Assimilate them early! Corrupt their minds before they have a chance to live a life free from fascination with robots. Yes, we are talking about our youth. We must teach them to master the machines to avoid enslavement in the future!
To celebrate the opening of the store sure to be the favorite of baby John (and Sarah) Conners everywhere we are giving away a free robot to the first 50 orders! In reality these are spybots that we plan to put into every home as part of a secret government program, but for now you can have one free. Isn’t that exciting!?
Roboticstoys.com aims to be the number one place to find all your robotics kits, toys, and decor for that budding roboticist in your family. Robotics is a great way to spark an early interest with children in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. There is nothing quite like building your first interactive creation and watching it come to life to kickoff a lifelong fascination of discovery and invention. Just be careful with how much time they spend behind closed doors or you just might come home to find this thing “negotiating” allowance increases with you.
As always, Thank you for being a customer and blog reader!
Dr. Dennis Hong, who is in charge of the RoMeLa program at Virginia Tech recently made a presentation at TEDx showcasing some of his department’s very advanced, very cool robotics projects! I couldn’t help but notice watching through this rather lengthy video (it’s worth watching all of it, trust me) that a good number of Dynamixels from Robotis made an appearance. Check it out!
Our pals over at Coding4Fun wrote up a pretty extensive, and pretty awesome tutorial on how they made their Wi-Fi Warthog project a reality. Remember Power Wheel toys as a kid? Add in Phidgets, Nerf Guns, computers, and Xbox 360 controllers, and you’ve got yourself a real life videogame!
The video below shows the Wi-Fi Warthogs in action at PDC09!
On Jan 7th, Sparkfun did an awesome thing for the DIY hobbyist community; they gave away $100,000 worth of stuff for free. Free Day was a massive thank you to all that supported them growing as a company, a way to give back to the community. While we at Trossen Robotics cannot fully express just how much we appreciate such a gesture, the move was one that sparked both love and hate from their many fans, customers, and followers. The website was up and down all day under the immense amount of traffic they were experiencing and many of those who were not able to get their free stuff were ‘outraged’. How one can be mad over such a generous gesture is beyond me, but as the age-old saying goes: “No good deed goes unpunished”.
Anyway, Sparkfun put together a pretty cool video highlighting the chaos from their POV, check it out!
This is an extremely versatile Arduino-software compatible microcontroller that packs a lot of features in a very small footprint. It is also the board used for the target/scoring system in the Mech Warfare robotics competition. Read more below:
The MINI robocontroller is designed for small robots. It incorporates a powerful AVR microcontroller, XBEE wireless radio, dual motor drivers, and 3-pin servo-style headers for IO.
The board includes all circuitry needed to control a small differential drive robot. It can also easily control up to 4 servos.
Servo style 3-pin headers (gnd, vcc, signal) on all 6 analog inputs, and 4 of the digital IO
Dual 1A motor drivers, with combined motor/encoder header.
XBEE radio sold separately. A typical setup will require 2 XBEE radios and an XBEE explorer to be able to wirelessly control your robot from your computer.
This board requires either an FTDI cable or ISP. We recommend the Sparkfun FTDI breakout.
And… we’re back from our vacations during the holidays and hope that all of you had a great 2009!
Inverse Kinematics can be a scary thing to the robot hobby novice. There is a lot of trig involved, and if you’ve learned anything from reading this blog you’ll know that being Norwegian apparently makes it a lot easier to grasp.
Mike Ferguson of Vanadium Labs has just released NUKE (Nearly Universal Kinematics Engine) in Beta form, which is a comprehensive and easy to use IK system built around the arbotiX Robocontroller. To make things even easier, he’s created a step by step tutorial on how to implement NUKE on your arbotiX based robot.
The Nearly Universal Kinematics Engine (NUKE) is finally out in a first beta. NUKE is a PyPose tool that allows users to setup an IK/Gait engine for their ArbotiX-powered bot, regardless of the size, servo orientation, etc (as long as it fits within an available template). Right now our templates only support 3DOF Lizard-legged 4 and 6 leg robots, however 3DOF Mammal-style leg support isn’t far off, and low DOF Biped support is in the works. This is the same system that powered Issy, Roz, and Jeff to take the top 3 spots at CNRG’s Walker Challenge. It takes about 20-30 minutes to setup your bot once you get the hang of what’s going on. The output is fairly straight forward to expand/alter. It’s mostly been running on Quads, I’ve yet to fully test it on Hexapods (first person to post a video of NUKE powering a hexapod gets a cookie at Robogames..)
Our good friend Jon Hylands, of HUV Robotics (maker of all those awesome 3rd party Bioloid accessories), has recently started a new 4-legged Bioloid based walker named Roz. He is currently using an arbotiX Robocontroller, but has plans to eventually migrate over to a custom Gumstix-Overo platform. He is utilizing the upcoming NUKE (Nearly Universal Kinematics Engine) on the arbotiX, which will be available in public beta in the near future, and is really coming along in his walking gait progress. This has to be one of the fastest AX-12+ servo based walkers I have seen yet, check it out!
The long awaited Bioloid Premium Kit has arrived! Thanks to all of those who pre-ordered, your orders are being shipped today with Free 2nd Day Air shipping!
We managed to pick up a handful of extra kits for those who missed the Pre-Order. Quantities are extremely limited and available on a first come, first serve basis. Order now while there is still time before Christmas!
For those of you wondering about the availability and release date of the Bioloid Premium Upgrade Kit, which will allow Bioloid Comprehensive Kit owners to take advantage of all the awesome new features, these kits are estimated to be available in February. We will keep you updated!
SMALdog, or Sorta Maybe Almost LittleDog, is Mike Ferguson’s (creator of the Arbotix Robocontroller) latest addition to his AX-12+ based quadrapod robot lineup.
Rather than utilizing the more common ‘lizard-style’ leg configuration, SMALdog has a more ‘mammal-style’ leg configuration that provides some interesting walking gait variations. The biggest difference is even with very little gait programming done so far, it’s already faster than the award winning Issydunnyet quadrapod. There is still a lot of work to be done on refining the walking gait, and the turning gait is barely functional, but this platform certainly shows promise. Check out Mike’s thread for more information and updates!
