Trossen Robotics Blog » Research Stuff

Brainbot Gets Bigger and Badder

Andrew — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:16:31 +0000

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.

In Jon’s new Project Thread, he says:

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).

Here is a short video of it under remote control:

Edit: Another Video just posted!

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Amazing Robotics Presentation From RoMeLa

Andrew — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:13:27 +0000

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!

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Roz: Super Quick Quadrapod Platform

Andrew — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:08:55 +0000

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!

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SMALdog, Sorta Maybe Almost Littledog

Andrew — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:17:16 +0000

If this robot looks vaguely familiar, it’s because it is inspired by Boston Dynamic’s LittleDog.

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!

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Boston Dynamics does it again

Andrew — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:11:23 +0000

Whoa. Just Whoa.

I won’t even pretend that I understand all that is going on in the walking gait here, but this is darn near human-like in every aspect. And being able to walk like that is one thing, being able to recover from a sideways push is an entirely different accomplishment all together. Absolutely brilliant.

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One Step Closer to T-1000!

Andrew — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:07:10 +0000

Looks like iRobot is determined to bring Judgment Day upon us. First with the military bots, and now they’re trying to build a liquid-metal-shape-shifting robot that will surely ask us if we are John or Sarah Connor. Okay, not quite, but it looks like they’re headed in that direction.

This week at IROS 09 (Intelligent Robots and Systems), iRobot and the University of Chicago unveiled a soft, blobby robot that looks something like an inflating marshmallow.

The new robot, called chembot, changes the shape of its stretchy polymer skin using a technique called “jamming skin enabled locomotion”. This means that different sections of the robot inflate or deflate separately; controlling this inflation and deflation enables the robot to move. DARPA, which is funding the project, hopes to use the robot to squeeze into small holes or under doors, which I’m guessing would be used for sophisticated surveillance.

Via Geekology

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