Who said Robots shouldn’t dress cool. Herb was created out of the desire to create a more natural neckjoint for a Robot, and a more efficient eye-rig. And beside the technical parts, also to explore the possibilities to add even more character to the Robot’s appearance.

This project presents a method for synthesizing motions of a humanoid robot that receives an object from a human, with focus on a natural object passing scenario where the human initiates the passing motion by moving an object toward the robot, which continuously adapts its motion to the observed human motion in realtime. In this scenario, the robot not only has to recognize and adapt to the human action but also has to synthesize its motion quickly so that the human does not have to wait holding an object. We solve these issues by using a human motion database obtained from two persons performing the object passing task. The rationale behind this approach is that human performance of such a simple task is repeatable, and therefore the receiver (robot) motion can be synthesized by looking up the passer motion in a database. We demonstrate in simulation that the robot can start extending the arm at an appropriate timing and take hand configurations suitable for the object being passed. We also perform hardware experiments of object handing from a human to a robot.

A compilation of ROS-Industrial application videos from the first year of the ROS-I repository.

Nick Donaldson’s new hexapod robot Grinder goes for a skate on the tennis courts at the park. Approximate top speed is 6mph / 10kph when skating, 10x the walking speed. The wheels are passively mounted at an angle to the legs, allowing them to roll on the ground when the legs are spread. Find out more about Grinder at http://www.gotrobots.com/grinder/

Presented at ICRA 2013 by Samuel M. Felton, Michael T. Tolley, Cagdas D. Onal, Daniela Rus, and Robert J. Wood from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University

This is a test of the robot basic movement made by A. Martino at the factory where the Arduino Robot will be manufactured.

Servo motors are often driven using the PWM outputs available on most embedded MCUs. But while the Pi does have native HW support for PWM, there is only one PWM channel available to users at GPIO18. That kind of limits your options if you need to drive more than one servo or if you also want to dim an LED or do some sort of other PWM goodness as well. Thankfully … the PI does have HW I2C available, which we can use to communicate with a PWM driver like the PCA9685, used on Adafruit’s 16-channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver!

Using this breakout, you can easily drive up to 16 servo motors on your Raspberry Pi using our painless Python library and this tutorial.

Note this cannot be used for driving anything other than analog (1-2 millisecond pulse drive) servos. DC motors, AC motors and digital servos are not going to work.

Check out the tutorial here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685 – You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout. (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Robotic dog, girl evaluate smelly breath, stinky feet – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun.

The latest advancement in robotics are two automatons designed to bluntly inform you that it’s time to brush your teeth or change your socks.

Robot maker CrazyLabo and the Kitakyushu National College of Technology, both in Fukuoka Prefecture, have developed a female humanoid and a dog robot that sniff a person’s breath and feet and use snarky remarks and exaggerated reactions to encourage offenders to do something about their breath and body odor.

The female robot, Kaori-chan, has brown hair and blue eyes. When a person breathes in her face, she analyzes and quantifies components in their breath, and evaluates the smell on a scale of one to four.

If their breath smells good, Kaori-chan says, “It smells like citrus!”

Controlled flight of a robotic insect

From the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard:

Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap at 120 times per second, robotic insects, or RoboBees, achieve vertical takeoff, hovering, and steering. The tiny robots flap their wings using piezoelectric actuators — strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied. Thin hinges of plastic embedded within a carbon fiber body frame serve as joints, and a delicately balanced control system commands the rotational motions in the flapping-wing robot, with each wing controlled independently in real-time. Applications of RoboBees could include distributed environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue operations, and assistance with crop pollination.

Read more:

http://www.sakakibara-kikai.co.jp/products/other/kw_cyclops.htm

The Romibo Robot Project demonstrates some of the capabilities of the Romibo social robot, a robot designed for social therapy, companionship and fun. Romibo is an open-source DIY mobile robot platform for social robotics research. Here we demonstrate a few of the capabilities and sensors including touch sensing, light sensing, accelerometers, wifi, IR range finder, smartphone eyes and others. Read more at www.Romibo.org

Here’s an update from Ben Krasnow’s Cookie Machine project:

I’ve got most of the subsystems on my cookie machine working so that I can dispense desired quantities of one ingredient (sugar). I’m using a UI developed using processing.org, which sends serial commands to a Parallax Propeller microcontroller.

