Recent Weblog Entries
3 May 2008 jkkroll »
The impossible takes a little longer…
Take a look at this: http://wiki.airsoftcommunity.co.uk/Gatling_Gun.
According to the Airsoft Wiki, what I am attempting to do is nigh impossible. Cool! That’ll make it even more fun.
30 Apr 2008 robot-maker-website »
22 Apr 2008 Robot Shop »
The RobotShop WIKI is now live! The RobotShop Wiki can be edited by anyone and is intended to allow and encourage the sharing and dissemination of robotic knowledge and ideas not possible by other means. Rather than simply talking about a topic, the focus of most articles is to educate users in the use and application of robotic technology, terminology and concepts.
21 Apr 2008 Igor.Gabrielan »
Robot should not have free, downloadable memory. Otherwise harmful, the hostile program easily spread among robots. A more general way: not to be combined free programmability and possession effectors. Let’s remember that Asimov robots were rigidly programmed.
20 Apr 2008 motters »
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3280/2427779514_d28b368557.jpg
18 Apr 2008 The Swirling Brain »
I got some 280,000 mcd white LEDs. Yep 280k! I've played with them. I'm not sure they really are 28 candle power but they are pretty bright. They apparently have 3 led chips inside of one package as when you shine it on the wall it looks like 3 bright spots like war of the worlds aliens. I'm hoping to put them to use in my front doorway at my house as it's really a dark walk.
I've mentioned Prosper before and people have given me referrals. Thanks! So far nothing has panned out for me as far as the referrals go but it's interesting to see that people are looking at it. I'm down to $5700 owed left on my $6500 loan so that's like 22% paid. The loan is cool, but the clothes I bought with it are not selling so that's not cool. It turns out that ebay has raised their Final Value Fees (FVF) too. They're cheaper to list up front but they take like 9% for a FVF. That's really expensive so I'm not liking selling on ebay anymore. This is forcing me to check out other auction and selling sites. I think I'll look into Amazon and Bidz to see what it takes to sell there. I don't know if Yahoo is still going well but I may check them out too.
My mom and dad are into rocks! They want to make ?Cabishawns? I just think of it as rock jewelry. They may try to suck me into it which is fine. I thought it might be cool to go round with them to the arts & crafts shows selling the jewelry. That seems to be a popular thing to sell at shows like that. I may try to make some too to try to sell. I've been looking at the Art Clay Sterling Silver Clay but it's exensive stuff and probably not practical if we're trying to make money at it.
I got 4 packets of 5000 catchfly seeds on ebay. Catchfly plants are supposed to be pretty hot pink flower plants. I hope so. Anyway 4 packets of 5000 is 20k seeds! I put some around the big tree in my front yard, some in front of my bushes and some in a flower bed to the left of my house. I'm hoping it will look nice.
12 Apr 2008 RoboDo »
BrainBoy and the Slug: BrainBoy was an NXT bot which navigated with the sonic sensor, while the Slug had no sensors. The 2 were in communication via bluetooth, with BrainBoy recording its movements, introducing a 3 move lag, then transmitting moves to the slug, who just followed along. I was exploring an idea for the robotic transportation of military goods where a manned truck would be followed by an unlimited number of unmanned robot trucks carrying supplies.
The Chariot: The Chariot was another experimental bot which featured a front powered section (without sensors) which pulled a trailer containing a sensor array. Having the sensors in an unpowered trailer allowed me to build a sensor array that was capable of continuous 360 degree rotation.
Just for the record... this intensive electromechanical research and development phase, involving numerous iterations, each exploring different design possibilities while keeping within the physical constraints of the available robotic prototyping system should never be confused with "playing with Legos." Someone needs to explain this to my girlfriend.
Ok, maybe the robo-forklift was just for fun.
9 Apr 2008 sdvic »
4 Apr 2008 andy export »
22 Mar 2008 MDude »
20 Mar 2008 Sergey Popov »
17 Mar 2008 steve »
A Few Fun Things
It's way past time to catch up my readers on what we've been up to lately. Since my last post we went to the La Reunion winner announcement party for their Make Space for Art architecture contest. While there we heard a really cool music ensemble that called themselves the Escalator Maintenance Society. In addition to a cello and bass, they played an amplified mechanical typewriter and a child's toy piano. It was some fun, minimalist-sounding music. After the event, I ran into the manager of Club DaDa outside and she said the group would be playing there soon. We'll probably go hear them again if we can work it out.
