I’m not at all exaggerating; Loki, a 4 foot tall 40lb ‘Domestic Style’ robot looks far better than anything I have seen produced for commercial sales.
Beautiful aesthetics aside, functionally it is one of the most impressive and polished PC based robots I’ve ever seen as well; custom software that handles object recognition, mapping and navigation, as well as voice commands, just to name a few. If all of that wasn’t impressive enough, creator Dave Shinsel has the schematics, documentation and even source code available on his site! Definitely check out Dave’s entire site, he has an impressive body of work, and his Youtube Page has some very cool videos demonstrating Loki in action.
Who doesn’t like free stuff? XMOS is offering some development kits of their new event driven parallel processors to qualified parties and individuals. These controllers looks like they pack a punch in terms of features and processing power and would make an awesome robotics controller! If you’re interested, check out the forum post by XMOS and answer the requested questions. Definitely shows some promise, check out the forums and the videos below for more info.
XMOS event driven processors allow you to execute code in parallel which could open up a number of possibilities to evolve your robots “mind” to the next level!
I have some development kits to give away potentially, but before I give away all the details, I just wanted to see if there was any interest.
People have made some cool stuff with our tech before (See videos).
Some details of the processor itself which will be on the dev kit (to be released soon):
- Single core device (Although we do have quad core versions – ask me)
- 400 MIPS per core.
- 8 Threads per core.
- 64Kb RAM
- 8KBytes OTP memory for applications, boot code or security keys, with security mode
- 64 user I/O pins
- Support for high performance DSP (32 x 32 → 64bit MAC) and cryptographic functions
- Time aware ports provide up to 10ns timing resolution
- Designs implemented using a software-based design flow (can program in C or XC – very similar to C but with support for extras such as parallel execution)
- Scalable – can connect many kits together for crazy amounts of processing power using Xlinks.
Roborealm is hands down one of the most incredible tools available to roboticists today and amazingly it’s completely free, as in free beer! Roborealm is a vision processing platform for Windows that allows experimenters to harness basic webcams and wifi cameras for use in robotics. We’re not just talking about telepresence here, Roborealm allows you to filter and manipulate video, as well as get output variables for use in various programming languages and even built-in hardware interface modules (SSC-32 servo controllers, joysticks, etc).
Many roboticists are well aware of Roborealm and all of its awesomeness, so why am I preaching to the choir here? Because they recently published a tutorial on using vision for obstacle avoidance, and one look at it had my jaw dropping. Some very useful stuff here, as well as downloadable example files and code showing how to use it in a real world application. Anyone interested in machine vision and PC based robotics should definitely check this out! While Roborealm is available for free the cost associated with its development is by no means cheap, so if you enjoy the product please consider donating! Information on donating to Roborealm can be found on their site.
We’re always on the lookout for useful and inexpensive gadgets to add to our Robotics Lab, and while searching around for a small, inexpensive Wifi (as in 802.11) camera for use in Mech Warfare I finally settled on the Airlink 101 SkyIPCam250w Part #AIC250W. Personally I found mine at a local Fry’s Electronics for about $105, but we also sourced them online here.
Here is my quick review here on the forums of this camera:
Image quality is mediocre, but good enough to view things at a max of 8-10 feet. Frame rate is 30+ and response time is in the 50ms range running the camera at 320×240.
Main board is 10cm x 5.5cm. Camera board is 5.5cm x 3cm and attaches to the main board at a right angle. It appears to be a 1mm spaced header pin port, so it could easily be extended for custom mounting solutions. Entire camera unit stripped down and including antenna weighs 91 grams. The antenna is a u.FL connection, so this could be replaced with a custom solution if needed.
Overall a solid little camera for the price. If you’re on a budget, this is about as good as it gets. Keep in mind for ‘competition’ performance, you’ll need to run it at 320×240, but that can be stretched. Image quality is enough to pilot and aim I would say, but I wouldn’t expect to read text with it. Definitely usable for Mech Warfare within 10-15 feet though. Oh and the IP web interface uses Java and/or Active X, so you could pull the control from it and add it into a custom form easily.
Here are some pictures! (click to enlarge)
Since we don’t care about the bulky exterior casing, here’s what it looks like stripped down:
That’s right folks, you heard it here first. Except instead of giant think ‘tiny’, and instead of city think ’scale model town’. The guys over at BP have created an amazing web based demonstration called BP Explorer using the Surveyor SRV-1 kit. Between the hours of 9AM-9PM GMT+10, you can pilot one of five Surveyor robots through a very detailed scale town and offroad area, exploring to find clues to unlock a code which allows for extended playing time. The kicker is that these bots are completely powered by BP solar panels, so everyone can have the pleasure of cruising through this hippy-fueled-utopia without the guilt of burning up our precious fossil fuels!
I’m sure this can’t last forever, so make sure to check it out while it’s active!
The Automated Foosball Table was created by a group of senior engineering students at Georgia Tech. This project was mentioned briefly on Hack a Day last week, but we think it deserves a closer look, so here it is. This is both a really fun project (Seriously, who doesn’t love a good game of foosball?) and an interesting experiment in human/machine interaction. It doesn’t look like it could beat a human foosball master (so we won’t have a scene like when Garry Kasparov wept openly and cursed out Deep Blue after it beat him at chess), but the potential is there.