Read more.

Jacob’s robot arm via Hacked Gadgets & Dangerous prototypes -

An old steampunk prop that I figured out how to build from plans on the internet.

After four years intensive R&D, inspiration, design and build, Micromagic Systems is proud to unveil Mantis — the biggest, all-terrain operational hexapod robot in the world.

This 2.2-litre Turbo Diesel-powered, British-designed and -built walking machine can be piloted or remote WiFi-controlled, stands 2.8 metres high with a five meter working envelope and weighing in at just under two tonnes.

Meet ROBO1010

It’s been 14 months since I started working on this project… and it’s ready for some critique. It’s a robot… which seems simple enough right?

The project goal is to create a foundation / approach to integrate STEM (or STEAM if you like) into just about any discipline from grade-school to university.

You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout.

In Stock and Shipping Now!

Apr 17, 2013 10:16am.

Mark Setrakian Robotics Community – Intl Robogames 2013 is just two days away! I will be there with my art-bot: Cascade

This is the coolest art-bot.

MIT Hexacon 2013 World’s First Hexapod Conference (includes dance-off!).

The world’s first Hexapod Conference and Convention will be held on May 4th, 2013, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and we are accepting proposals for talks, workshops, and demonstrations.

The aim of this conference is to foster relationships between academics and non-academics working on hexapod (six-legged robot)-related topics. Additionally, a major aim of this convention is to have a lot of fun, especially since this conference is made possible by the DeFlorez Humor Fund.

Hexacon will take place at the MIT International Design Center on the third floor of building N52, right next to the MIT Museum.

Scholarships to cover travel and lodging of up to $100 will be awarded on a needs-based basis. To apply, please fill out this form: http://hexacon2013.mit.edu/?page_id=8. Additionally, if you seek lodging and are willing to couch-surf, we may be able to match you with an MIT student host for the duration of the event. Please fill out: http://hexacon2013.mit.edu/?page_id=29

There will be a prize for the most humorous hexapod demonstration as well as the best presenter.

The conference website may be found at http://hexacon2013.mit.edu

Here we evolve the bodies of soft robots made of multiple materials (muscle, bone, & support tissue) to move quickly. Evolution produces a diverse array of fun, wacky, interesting, but ultimately functional soft robots. Enjoy!

This video accompanies the following paper: Unshackling Evolution: Evolving Soft Robots with Multiple Materials and a Powerful Generative Encoding. Cheney, MacCurdy, Clune, & Lipson. Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. 2013.

Robotics revolutionize dairy farm | The Chronicle Herald.

Milking chores have became a lot less labour intensive on a longtime Hants County dairy farm.

Brian Casey and his family collect milk from 97 purebred Holsteins at Caseydale Farms, but they don’t actually milk the cows. Two robots take care of that chore and a do lot more besides.

“The voluntary milking system automatically milks cows 24 hours a day,” Brian Casey said during a walk though his barn late last week.

Some of the cows are milked four times a day and, if you can believe it, they get milked when they decide they want to be milked.

“With this new system, we are making the same amount of milk with 30 less cows,” Casey said.

The DeLaval robotic system is made in Sweden. Caseydale Farms has two of the modern milking stations and each station is capable of handling 60 to 70 cows.

This video shows the result of a learning by imitation approach that allows two users to demonstrate an assembly skill requiring different levels of compliance. Each item to assemble will have specific characteristic that needs that are transferred to the robot. Re-programming the robot for each new item to assemble would not be possible. Here, the robot can learn this skill by demonstration. One user is grasping the robot and moving it by hand to demonstrate how it should collaborate with another user (kinesthetic teaching). A force sensor mounted at the wrist of the robot and a marker-based vision tracking system is used to track the position and orientation of table legs that need to be mounted at four different point on the table top. After demonstration, the robot learns that it should first be compliant to let the user re-orient the table-top in a comfortable pose to screw the current leg. Once the user starts to screw the leg, the robot becomes stiff to facilitate the task. This behavior is not pre-programmed, but is instead learn by the robot by extracting the regularities of the task from multiple demonstrations.

