In case you’re new to the Trossen Robotics Community, here’s a quick refresher on how this contest works:  First, all kinds of fantastically talented and dedicated people come to our Project Showcase forum to tell us all about the projects they’ve been working on.  Periodically, we (the Trossen Robotics team) sort through these projects, and score them very scientifically in the following categories: "Wow" factor, Ingenuity, creativity, and presentation (this includes graphics, videos, documentation, explanation, etc.).  This is the fourth contest we’ve run here at Trossen Robotics, and the projects just keep getting cooler!  This time around, we extended the deadline and upped the stakes.  Since the last contest, the community has grown and expanded well beyond our expectations, and this has resulted in some of the best work we’ve seen yet.  If you showed off your project in our Project Showcase forum, give yourself a big ol’ pat on the back.  Now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes.  Here are the runners-up and winners, in suspense-building ascending order!

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Honorable Mention

Project: "Johnny 5.3"

Creator: Andrew Alter (Tyberius)

We’ve been working a little too closely with Andrew to let him enter the contest, but we can’t totally leave him hanging.  He’s been building a "Johnny 5"-inspired humanoid/trackbot hybrid, and it’s really coming together.  His brain (Johnny’s, not Andrew’s) is a Pico-ITX running Windows XP Pro.  It has a vocal synthesizer, great big grippers, a reinforced suspension system, a snarky personality, and I’ve heard that it drives around harassing Andrew’s baby.  It’s the embodiment of robotic awesomeness, in other words.  Check out his thread, picture gallery, and his blog.

Runners-Up

Project: "Leviskate"

Creator: Rodger Cleye
Average Score: 7.63 / 10
Prize: $20 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

The Leviskate is a "self-balancing motorboard."  Kind of like a Segway for people who really like head injuries.  Seriously though, this contraption is truly awesome.  There are some cool videos in Rodger’s thread, too.  Our favorite thing about the videos is that Rodger sounds genuinely amazed that it actually works.

Project: "The Bratinator Project"

Creator: SN96
Average Score: 7.67 / 10
Prize: $20 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

It walks, it talks, it scares the kids.  It’s… the Bratinator.  Built around the Lynxmotion Brat biped, this monstrosity features speech, binaural hearing, a custom-machined aluminum head.

Project: "Gepetto"

Creator: darkback2
Average Score: 8.25 / 10
Prize: $20 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

It really pains us to see Gepetto in the runners up, instead of placing in a cash-winning position, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes.  This was a very close race.  This bot is beautifully made from wood and metal, has a really cool suspension system, carries its laptop brain around with it, and is programmed with some really interesting behavior/mood software.  That’s really just the tip of the iceberg, so you’ll have to read through the thread to see Gepetto’s full story.

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Third Place

Project: "eyeRobot"
Creator: Nathaniel Barshay
Average Score: 8.38 / 10
Prize: $100 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

The eyeRobot is a robotic guide for people with vision impairments.  It has a whole slew of IR and ultrasonic range sensors for collision avoidance, and pathfinding software to keep it moving through the clearest area.  This was a proof-of-concept prototype meant to "marry the simplicity of the traditional white cane with the instincts of a seeing-eye dog."  This project is going places, and hopefully one day it will help other people go places.

Second Place

Project: "Frameless Laser Harp"
Creator: Stephen Hobley
Average Score: 8.88 / 10
Prize: $250 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

Twenty-two years ago, he saw Jean-Michel Jarre play a laser harp at a concert, and from that day he’s been on a mission.  This mission finally came to fruition last month, when he completed his own laser harp, and let me tell you, it’s a pretty stunning piece of equipment.  Using a galvanometer to very rapidly and precisely aim a pulsing laser, light sensors to detect where a beam has been interrupted, and an Arduino brain; the harp sends MIDI control signals to a synthesizer.

First Place

Project: "Phoenix"
Creator: KÃ¥re Halvorsen
Average Score: 9.63 / 10
Prize: $500 Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate!

Phoenix is a six legged walking robot.  Wait, we know some of you out there may be thinking that hexapod robots are old hat.  Well, you’re wrong.  So very wrong.  Wait until you see it move.  Phoenix’s real beauty lies in her graceful motion, which is some of the most convincing and eerily lifelike that we’ve seen in a robot that uses standard hobby servos and a common off-the-shelf servo controller.  The kinematics are computed by an intricately programmed spreadsheet, which we highly recommend you check out if you’re a fan of trigonometry.

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We want to thank everyone for their great submissions.  If all goes as planned, the next contest (which is already underway) will conclude at the end of May 2008.  You can stay up to date on contest rules and regulations at the Trossen Robotics Project Contest page, and start posting your projects in our Project Showcase Forum.

