Robot Dialogs

A few months before Maker Faire KC a friend started working on a Mini Sumo Bot and in passing I said I could probably get a bot ready for that...well those months slipped away and two weeks prior to the faire I had no bot (and had been constantly hounded by said friend). So I did a grand total of 30 minutes of research on the internets and ordered some parts (not recommended). I ordered everything from Canada (Fingertech and Solarbotics) so I had to wait almost another week to get started. Here's the parts list I ended up with: Chassis/Motors/Tires/Line Sensors: FingerTech "Cobra" Mini-Sumo Robot 4WD Kit Motor Controller: 2x Sparkfun's Motor Driver 1A Dual TB6612FNG Micro-controller: Arduino Pro Mini 328 - 5V Proximity Sensors: BittyBot 3-Way Object Sensor Battery: Venom 10C 2S 1250mAh 7.4V LiPO Line Sensors (Included w/ chassis kit): Phototransistor - QRD1114 More Stats below...  The first thing I did was construct the BittyBoty 3-Way Object Se...

I haven't done a proper project in a long while, and this past weekend it finally got to me. So I decided to try my hand making a prop/replica of the tuberous AI from Portal 2. I give you Potato GLaDOS : Most of it was sculpted from Sculpey and painted with acrylics. The audio comes from an old mp3 player I had lying around. The electronics consist of a LM386 audio amplifier, speaker, LEDs and a simple circuit to pulse the LEDs with the audio.  Here's a long winded explanation breakdown of how it was made . There's a boat-load of build pictures out on Flickr. The audio was pulled from here and spliced together in Audacity . Please support the developers and artists of these amazing games: Purchase Portal 2! And remember: "This. Sentence. Is. FALSE".

I started with pictures and models from the tubes. The image below is a particularly good example showing both sides. Model Reconstructed by ~ Zareste I went to the grocery store and found some models that I could hire for pennies an hour. I used Sculpey for the potato and GLaDOS, but I didn't want to bake it for four million years, and I needed a hollow inside for all the electronics so I made a potato-ish shape with aluminum foil. Keeping the outer layer of aluminum foil as smooth as possible will help when the foil is pulled out of the baked Sculpey. As you might expect potatoes are particularly easy to sculpt. Imperfections are the main feature...trying to keep fingerprints and fingernail marks out of the clay is the most difficult part of it. I don't have a picture, but the large hole (through which electronics are inserted) was cut out of the clay before it was baked. Scupley isn't too brittle after baking, but I didn't want to take a chanc...

I've been tinkering about with making panoramic pictures lately and when I'm out and about my Droid is the only camera I have. But taking panorama quality pictures with it is pretty tough. So last night I whipped together a very simple tripod mount. It's pretty self explanatory...here's what you need: Wood, I used 3/8" pine from the scrap pile. Small screws Wood glue Drill and bits (1/4" for standard tripod screw) Saw (I prefer the small teeth of a hack saw for little stuff like this.) Paint I had some in progress pics but Windows ate them. Essentially the only part I measured accurately was the slot the droid slides into, other than that it was just eyeballed. Two small screws hold the upright pieces (wood glue also). I used some paint I had from a robot project. Tripod screw threads right into the wood. I spent nothing upfront on this project...I'd estimate cost around $1 of material and maybe 30 minutes time went into it. It fits quite snu...

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...