This video demonstrates the hexapod router cutting a 3D face in high density foam. The video has been sped up in places to alleviate boredom

BrickPi helps make building Raspberry Pi powered robots a cinch:

The BrickPi is a slide-on board that turns your Raspberry Pi into a robot. The BrickPi is a board for the Raspberry Pi that helps you connect LEGO® Mindstorms sensors, motors, and parts to easily turn your credit card size computer into a powerful robot.

Read more!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Here’s an interesting Pi + PIC project by MrValkeerie that is using a Raspberry Pi to run face detection analysis via an inexpensive webcam and then in turn trigger position adjustments for a series of hobby servos hooked up to his PIC breakout board. His intended application? A costume where many eyes track the human faces that it detects! From the video description:

This is a stock Model B Rev 1.0 256Mbyte, 700Hz Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. It is interfaced to a PIC 16F690 through a homebrew 3.3V-5.2V level convertor based on a couple of 2N7000 Mosfets (circuits online). The protocol is I2C, with the Pi acting as master and the PIC as slave.

The Pi uses I2C to update 8 registers in the PIC holding angles in the range 0-255, which in turn converts the angles into pulses of 1-2 milliseconds every 20 milliseconds (this is normal for servos). The servos are low-cost generics ordered off Ebay direct from China.

The Webcam came from a thrift store and is reported as “Pixart Imaging Inc”. The face detection uses the Python bindings to OpenCV and is based on Haar Cascades. The eyes were found in a graveyard.

The face detection is slow … but I only integrated everything this morning, and I am sure I can speed it up a little.

Read more.

C3PO “Woody” @ Gabrieldishaw.com via BB.

My passion for Star Wars and one of the most iconic robots of all time has carried over to my upcycled art. C3PO “Woody” was created using recycled materials from computer parts, adding machines, calulators, check printers and typewriters.

Barobo launches 3D printed Mobot-A robot kit.

Barobo is a spin-off of technology developed at the University of California, aiming to make robotics more affordable, adaptable for education and industrial applications.

“As 3D printers become more and more common place in the classroom there’s a need for engaging projects and curriculum to tie this powerful tool into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects,” said Graham Ryland, President and Co-founder of Barobo.

All the 3D printable plastic parts, accessories, assembly instructions, and curriculum for the Mobot-A will be available to download from the company’s website.

The Mobot-A kit includes the internal electronics, motors, and fasteners. Users print the rest. The launch of the Mobot-A kit follows a successful Beta program where over 300 robots were used in more than 30 high schools and middle schools to teach STEM subjects.

Once assembled, the Mobot-A can attach to other robots and accessories to form new and unique machines. Students can design their own accessories to attach to the robot and print on a 3D printer. In this way there’s no limit to what can be created. Curriculum ties these robot projects into math principles and students are exposed to basic programming.

“We’re breaking from traditional business models and relying on our users to, not just assemble the robot, but play an active role in manufacturing the plastic parts,” said Graham Ryland. “We’ve proven the technology in the classroom and want to get it into students’ hands as quickly and cheaply as possible. Relying on customers to manufacture their own plastic parts wasn’t an option just a few years ago, but 3D printing technology has made this new way of rolling out an educational product possible.” …

Read more.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

Building an Animatronic Dinosaur!

Robots for iPad free this week, via GeekDad.

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) is sponsoring the Robots app from 6-14 April in celebration of National Robotics Week in the U.S. Get it free now! IEEE RAS is an international society of engineers and technologists that strives to advance innovation, education, and research in robotics and automation.

The musician and robotic instrument maker Patrick Flanagan of the “part human, mostly robot, electro band” called Jazari shared part of his latest EP “The Human Element” that he created using a cluster of custom-built instruments and “robotic performers.” He shared this story with us:

I bought a lot of illuminated, square arcade buttons and a number of other components from Adafruit about a year ago. Thanks again for the awesome customer service! Those sexy red arcade buttons are the crucial component in my Meganome MIDI controller, which I used to record my debut EP The Human Element. You can see the controller and buttons in action in this video for the track Quick Minute.

And here are details from his video description for “Quick Minute“:

This original mix consists of an improvised robot djembe solo with beats inspired by footwork, drum n bass, and trap music. It’s available as a FREE download What you hear was taped live at the video shoot and mixed later in Pro Tools.