Four human-controlled rows, four robotic ones. At the right, you can see the custom PIC-based servo controller board. Let’s take a closer look at the drive mechanisms:
Recognize that actuator? That’s a Robotis AX-12 Dynamixel. It’s the cornerstone of the wildly popular Bioloid system, and it’s one of our favorite robot servos on the market. These actuators can be set to servo mode or continuous rotation mode. In CR mode, you can get accurate positional feedback. What you end up with is functionally the same as a highly accurate, powerful, serially controlled stepping motor; at a fraction of the cost.
Here’s the whole rig. As you can see you have the table, a camera watching the table, a computer processing the video feed and sending commands to the actuator controller board, and actuators pulling and twisting the handles.
The team wrote their tracking software, which tracks the ball and maneuvers the players accordingly, in Java. Matlab was considered, but the plan was scrapped because Matlab is too resource-hungry.
The custom actuator control board is pretty cool. Two different types of outputs for the two styles of servos. The kicking motion is handled by standard PWM hobby servos, while the lateral motion is handled by AX-12 Dynamixels.
Ok, this is just too damn cool. The Surveyor crew have integrated the SRV-1 controller with a quad-rotor helicopter.
The heli, called "X-3D-BL Scientific," is from a German company called Ascending Technologies GmbH. I knew it was easy to use the SRV-1 controller for other wheeled vehicles, but seeing it on a UAV is pretty exciting. They don’t have too much info up yet, but it sounds promising. Here’s a video of the aircraft (without SRV-1 controller) in action:
The immensely popular Surveyor SRV-1 has just received some major upgrades! The tracked base remains unchanged, but the electronics have gotten a complete overhaul. Wi-Fi has replaced the slow and sometimes unreliable ZigBee wireless link, the camera can now grab video at a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024, an Analog Devices Blackfin processor has replaced the comparatively puny ARM7 processor, and they've even added laser pointers for distance sensing.
Wi-Fi:
The SRV-1 now benefits from the extended range and faster data rates of Wi-Fi. All you need is an 802.11 b/g wireless LAN card and you're ready to start spying on the neighbors.
Camera:
Speaking of spying on your neighbors, this 1.3 Megapixel camera is roughly on par with most cell phone cameras, with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024. Unlike your cell phone camera, this one’s going to be riding on tank treads.
Main Processor:
Here it is, fully assembled. The red board on top carries the 1000MIPS 500MHz Analog Devices Blackfin BF537 processor. [Editor's note: When I was 17, I built my first computer around the 500MHz Pentium, which was the top of the line at the time. Now you can get all that power on a circuit board that's smaller than a playing card. Crazy, huh?]
Lasers:
Fact: lasers make anything cooler. The new SRV-1 uses two parallel lasers as a low-cost range-finding system. Try not to blind your friends/family members/pets.
No keyboard or mouse needed! Teach your robot what to do by using motions and gestures.
Skilligent is taking a new approach to the area of human robot interactions, their press release explains:
Skilligent Robot Learning and Behavior Control System is a software product which enables robots to learn procedures and skills directly from human users. The product is a set of software components specifically designed for straightforward integration into control loops of PC-controlled robots.
The software needs to be integrated with sensors, motors, actuators and robot’s control system via a set of open APIs. On one side, the software controls every motion of the robot. On the other side, the software uses a video camera, a microphone and other sensors to receive guidance from a human user.
The software analyzes human’s gestures, looks at the objects presented by the user, listens to the sounds and tries to guess what robot is supposed to do.
Through trial and error, the robot understands what needs to be done and associates learned behaviors with stimuli used by the human. Over a few training sessions, the robot refines its understanding of the domain, the procedures and skills required to serve the user.
Robot Learning Technology is especially useful in the following domains:
1. Industrial/service robots for small and medium sized businesses
2. Defense and law enforcement
3. Health-care and Elder-care robots
4. Research and Education robotics
Skilligent is currently seeking partnerships for further sales and distribution of their software packages. Interested parties can contact them through their website.
Skilligent LLC is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and operates an off-shore research and development center.
Ever wish you didn’t have to hire a babysitter to watch the kids? Well, that time is certainly near, if it isn’t already here if Korea-based KornTech (English translation) has anything to do with it:
At 1-metre tall, Rogun, a robot babysitter and security guard uses two cameras for eyes for facial recognition abilities and is able to recognize “good guys vs. bad guys”. While Rogun runs around your home playing with your kids, it can broadcast video wirelessly so that you can check up on your kids throughout the day. It can also act as a videophone and wireless Internet, so when everyone is gone or asleep, and there’s a stranger lurking around in your home that Rogun doesn’t recognize, it’ll give you a call so you can sneak back into your home and beat the stranger with a wooden spoon!
Rogun is the culmination of only three years’ worth of Korean bipedal robot research, and although prototypes have been very expensive to produce, KornTech expects that a mass-produced Rogun will reach a predicted price point of around US$5000.
