Paintball Picasso Purposely Misses Its Prey

January 31, 2014 by Adam Fabio 16 Comments

waterlooPB

We’ve seen quite a few automated paintball marker systems over the years. Generally it’s the same story – a motion detection system used to target and fire upon the opposing team, prowlers, spouses, etc. [Waterloo Labs] decided to take a slightly different approach, and create a system that intentionally misses its target. Paintball Picasso uses a pair of Tippmann A-5 paintball markers to draw an outline around the person in its sights. This is a rather safe project for [Waterloo Labs], considering their previous adventures in car surfing.

The Paintball Picasso system uses a webcam to capture an image of a willing test subject. Picasso then processes the image. The human outline is plotted on a 50×50 grid of paintball pixels. Then the real fun begins. Paintball Picasso uses a National Instruments myRIO to command two paintball markers to simultaneously fire. The markers are fitted with high torque R/C style servos for pan and tilt. At 10 rounds per second the markers quickly draw the human outline. The test subject walks away slightly splattered, but otherwise unscathed. With a matrix of 2500 points, [Waterloo Labs] has enough resolution to draw some basic logos.

We liked the mounting system [Waterloo Labs] created for the markers. Using a mix of 3D printed parts, Lego Tetrix, 80/20 aluminum extrusion, and ball bearings, they fashioned a mount that moved smoothly enough for R/C servos to actuate, yet was strong enough to withstand the kick of firing. We’d love to see the servos swapped for stepper motors and belt drives. While open loop, stepper motors would afford more accuracy and a longer life than PWM driven R/C servos.

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Real Life Mario Karts React To Launchable Items

January 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

real-life-mario-kart

The team over at Waterloo Labs reasserts their reputation for creativity with this real life Mario Kart project. One of the team members must work at Austin’s Park because they seem to have had free rein when it comes to modifying the go-karts and filming the delightful video presentation found after the break.

It’s one thing to put on some costumes and head off to the go-kart track. It’s another to modify the vehicles to react to items launched by another rider. You can see the painted PVC launcher hardware to the right of each driver. By stuffing a plush item (banana, star, mushroom, etc.) in the barrel the driver can use compressed air to launch it quite a distance. Inside of each item is an RFID tag. When the RFID reader on a kart detects the tag it can take control of the steering, brake pedal, or speed limiter to inflict the appropriate actions.

If you don’t have this kind of insider access to your local go-kart track don’t fret. You just need to build your own set of karts.

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Giant Pencil Used As An Etch A Sketch Stylus

March 6, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

The gang over at Waterloo Labs decided to add a team-building aspect to a plain old Etch a Sketch. Instead of just twisting the two knobs with your own mitts, they’re converting this giant pencil’s movements into Etch a Sketch art.

The challenge here is figuring out a reliable way to track the tip of the pencil as it moves through the air. You may have already guess that they are using a Microsoft Kinect depth camera for this task. The Windows SDK for the device actually has a wrapper that helps it to play nicely with LabView, where the data is converted to position commands for the display.

On the Etch a Sketch side of things they’ve chosen the time-tested technique of adding gears and stepper motors to each of the toy’s knobs. As you can see from the video after the break, the results are mixed. We’d say from the CNC ‘W’ demo that is shown there’s room for improvement when it comes to the motor driver. We can’t really tell if the Kinect data translation is working as intended or not. But we say load it up and bring to a conference. We’re sure it’ll attract a lot of attention just like this giant version did.

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Internships: Have Fun While Working Toward A Career

February 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Attention Students: Living your life with a devil-may-care attitude will soon come to an end… But while you’re at it, take the summer away from your normal school’s-out activities to hack together something cool while tricking family into thinking it’s good for the career.

That link will take you to Waterloo Labs’ announcement that they’re hiring four paid interns this summer. You’ll need a bucketful of hacking skills from mechanical, to electrical, to coding (or any combination thereof). If the name doesn’t strike a bell be warned; these guys and gals do things like riding the roof of remote-control cars, and playing video games with real armaments.

Is your company offering similarly radical internships? We’d love to connect some hardcore hackers with good summer homes. Send a tweet a to Mike (@szczys) so that we can post an internships follow-up with more opportunities.

[via Twitter]