I practice in a studio near a lot of trap producers, and the track grew out of playing along with their crazy hi hats and 808 basses. The instruments are djembe, bongos, cabasa, hi hat, and snare, which might be obvious. What probably is not obvious is that the bass sound you hear (you do have a sub, don’t you?) is the bottom of the djembe, miked with a kick mic. It has a booming, resonant sound that sounds absolutely massive on a good system.

All of the machines are controlled by Arduino microcontrollers, which receive MIDI signals sent from a laptop running MAX/MSP. The main controller is an 84 LED button monster I call the Meganome. I use it for drum machines and synths. Controllerism.com did a write-up on it.

You can read my liner notes to the free EP The Human Element on my blog at http://jazarimusic.com. And you can follow me on social media for robot music news, life coaching, DJ trolling, and music theory jokes.

• http://jazarimusic.com
• http://soundcloud.com/jazari
• http://twitter.com/jazarimusic
• http://facebook.com/jazarimusic

Read more.

Sign up now to attend New Frontiers in Robotics: Extending Human Reach event on the evening of April 9th in New York City!

New York City is home to a vibrant tech community researching and developing cutting-edge systems.

Join us for an evening of thought-provoking presentations and exciting live demonstrations in celebration of National Robotics Week 2013!

National Robotics Week is a week-long series of events and activities aimed at increasing public awareness of the growing importance of “robo-technology” and the tremendous social and cultural impact that it will have on the future of the United States.

National Robotics Week is organized by an Advisory Council (see our Partners) which recognizes robotics technology as a pillar of 21st century American innovation, highlights its growing importance in a wide variety of application areas, and emphasizes its ability to inspire technology education. Robotics is positioned to fuel a broad array of next-generation products and applications in fields as diverse as manufacturing, health-care, national defense and security, agriculture and transportation. At the same time, robotics is proving to be uniquely adept at enabling students of all ages to learn important science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts and at inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM-related fields. Robotics Week is a week-long series of events and activities aimed at increasing public awareness of the growing importance of “robo-technology” and the tremendous social and cultural impact that it will have on the future of the United States.

In May 2009, leading universities and companies appealed to the Congressional Caucus on Robotics to create a “national road-map” for robotics technology. On March 9, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed resolution H.Res. 1055, officially designating the second full week in April as National Robotics Week. This resolution was submitted by U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14), co-chair of the Caucus, and other members.

Initiated in 2010, the inaugural National Robotics Week included 50 affiliated events around the country. National Robotics Week 2011 built on that success to include more than 100 events in 22 states, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. And in 2012, National Robotics Week included over 160 events in all 50 of the United States.

We welcome all collaborators from industry and academia who would like to join us. Get involved by hosting a National Robotics Week event next year or help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter!

Read more.

The PETMAN robot was developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the DoD CBD program. It is used to test the performance of protective clothing designed for hazardous environments. The video shows initial testing in a chemical protection suit and gas mask. PETMAN has sensors embedded in its skin that detect any chemicals leaking through the suit. The skin also maintains a micro-climate inside the clothing by sweating and regulating temperature. Partners in developing PETMAN were MRIGlobal, Measurement Technology Northwest, Smith Carter, CUH2A, and HHI.

Speaking of alternative approaches to 3D printing, with so many “delta-bot” approaches cropping up here or there, this is a great time to learn more about what it means to make a real “delta-robot” — and I am learning a lot from this maker from the UK: 3D Printed Delta Prototype by Jeden.

The last working delta robot I created was completed last August, nearly six months ago. I didn’t have access to a metal shop, so I relied on my dremel to do all the work and because of this it was made entirely out of hangers and tupperware. I hacked a multitude of plastic household objects and to-go boxes into actual moving robots… which was how I had expected to create the whole army of such deltas. That is until I met everyone at the budding hackerspace last summer and learned that 3D printers are now desktop sized.

I’ve come a long way since then. Now having figured out how to make 3D models of the parts I need, I’m printing my robots like a more civilized maker. I’ve also departed from relying on hobby parts for the joints due to my friend Mark’s ingenious idea to implement ball bearings into the design. This allows the robot to be free of heinous amounts of nuts and screws as well as any additional bought items.

