2006 « Trossen Robotics Blog

Archive for 2006

Qwerk Robotic Computer from Charmed Labs

Friday, December 8th, 2006

This is a great looking piece of hardware. Check out all the specs below. This is a very exciting time in robotics to have so many computers of this type coming out. ARM chips are becoming fairly powerful and there are ways to run high level object oriented programming language apps on them. The world of PCs and embedded systems are continuing to merge in many ways. The Qwerk looks like a great development platform for roboticists.

From the Charmed Labs site: “Qwerk is a powerful embedded computer with lots of I/O capabilities specifically for robotics.Â Qwerk is being offered as the “official” Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) hardware, as well as for general applications in robotics and mechatronics.”

Qwerk Overview

* Powerful robotics solution for university and high school educational and hobbyist markets
* High-performance CPU with an excellent I/O feature-set for robotics and mechatronics applications
* Low-cost

Hardware

* 200 MHz ARM9 RISC processor with MMU and hardware floating point unit
* 32 Mbytes SDRAM, 8 Mbytes flash memory
* Latest generation Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA for custom I/O peripherals
* Linux 2.6 installed
* WiFi wireless networking support
* WebCam video input support
* 4 Amp switching power supply, 90% efficient, 7 to 30 Volt input range
* Rugged aluminum enclosure
* 5.1â€? x 5.8â€? x 1.3″, 11.8 ozs

I/O

* 4 closed-loop 2.0 Amp motor controllers (supports both quadrature encoder and back-EMF â€œsensorlessâ€? feedback)
* 16 RC-servo controllers
* 16 programmable digital I/Os
* 8 12-bit analog inputs
* 2 RS-232 ports
* USB 2.0 host ports for connecting standard USB PC peripherals
* 10/100BT Ethernet port
* Built-in audio amp for playing MP3 and WAV files

Thanks Bob Mottram for the tip!

Posted in Product Spotlight | No Comments »

Stereoscopic Vision by Bob Mottram

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

If Robotic vision is your thing then a name you need to know is Bob Mottram. Bob has been pioneering stereoscopic vision software for a long time now and is very generous with posting information about his work.

Sentience is a stereoscopic vision and mapping system for mobile robots. It was developed initially as part of the Rodney humanoid robot project, and has been refined over several years. The system uses cheap low resolution webcam technology to acquire images and calculate a depth map from them.

Here are Bob’s websites:
Sentience Stereo Vision System

Rodney Project

Bob’s Main Homepage

The Streeb-Greebling Diaries

(Shameless Plug) For those who are interested in stereoscopic vision we suggest taking a look at the Stereo Vision Web cam Pan & Tilt unit we sell.

Posted in Featured Robots, Humanoid Robots, Software, Vision | No Comments »

Top Ten

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Techeblog has two fun lists to check out:
Top Ten Strangest Robots
Top Ten Coolest Robots

Posted in Featured Robots, Fun Stuff | No Comments »

Almir Heralic – Humanoid Robot HR-2

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

This is one SMART humanoid. It can watch movements and then mimic them as well as watch/track a light pen and then reach out to touch it. There is some serious AI going on behind the scenes here and we are way impressed

From Almirâ€™s site: â€œThe HR-2 robot was constructed during a period of three months at Chalmers University in Sweden. It has 22 degrees of freedom which enables it to easily move around imitating human motions. The robot is also equipped with stereovision giving it possibilities to perform hand-eye coordination. For that task an artificial neural network is evolved. Furthermore, the artificial brain is capable of tracking faces as well as recognising them. The HR-2 is also able to speak.â€?

View the awesome 30 meg demo video here. If you only watch 1 robot video this week, this is the one.

Posted in Featured Robots, Humanoid Robots | No Comments »

Neill Blomkamp Short Films

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

Neill Blomkamp likes robots, this much is apparent. He even uses them when he is hired to make car commercials. Niell Blomkamp is a director for Spy Films. Two of Neill’s short robot films have been making the internet geek rounds for awhile. We thought we would post them up for anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. (If you aren’t a fan of watching grainy youtube videos you can find the 14 minute Tempbot video on the Spy Films website.)

