

November 10, 2008 by Eliot 8 Comments

cookie_monster

[DJ Sures], who built the autonomous Wall-E, is back with another creation. His new autonomous Cookie Monster is certainly an interesting build. He had the cookie monster plush toy already so the first step was to flay the blue beast and insert a skeleton. He used another robot for that. There are two servos for the wheels plus one for each arm and one for the neck. There’s a distance sensor in the mouth. He built a custom board for the PIC18F4685 microcontroller which is running the same 2D mapping code as his previous bot. Check out the video of it in action below. Continue reading “Autonomous Cookie Monster” →

Robot Fish CAD Models

November 2, 2008 by Eliot 4 Comments

[Bre] dug up this excellent robot fish prototype project. The PPF-O9 has three servos. One on the forward fins to control depth, one on the middle joint, and one final one drives the tail fin. The battery box is mounted to the underside. The control scheme is interesting: the right stick controls left/right and up/down while the left stick controls the frequency and amplitude of the motion. They say the robot is fairly stable, but swimming and turning can be slow. They’ve included CAD files for almost every component to help you with your own designs.