We also went to the Dallas House of Blues for the first time to hear They Might be Giants and Oppenheimer play. I'd previously been to the Las Vegas HoB and spent a lot of time in the Foundation Room there hanging out with bizarre local characters. We weren't lucky enough to know anyone with Foundation Room access here but still had a good time. It's an interesting place and a pretty good mid-sized music venue. We got the cheap tickets for the standing-only area near the stage but it turned out there are a couple of bars near the back and we managed to snag some bar stools there. It was further away from the stage but the view wasn't too bad. As is frequently the case, the audio was mixed so that the instruments were 10 times louder than the vocals so you couldn't make out any words. For some bands that's not a problem but TMbG's music is largely about the humor of the lyrics so it was a bit disappointing.
Last weekend, I went to All-Con 2008. The Dallas Personal Robotics Group was invited to display and do some demos so I went along to take photos. This was the first science fiction convention I've been to in many years and it was a lot of fun. There were all sorts of robots to be seen. Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol of Battlestar Galactica) was one of the guests, and I suppose we can count his character as a robot too. There was a fun demo by the Assassination City roller derby girls, a local group that does flat-track roller derby. I was also surprised to see the Lollie Bombs there. The Lollie Bombs are a Deep Ellum burlesque troop and this was the first time I'd seen them. Also a lot of fun. I met lots of other interesting people and posted a flickr set of All-Con photos. I stayed out way too late and ended up coming down with a cold the following week, probably from some alien bug I caught at All-Con.
13 Mar 2008 lnxfergy »
Over the past year I have gone through a total redevelopment of my robot hardware. I've moved from using PSoCs in my robots to using Atmel AVRs. I love AVRs. AVR-GCC is a great, and free, compiler - but the greatest thing about AVRs is their tolerance to power supply fluctuation caused by motors. I've also discovered the LM2940CT-5.0 power regulator, which is a great and fairly inexpensive regulator. The 2940 is easier to set up and I seem to get better results than with the 5V switching regulators from Maxim that I had been messing around with (until they discontinued them). For my latest robot, GMR (which is still under consruction), I purchased some of Lynxmotion's new Servo Erector Set parts to make the neck pan and tilt - I was very impressed with the parts.
This semester I've been taking a robotics course through UAlbany. We are using Sony AIBOs, with Tekkotsu. In theory this is a really nice package - a behavior based, c++ programmable robot. Unfortunately much of the documentation is poor or out of date, and some of the constructs in Tekkotsu are incredibly non-standard and hard to understand. All-in-all though I like the idea, and once you get used to (and figure out how to) use Tekkotsu, it's quite nice.
Finally, I'm working on my third (and probably final) robot for the senior division of the Trinity Fire Fighting competition. I believe I have really worked out all of the kinks of previous years (poor drive train, sensor placement, power failures). The underlying software design is really over the top for the problem at hand , but it is planned in such a way that it can be extended to a future Expert division robot. The competition is about a month away - so far I have the robot navigating the maze with near perfection. The room search functions are currently non as reliable, but I have high hopes for Bayesian analysis method of filtering the UVTron. I've got some information on all of my projects on my website
-Mike
5 Mar 2008 JamesBruton »
Thought I should post something as it's been a while.
I've been a little separated from 'real robots' for a while, as I decided to build a full size Star Wars R2-D2 replica prop. You can check out all the construction pictures over on my website:
http://www.xrobots.co.uk/modules/news/article.php? storyid=28
My current project is now a C-3PO prop which you can find here:
http://www.xrobots.co.uk/modules/news/article.php? storyid=29
I built my own vacuum forming equipment for these projects. If you want to ask questions then you can post a comment in my guestbook/forum:
5 Mar 2008 srobot »
Over time I'm found some great software, here is some of the best virtual software I've found.
VirtualBox - I LOVE this software! It's free, and works good. You can run Linux Distros on your XP computer, or older Windows versions on your XP computer. I'm running Win98 SE so I can use some older robot software.
DOSBox - More people know about this free VM software, but still I feel I should say about it. You can run some OSes in this that you can't in VirtualBox.
MagicISO - This software costs money but works good (if you find free software that does the same thing, let me know). You can create .iso, and other image files with this software for use in virtual drives.
MagicDisc - You can mount .iso, and other image files with DVD/CD-ROM drive letters like E, F, etc...
Virtual Floppy Drive - This free software works like MagicDisc, but is for Floppies.
PowerArchiver 2007 - Not directly virtual, but it does help with a lot of types of file extensions.
If you want to email me please go to the contact form on my blog.
I will be listing more of my favorite software on my blog soon!
--Scotty
RIBO Labs
Edit - If you liked this article, please DIGG IT!
3 Mar 2008 roschler »
3 Mar 2008 RobotsAustralia »
and the embedded images and video don't appear correctly either. The issue is known, and hopefully will be fixed sometime!
In the mean time, to read my blog please visit;
http://robotsaustralia.blogspot.com
and to visit the web site with background info;