Tetra Vaal – Soldier of the Future

(video removed from YouTube)

TempBot

Posted in Fun Stuff | No Comments »

Featured Robot – LEGO NXT card dealing robot

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

This is our first post for a new category called “Featured Robots.” We decided it would be helpful to feature robots that we think other developers can benefit from seeing. Each profiled robot will have some bit of specific take away value for developers to ponder.

For our first featured robot we found this beautifully simple LEGO NXT card dealing robot.

What we like about this robot is that is shows a real world application for which robots could be used. As a robotic company we ourselves are always looking for robotic application themes. We are always asking ourselves questions like, “Where do robots fit into our lives?” or “What is the next Roomba?!” When I look at this cute robotic card dealer it makes me imagine what next versions could be like. Maybe a stationary robot in the center of a poker table which rotates as it deals. It can be told (or sense) how many players to deal to, where they are, and what game is being played. At the end of each hand the cards are pushed into a bin which reshuffles them for the next hand. Now that’s a robot I’d like to own!
Via Make Magazine – Via TechEBlog

Posted in Featured Robots | No Comments »

R100 Personal Robot from NEC

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

We avoid posting every mention of a new robot coming sometime in the next 10 years here at Trossen Robotics, but this little guy looks promising!

The R100 Personal Robot is one of the quirkier looking robots from NEC that looks more like a de-feathered penguin and will easily pass as Frankenstein’s offspring. As we were told not to judge a book by its cover, what does the R100 Personal Robot have in store for us? For starters, it comes with a couple of CCD cameras that is capable of recognizing faces, cheering the owner the moment he comes back from work, as well as help the R100 navigate without bumping into furniture and other obstacles which litter the floor. A trio of microphones enable it to catch your commands and match it with a 100 phrases in its database. The R100 is also capable of expressing itself through 300 phrases. It surfs the Net as well, delivering your e-mail on your behalf.

Via UberGizmo

Posted in New Kits / Products | 1 Comment »

PC Robot Demo Sneak Peak

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Here is a sneak peak of the robot that was built for the next article in Robot Magazine’s series on building PC based robots!
Below is a fun little video showing us drive the robot around. We built this robot for the second article in the series which covers the chassis, power supply, computer selection, and motion control output. As you can see in the video we are controlling the robot via a wireless logitech gamepad to test our motion control output. (So what it really is at this point is a very expensive RC vehicle.) In the future articles we will show how to add sensors and autonomous control to the project to turn it into a real live robot!

Look for the PC Robot article in the spring issue of Robot Magazine.

PS: The metal decks used to build this robot are a sneak peak at our new modular chassis system which is coming soon. The aluminum decks allow for extremely fast and flexible robot building. Just slap a miniPC or laptop onto the chassis and voila, you have a robot. (click on the pictures to enlarge)

Posted in News / Articles, Project Ideas | No Comments »

Flash Back Fun

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Giant Magazine posted their pick of The 50 Greatest Commercials of the â€™80s. While they missed some painfully obvious ones like Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl ad they still dug up some old classics that take us waaaaay back. Have fun seeing if the child geek still within you remembers some of these ancient technology products.

Commodore Vic-20 commercial

Paperboy

The Go-Bot Command Center

The Legend of Zelda

Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl ad

Posted in Fun Stuff | No Comments »

A new KHR-series Kondo humanoid robot is coming out… and we’ll be carrying it!

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Kondo has yet another humanoid biped robot to add to their product line called the Kondo KHR-1HV.

Oddly enough, the name has a lower version number than the previous version of the KHR series robot, the KHR-2HV. That aside, this new version sports 19 degrees of freedom, which enables the humanoid to rotate each leg independently at the hip. Additionally, each shoulder in the KHR-1HV are now equipped with KRS-4024SHV servos which are metal geared, and have greater range of rotation. Of course, all of these upgrades come with a cost; Estimated at 126,000 yen (about $1,091 US).

It looks like this robot has quite a bit more potential than the 2HV. I can just see it now… Kondo Martial Art Competitions!!

Thanks to our friends at Robot Dreams for finding this lead!

UPDATE: We are now carrying this Kondo 1HV!!

Posted in Humanoid Robots, New Kits / Products, News / Articles | No Comments »