Giger’s upgrades got finalized late Sunday night and I had a bit of time to sit down and start to work on the walking gaits (from scratch). The EX-106+ is roughly 4x more precise than all previous Dynamixels, so the positional values do not translate over well when upgrading from a previous model. What does that mean? It was far simpler to just start over rather than try to scale the values step by step. All new custom brackets used in the legs and feet, as well as new elbow/shoulder brackets and arm extensions. Brackets were designed in Autodesk Inventor 2008 and machined by Rapid Sheet Metal. It’s worth mentioning that all of the custom, as well as the stock, brackets and frames that are used in Giger’s arms and legs are available in our store on our Dynamixel Servo & Bracket page! Even his ankles/hip joints or his entire legs!
A lot of projects tend to only show updates after many dozens and/or hundreds of hours of progress, but I like to show the little steps as I feel it gives one a better view of the evolution of a project and what goes into making a robot work. Keep in mind; I have this gait tuned to a very slow rate so that I can work on the balance and COG shifting correctly, it can then be sped up to a more realistic, useful speed. Here’s a short video of my initial walking gait progress (about 2 hours of programming work so far) on Giger 2.0:
I’ve been busy at work with Giger installing some upgrades before Robogames (in the tune of 10x EX-106+ actuators, as well as brand new machined brackets from Rapid Sheet Metal). That said, we decided to use some of the random footage we had taken of Giger to give an overview of the robot in it’s first revision, when it only had RX-64s powering its legs. We’ll have a lot more information, pictures, and video on Giger v2.0 in the near future!
BTW- If anyone is looking for a solid place to get some sheet metal cut/bent or some parts machined, check out Rapid Sheet Metal and their sister company Rapid Machining. I’ll give a bit more in-depth review of them in the followup post where we’ll talk more about Giger 2.0, but I was absolutely blown away by their quality and customer service, so I’ll say it here as well. Check em out! Tell em we sent ya! =)
Some of you may remember Brainbot, a project directed and funded by the Brain Engineering Laboratory and Neukom Institute at Dartmouth College, designed in collaboration with Jon Hylands and HUV Inc. The purpose of which is to enable the study and practice of brain engineering.
Well, Brainbot is getting a brain transplant into a 1/5 scale top of the line rock crawler chassis, for the purpose of creating a navigation variant. Onboard smarts? A Core 2 Quad, 2.83 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and a 32 GB Solid State HDD, 802.11n wifi, GlobalSat USB GPS, Prosilica gigabit ethernet camera (640 x 480, 60 fps) which plugs into Roborealm, and a Hokuyo UTM-30LX scanner laser rangefinder.
I went out and bought a 1/5 scale RC rock crawler chassis. Just for scale, those tires are 8″ in diameter, and the whole thing is 30″ long. We chose this chassis because it would have no issues going long distances at speed, and it would be able to handle curbs and grass and such with no issues. Being a rock crawler, it also goes slow enough that the sensors can keep up…
Right now, it has the quad core mini-itx mounted, and is being driven around with my Logitech wireless joystick. The motor driver (a Sabertooth 2×25) is controlled from one of my Bioloid I/O boards, which is connected to the bus. A program (written in Squeak Smalltalk) takes the joystick input, and sends speed and steering commands over the bus to the I/O board and the steering servos (AX-12’s).
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!
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!
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!
Seriously. I’m getting a bit tired of Phoenix hexapod inventor Kara Halverson, aka Zenta, constantly showing everyone up. We get it, you’re awesome at building awesome robots. Could you please just stop and give the rest of us a chance to catch up? It’s just cruel at this point.
The T-Hex is Zenta’s newest creation, inspired by all the Mech Warfare talk buzzing around the forums. He decided to jump in and build a ‘mech like’ hexapod, complete with a whopping 4DOF per leg. And of course, in the process, made the rest of us look like complete amateurs. Aesthetics aside this thing is amazing, and the fact that he has a working IK solution for it already just adds to the fact.
We’re a little late to get this posted, but have been busy working on new robotic monstrosities in our lab, as well as moving to a much bigger facility! Check it out! iHobby was a blast this year.
Initial quantities are limited, the cut off date for this pre-order is December 7th! Act now to reserve your Bioloid Premium Kit.
This kit is expected to be ready to ship December 14th-18th, and due to the holidays rapidly approaching, we are offering FREE 2nd Day Air shipping to all pre-orders within the United States!
