The ArbotiX Commander is an Arduino Software compatible, open-source XBEE-wireless hand-held controller built specifically for controlling ArbotiX/NUKE powered walking robots (but it can be used to control just about any Arduino powered robot). This gamepad style controller comes ready to be setup with the ArbotiX Robocontroller. The ArbotiX Commander was meant to be hacked, modified, upgraded, and otherwise tinkered with. Add additional sensors, customize it with your own handle grips, or rewrite the firmware sketch in any way you see fit!

We’ve been a bit quiet around here lately, mostly because we have our heads buried and are hard at work at bringing you guys some awesome new robotics products and kits! Wanted to take some time to showcase a new reworked section of our site that helps builders like you build your robots easier. Our Robot Servos & Brackets section has been completely revamped, pairing up the servos with compatible brackets and frames (tons of new varieties have been added, as well as more to come).

The Robotis Dynamixel Servos section should be of particular intrest, as we now stock individual Bioloid Frames as well as every type of DX/RX/EX Series Brackets and Frames.

Even our Hobby Servos section got a revamp, now offering Micro, Standard, and Giant Scale PWM Hobby Servos and compatible brackets!

We also started rounding up some cool user projects to demonstrate what can be done with these awesome actuators, which can be found on various related product pages. Here are a few examples!

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.

See the user manual here.

RoboController Specifications

• 16MHz AVR microcontroller (ATMEGA168).
• 20 I/O, 6 of which can function as analog inputs
• 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.
• 2.4”x2.4” with mounting holes in each corner.

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..)

NUKE is written in Python, and it exports a C/C++ Arduino project that runs on the ArbotiX. NUKE can be downloaded from our Google code site: http://code.google.com/p/arbotix/downloads/list. Documentation is also on that site. We also have a google group for support (it’s very new, hence the low traffic) http://groups.google.com/group/robocontroller .

We are now accepting pre-orders for the long anticipated Bioloid Premium Kit!

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!

Also, for those looking for an inexpensive bipedal Mech Warfare platform, the BRAT based Mech project over at Lynxmotion is turning out to be quite promising, with complete build instructions and code available.