Robot Dialogs

This is an update and rehosting of a senior design project completed in Spring 2008 at RIT . It is (to date) my favorite robotics project. Myself and two friends collaborated to create a remote controlled turret that was accessible from anywhere on the web. The project makes use of a 5 gallon air tank at ~80 psi to fire foam (Nerf) darts. One servo operates six rotating barrels which are mounted on two more servos that provide pan and tilt movement. There are two ultra bright LEDs providing light in dark conditions for a top mounted web-cam. An Arduino is used to control the turret, while communicating (via serial over USB) with a web server that hosts the custom web page and live video stream. A modified PC power supply was used to provide the power. Here's a video of the finished turret... Full System Test I was in charge of most of the hardware and electrical work, Mike programmed the Arduino (I usually work with other AVR stuff ) to take serial commands from a server...

This post is a retrospective look at the first robot I built solely for myself (back in 2008). I had only helped build one robot before this. It's clear I got a very late start into robotics. Although school did prepare me formally to dive right in, I wish I had been more focused on it when I was younger, I would have really flourished in college. This robot was designed mostly on a whim, but has turned out to be a nice solid prototype, and it is very useful for testing sensors and AVR code... The Parts List: Aluminum Chassis, Motor Mounts & Tire hubs - Machined while I was still at RIT when I had access to their machine shop. No original designs are available, I just went in and used what scrap I could find...I'd be embarrassed by providing the true measurements :). Stepper Motors - From Sparkfun ...I may replace these some day with cheaper gear motors so I can use these steppers in a CNC/Drill Press. EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver - Also from Sparkfun...sim...

Okay...this doesn't even remotely fit the robotics theme of the site, but it's a weekend project/gift for a family member. The only rule at my family's gift exchange this year is that the gifts have to be "made". For me this is an excuse to kill a weekend with arts and crafts. I started with the idea of duplicating the brain teaser puzzle below. Original Duplicate Well that one was easy enough to make...unfortunately it's not as colorful as the original (couldn't find that kind of rope). While looking online at similar wooden brain teasers I saw a picture of a small wooden box. As it turned out the box had a maze inside with the intended goal of getting a small ball through the invisible maze. I was hooked. So I went back to Lowe's grabbed what I needed and got to work. It has some weird dimensions because I had the guys at Lowe's cut the top and bottom before I really had anything designed (I wish I had a table saw...). I've always loved drawi...

Well unfortunately I was the only person to enter the competition officially, so it was canceled . To appease the robot gods' thirst for robotic mayhem Sparkfun morphed the events this weekend into a robot building/hacking/soccer match shindig . Making the 8 hr drive (one-way) was totally worth it even without the competition. I was able to demo "Spin Cycle" to those attending. Most of the day was spent on a class detailing the steps necessary to build an Ardubot for several people who had never made their own robot before. I've been a loyal customer and follower of Sparkfun.com for at least 3 years. It was great to finally meet some of the people behind the handles . I'm frazzled so no more text. Here is a video of my bot in action, and some pics from the trip. "Spin Cycle" The view from not even a mile away from SparkFun's building. (So...jealous) The fancy sign. Some nifty robot tracking (webcam+IR LEDs+ projector+codes=awesome). Th...

Time for the code... The software portion of this robot was fairly straight forward compared to the electrical and hardware designs. I had several previous robots and experiences to pull from when writing the code. As a result the code is very clean and well documented. There are two languages required to understand the code: JAVA and C ( AVR Libc to be precise). JAVA: I used JAVA to create a user interface which would take keyboard input and translate it into serial commands. The UI is very simple. It uses a KeyListener (which is added to all visible components of the UI) to pick up key strokes from the user. When a key is "typed" a string of characters is sent via GiovynetSerialPort1.3 to the XBee Module attached to the PC. The XBee acts a transparent serial cable with the XBee on the robot as the other end of the cable. Any serial data coming from the robot is displayed in the text area... I used Giovynet's serial port library for two reasons; first, Sun (JAVA)...

Well I managed to get all the parts purchased, designed and/or fabricated before the weekend of the event. As is often the case with project like this, my designs changed as I searched for parts. You will see below the final designs created in SketchUp (they really are final, based on the bot I took this weekend). I put a great deal of effort into getting exact dimensions in every place I could. In fact the only blatant differences between the drawings and the real robot are in the purchased parts(drill and batteries) which have too many curves to replicate. SketchUp Model I'm pretty certain no one will want to duplicate this exact design (anyone capable would probably find that boring) ; however, some of the components may be useful. The motors , motor drivers , wheels and hubs are all precisely measured, and could easily be copied into another drawing. I've decided on a name: "Spin Cycle" (a suggestion from my older brother). The name stems directly from the...