Making use of the now open and booming SYN Shop, I ordered my own grey and optic yellow PLA to use on their delicious Replicator 2. If you are in need of PLA and want more color options than the Makerbot store has to offer, I suggest looking at this website. At $33 a kilogram I give them a thumbs up : JustPLA.com

Over the period of this week my model has evolved radically… but I’ve finally gotten each piece finalized to the point that I can assemble a fully functional delta robot. The first of such I completed just last night. It isn’t perfect yet… but that’s ok. It feels good to be making progress on this project again… and to have a new delta in the family. It’s name is ‘Jeden’, after the Polish word for ‘one’. =]

Read more.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program is developing software, hardware and sensors to enable robots to semi-autonomously grasp and manipulate objects in unstructured environments (meaning, “outside of a laboratory”) with human operators providing only task-level instructions. For example, rather than dictating step-by-step every movement a robot makes, a human can give DARPA’s ARM robot a high-level command like “Open the door” or “Screw in the bolt.” Performers on the ARM program have already demonstrated success using one arm and hand to manipulate objects. Now DARPA is having teams test two arms and hands on tasks that require bimanual manipulation, like the robot changing a tire shown in this video. If DARPA is successful with grasping and manipulation, while also making robots more adaptable to changing environments and driving down the cost of production, robotic manipulation systems can be applied to a wide range of potentially dangerous Department of Defense applications, including defusing improvised explosive devices and searching bags.

Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers have unveiled a life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish the size and weight of a grown man, 5 foot 7 inches in length and weighing 170 pounds, as part of a U.S. Navy-funded project.

The prototype robot, nicknamed Cyro, is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish the same team – headed by Shashank Priya of Blacksburg, Va., and professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech – unveiled in 2012. The earlier robot, dubbed RoboJelly, is roughly the size of a man’s hand, and typical of jellyfish found along beaches.

WaterColorBot is a brand-new project from Super Awesome Sylvia and Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories— a kid-friendly art robot that moves a paint brush to paint your digital artwork onto paper, using a set of watercolor paints.

The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).

The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.

The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.

The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.

Here’s some fun photo coverage of a visitor’s experience at Bristol’s first Mini Maker Faire — and we noticed an interesting Raspberry Pi robotics project by Steve Battle (among the other cool projects) to share for #piday:

This is a Theremin being played badly by the little robot arm on the left… (above)

…and this is the Raspberry Pi driving the robot that’s “playing” the theremin! (below)

Here are more details of Gordon’s visit, which I enjoyed reading:

M-Shed is a pretty interesting place in its own right – a nice little museum exploring some of the history of Bristol, and as someone who lived in Bristol for a few years it was nice to have a look at some of the exhibits. It does warrant another trip too, it’s quite a nice little gem of a place. I left Bristol just over 10 years ago and all that area was just in the process of being re-developed at that time and the whole area looks quite good now too. (On both sides of the floating harbour!)

So the Maker Faire is basically just a bunch of folks showing off and hopefully trying to get others enthused into their projects – there are some commercial companies sponsoring the event and it was good to see Pimoroni – makers of the Pibow case for the Raspberry Pi there and chat to the chaps, as well as a few other small companies selling components and embedded processor boards (e.g. Phoenoptix, Soldersplash) as well as Element 14 and many others. (Sponsor list here)

There were also lots of enterprising individuals, and of-course lots of non-computer/electronics makers too! Bronze casting, knitting/weaving, pottery/clay work, soft-drink making – something for absolutely everyone.

The Bristol Hackspace took up a lot of space in the middle and were demonstrating many varied and different projects – from old pen plotters to their BBC Micro connected to a Raspberry Pi sending & receiving tweets!

Read more.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Thanks to some handy tools to help manage the math/movement, check out this Trossen PhantomX MKII robot “Charlotte” running with a RasPi brain:

Here is my second pass at running my Trossen PhantomX MKII with a Raspberry Pi. I’ve finally decided to give it a name…. “Charlotte.” It’s called “Charlotte.” It’s running a custom c++ port of the Phoenix software developed by Jeroen Janssen, Kurt Eckhardt and Kåre Halvorsen. All the Inverse Kinematics are calculated on the fly using the law of sines on the RasPi. This version is all floating point and standard math libraries are used. Communication to the servos are done with a USB2AX created by Nicolas Saugnier and using a modified Robotis Dynamixel SDK. Power to the servos is provided by the Robotis SMPS2dynamixel. Remote Control is handled by a USB XBee module and Arbotix Commander.