Mounting all the electronics and batteries onto your robot can often be a pain in the ass. Drilling dozens of holes, measuring them all out to line up perfect, spacers, nuts, bolts, ack! Then taking it all apart when you have to work on something… we discovered a better way to secure things down on our bots which is much faster. Using a Sorbothane sheet and some Velcro you can fasten down just about anything very securely. Then, when you need to take it off to work on it’s super easy. No need to try to get in there with screw drivers and wrenches.

You can find our Velcro and Rubber sheets here.

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.

Project home page
Found via Hack a Day

All images belong to the design team.  They were clipped from the project’s final report document or captured from the video.

Controlling a DC motor from your computer using bridgeware is easier than you think.  The purpose of this tutorial is to explain the basic concepts behind creating a motor control system with encoder feedback.

Using a few widely available modular components, you can create a flexible system that can be used to control a DC motor.  Start by selecting a DC motor that will meet the demands of your project, then a motor controller that can provide sufficient power to the motor.  Add an appropriate servo controller to generate the R/C control signals, and software to issue commands to the servo controller, and you’re ready to roll!  If you need to monitor the motor speed, feedback is easily achieved by adding an optical encoder.

This control method has a wide range of applications, from battlebots, to industrial processes, to kinetic art installations.

You can also find more computer based robotics tutorials here.

We just ran across this video on Youtube, check out this awesome home made Bioloid gripper by Jon Hylands using Bioloid parts and a Firgelli actuator. Nice job Jon!

Alex from CrustCrawler has been kind enough to give us a sneak peak of their new underwater Thruster units. CrustCrawler continues to innovate and push the cutting edge in hobby robotics and we are impressed again. We don’t have any specs on the new units yet, but Alex said they will be posting information about the thrusters over the weekend on their site.

(click to enlarge)

Thanks for the sneak peak Alex !

We wanted to let everyone know about something new we discovered recently. While trying to figure out a simple way to keep batteries and hardware in place on our robots we wanted a solution that was simple and flexible. We didn’t want to have to build complex harnesses or framework because we weren’t sure of where the final placement of everything would be. Through trial and error we discovered the wonderfully elegant solution of using soft rubber sheets.

We cut sheets to our desired size and put them under our batteries and other components. These sheets are so sticky that the weight of the battery alone would seal it to the base plate so well we could tilt the bot almost perpendicular to the ground and the batteries would stay in place. In fact, after the batteries had sat for a few days you could lift the base off the ground by just holding onto the batteries. Without any straps! Delighted we knew we had found a handy way for securing hardware without drilling a zillion holes.

By adding Velcro straps you have a solution which keeps your hardware in place very securely, but without the permanence of bolts. It makes for quick adjustments and swap outs. Anyone who works with bots knows that it can be a pain to reach into tight corners to unscrew items that need adjusting or replacing.

Rubber Grip Sheets Link

Velcro Straps

“Anybots, which is three guys led by Trevor Blackwell, has developed the first robot that walks like we do, by dynamically balancing itself rather than being pre-programmed for walking like Asimo. The video shows the robot walking and being pushed by another ‘bully’ robot to demonstrate that it can’t easily be pushed over.”

via slashdot

Some day, Lipson believes, every home will have a “fabber,� a machine that replicates objects from plans supplied by a computer. Such devices could change how we acquire common products, he suggests: Instead of buying an iPod, you would download the plans over the Internet and the fabber would make one for you.

Such machines could evolve from the 3-D printers currently used by industrial engineers for “rapid prototyping.� Price tags for these machines average around $100,000, but you can build your own Fab@Home for about $2,300 worth of off-the-shelf parts. The prototype, designed by Evan Malone, a Ph.D. candidate in Lipson’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory, is slower than the commercial models, and its resolution, or ability or produce fine detail, is lower, but people are finding practical — and often unexpected — uses for it.

article link

www.fabathome.org

When you were a kid (or even now), didn’t you wish you could make mowing the grass fun by controlling it just like you do your RC cars/trucks? I know I did! Well, thanks to Terry Creer, we have an in-depth tutorial explaining how to build our very own radio controlled lawnmower, all for under $500. According to Terry, all this requires is, “A little electronic knowledge, soldering ability and mechanical know-how”

Wheelchair - $150

Lawnmower - $200

Radio gear - $100

Electronic parts for joystick interface - $30

Total - $480

The satisfaction that you get from sitting on your porch and navigating this lawnmower around - Priceless!

Sure, now that I’m older, live in the burbs and have no lawn to mow, I find this tutorial!!

Since there are some people out there that just love to sue companies because of their own negligence: The tutorial link contained in this post is not from Trossen Robotics. Trossen Robotics does not assume any liability from damages as a result of constructing and/or operation of this radio controlled lawnmower.
via Hack-A-Day