Read more.

]]> http://www.adafruit.com/adablog/?feed=rss2&p=58673 0 http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/03/28/festo-bionicopter-flying-robot-dragonfly/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/03/28/festo-bionicopter-flying-robot-dragonfly/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 01:00:00 +0000 adafruit http://www.adafruit.com/blog/?p=58641

With the BionicOpter, Festo has technically mastered the highly complex flight characteristics of the dragonfly. Just like its model in nature, this ultralight flying object can fly in all directions, hover in mid-air and glide without beating its wings.

This was the first drink the robot bartender – later in the night dubbed “Six Mix-a-Bot” – ever poured. Taken (graciously, by Maya) at my birthday party. Check out more on this contraption here: dsz123.net/Projects/RobotArm/

Computer Science Robotics Instructor Needed / Adafruit Jobs Board

Lick-Wilmerding High School, a college preparatory, co- educational day school serving approximately 460 students in San Francisco, CA from grades 9-12 seeks a part time Computer Science/Robotics Instructor. Founded in 1895 as a technical arts school, and tuition free until 1972, Lick-Wilmerding has a long history of welcoming and supporting students from all walks of life, and prides itself on being a private school with public purpose. At LWHS, a diverse student body, faculty, and staff in all its forms is central to what we believe constitutes an excellent education, and we are institutionally committed to ongoing and reflective work in order to further define and articulate this complex and worthwhile vision of our school.

The average part time teacher workload is 36 students, the students are motivated, and the compensation is generous.

Successful teaching candidates will have a keen interest in working with high school students, and know that teachers at the high school level serve as role models and educators both inside and outside the classroom. Flexibility and a sense of humor are required.

Position Specifics: Computer Science/Robotics (Part Time)
Lick Wilmerding High School is looking for excellent candidates for a part-time (40% time / 2 courses every other day) position in an Industrial Arts Department. The courses will focus on computer science giving students a solid foundation for programming while going beyond the virtual realm to program devices that interface with the physical world. We’re looking for someone who can program and build things. Experience a programing language such as Java, C, C++, Python, Processing or equivalent is highly desirable. Experience with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and / or other device programming is also very desirable. These classes will compliment and expand an existing electronics / digital fabrication program.

We are looking for teachers with a passion for design, craft and engineering, and are eager to critically and creatively engage students in the process of making. We are looking for colleagues who are kind, thoughtful, energetic, innovative teachers, and all-around “school people” who want to participate in and contribute to our vibrant department and community. We encourage risk taking in our teaching practice while maintaining high standards, equity, and clear expectations for all students.

Learn More

Check out this awesome, fully-printable GlaDOS robotic ceiling arm lamp Instructable tutorial — to which the designer is looking to add more and more functionality. Here’s a piece about it over at 3ders.org:

dragonator uploaded full instructions on how to make this lamp on instructables for entering the UP! contest in the lamps and lights contest. Due to shortage of time and overheating problem, the robot arm doesn’t function properly. However if you do not plan to use this as a moving arm, dragonator has also designed parts to replace the servo’s and moving parts. So before dragonator figures out a working robotic arm you can skip most of the wiring and only use it as a lamp.

To make this lamp you will need a 3D printer, tools, accessories, electronics and a lot of time. First you need between 40 and 60 hours to get all the parts printed. To make your own personal GlaDOS look extra awesome, you will need to sand and paint the printed parts. This will remove most of the visible printing lines and give all of the parts the right color. After sanding, you have to prime and paint them. Then you can start with assembling the base and the body of GlaDOS and afterwards wire it up and mount it to ceiling.

Read more.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

From Hipstercircuits:

The HipsterBot has an H-type belt configuration for controlling the X and Y axes. What’s special about this is that there are two stepper motors connected together with one long belt. If the steppers move in opposite direction, they control the X-axis. If they move in the same direction, they control the Y-axis. Therefore, the need for a linear mapping from a cartesian coordinate system into an H-belt coordinate system arises. In the RepRap community, the X-axis is usually the axis where the extruder sits, note that this is not the case here.

The advantage to this setup is that (with a Bowden extruder) there are no moving stepper motors to add weight to the carriage, so the speed can be high. The disadvantage is that there is some elasticity in the belt.

Luckily there’s a paper for that! …

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

Finally a robot we can all relate to. This little guy’s name is HERB, and he lives at Carnegie Mellon University, where he’s been taught to separate the cookie from the creme. He might be made of servos and cameras, but clearly he loves one part of the OREO more than the other.

While it has been a longstanding tradition in mechanical and industrial design courses to task the student to create functional designs out of paper, cardboard, and balsa wood — it is a rare delight to see such a fully-realized project tackled with these “prototyping” materials. Created by Noklas Roy. Thanks to Nick Brewer for the tip!

When I gave a workshop at the School of Art and Design in Offenbach about building digital devices out of cardboard, the students asked me to build a machine as well. I always wanted to own a plotter – so I didn’t have to think too long about what exactly I’d build.

The cardboard plotter is made out of Finnish cardboard, which is very durable, but also easy to cut with a hobby knife. The axles and slide rails are made out of welding rod. Everything is connected with super glue, adhesive tape and tie wraps.

As an interface, I built two rotary dials and a switch. One of the dials moves the pen in y-position. The other dial moves the table under then pen in x-position. The switch lifts the pen or puts it on the paper. When I was done with building the plotter, I also compiled a little code book with coordinates for several drawings. They are written down as a list of numbers from 0 to 9, which makes it effectively a very simple digital storage medium for low resolution vector graphics.

You can find further hires images – also of the building process – in this album.

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Three great Raspberry Pi flag automated waving projects shared at RasPi.tv. Follow the “Read More” link for further hands-on tutorials for how to create the projects featured in the video. These are extremely fun and should make anyone who has put efforts into First Robotics style robotic Capture the Flag projects should take note that here are ideas for your victory dances. Via RaspberryPi.org.

After the recent call for items for the demo table over at Raspberry Pi HQ, I thought I’d send over a flag-waving set. It’s not a product for sale, but it’s one of the most eye-catching and memorable Raspberry Pi demos I’ve made. People mention it more than any of the others when I don’t take it along to Jams. There’s a video, at the end of the page, showing three Pis all waving flags together (based on three different drive systems).

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

An incredibly cute video sharing about Livebots shared by Liz at the Raspberry Pi Foundation:

This is brilliant. Livebots is a project which allows you to control a robot (powered by the Pi, of course) over the internet. Follow the link, or watch this rather excellent video to see what’s going on.

You’ll be using buttons in the browser to send Python instructions to the robots via their serial ports. The robots are available to control depending on which of them is online at the moment you visit. There’s a robot with googly eyes, one that does ballet poses and urinates (!), and plenty of LEDs to flash on and off.

Detailed instructions on adding your own robot to the collection are available at Instructables. We are torn between our love for the breakdancing robot and for the creepy robotic hand. It’s up to you to add some more so we can do some more arguing about which is our favourite.

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We just got this message from John Cole from Dexter Industries: “We just got a load of Raspberry Pi’s from Adafruit and we’ll be putting together some more projects! Thanks for the support!” Here are some notes from their latest project, building a LEGO MINDSTORM robot around a Raspberry Pi:

Since we first got the Raspberry Pi, we have wanted to make a robot out of it.  There aren’t many kits out there yet that let you do that (yet).  This HowTo Raspberry Pi Project shows you how we hacked together a motor controller from the Raspberry Pi and used it to control LEGO MINDSTORMS Motors.

The LEGO MINDSTORMS system comes with 3 motors that are run at 9V.  The LEGO MINDSTORMS motors run by applying 9V power to the White or Black wires in the Mindstorms jack.  If you apply 9V to the black wire, the motor moves in one direction.  If you apply 9V to the white wire, the motor moves in the opposite direction.  And thus you’re able to get the motor to turn, depending on the voltage put across either of the the two wires.

Read more.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

A father who was given a high-tech bionic hand after losing his arm in an accident six years ago yesterday claimed he can now tie his shoe laces again. Nigel Ackland, 53, was fitted with the Terminator-like carbon fibre mechanical hand which he can control with movements in his upper arm in November last year. The bebionic3 myoelectric (double corr) hand, which is also made from aluminium and alloy knuckles, moves like a real human limb by responding to Nigel’s muscle twitches. Incredibly, the robotic arm is so sensitive it means Nigel can touch type on a computer keyboard, peel vegetables, and even dress himself for the first time in six years.