Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

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Robotic Branch by Derk Wolmuth

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

I wish there was more information about the artwork by Derk Wolmuth. I really like the way technology and nature are both incorporated into this piece.

A kinetic hat rack was conceived in conjunction with research into a mood reading/recording hat. Several servos, a geared motor, and a Querk microprocessor contort a branch in various degrees. Mental strain of everyday existence is suggested by the vagaries of deformation.

A little more about the Robotic Branch

Original post by Marc de Vinck

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GARG!

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Garg
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Gimmelotsarobots has created metal monster! -

This little guy is a Garg. The metal gargoyle robot I entered into the Crabfu Challenge on the Trossen Robotics community. The body is galvanized steel. It was made entirely from on hand parts such as CD player motors and hair dryer grills.

- Garg on Flickr

More:
Crabfuchallenge080908
The Crabfu Challenge

Original post by Collin Cunningham

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The TiLR bot

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Make Pt0969
RoboDynamics just released the “TiLR” – a four foot tall robot running Win XP Pro, a touch screen LCD, and a Canon PTZ camera with 26x optical zoom… More specs here.

Robotic Telepresence is the ability to transport yourself to a remote location without going there. It is similar to video conferencing but whereas video conferencing gives you only a small window into the remote world, Robotic Telepresence gives you a presence, instantly transporting you there and enabling you to move around, look about, and interact with people, objects, and the environment as if you are actually there.

Our robot, named TiLR (pronounced Tie Ler) has an 8″ LCD screen and a powerful Canon camera - providing you with live bi-directional video and audio. As such it brings you face to face with people and objects - and gives you the freedom to move about the remote world from the convenience of your PC - wherever in the world you may be.

Original post by Phillip Torrone

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Robotic brick laying system ensures light and airflow to plants

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

This custom designed robotic system was intended for a vineyard in order to build a wall of 20,000 bricks that had to be precisely arranged in a programmed manner in order to control the amount of air and sunlight that passes through to the plants. Each brick sits on a different angle than the next to create the right spacing in the wall.

Non-Standardized Brick Facade, via AITDW

Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

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Balancing bot using ADXRS150 gyro

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Via HackedGadgets comes this promising-looking self-balancing robot, still a work in progress:

Woohoo! I now have an Analog Devices ADXRS150 gyro on a Sparkfun breakout board (left). That, in combination with my Dimension Engineering DE-ACCM3D accelerometer, should get this thing balancing once I get the software squared away. After playing with it for a while I moved the gyro down to the centerline of the axles where I believe I′ll get the best response from it. The gyro is ultra sensitive and really “locks″ the tilt attitude of the robot. You can feel it trying to keep the robot’s tilt right where it is. But it drifts, as all gyros do and pretty soon the bot is leaning way over.

Balancing Robot #2

More:

DIY: Simple Balancing Robot

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

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Latest Servo Magazine

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

The latest issue of Servo magazine (September) is out and it has a lot of great stuff in it. I subscribe to both Robot and Servo and enjoy them both. Published by the venerable Nuts & Volts magazine, Servo skews a bit more towards the deeper geek,while Robot is geared more towards the casual hobbyist, kitmakers, etc.

The latest Servo has a cover story on upgrading the Lynxmotion Johnny 5 to make it a more reliable research platform, using the Parallax Propeller in robotics, Arduino resources for robots, and Part III of Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s series on artificial life. There’s also a section on combat robotics and a piece on making your own custom terminal blocks. Good stuff.

Servo is published monthly and is $24.95/yr.

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

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Self-assembling robots will rescue survivors from disasters

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

This news story shows an amazing robot that is capable of “self-assembly″ into a larger bot in order to conduct tasks that are too dangerous for humans. Think “Voltron″ meets wind-up toy size bots that together make something pretty remarkable.

Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

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Titan The Robot

Monday, August 25th, 2008

The video speaks volumes:

I don’t know about you, but I think the intimidation factor definitely makes these a lot cooler.

More in the gallery at the manufacturer’s site. None appear to be deploying weaponry… yet!

[via The Robot Group]

Original post by Luke Iseman

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RiSE climbing robot

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Rise Robot

Boston Dynamics is back with another amazing bot -

RiSE is a small six-legged robot that climbs vertical terrain such as walls, trees and fences. RiSE’s feet have claws, micro-claws or sticky material, depending on the climbing surface. RiSE changes posture to conform to the curvature of the climbing surface and a fixed tail helps RiSE balance on steep ascents. RiSE is about 0.25 m long, weighs 2 kg, and travels 0.3 m/s.

See the site for a video demonstration where this little guy scales a building - Waalbot wall climbing robot

Overview/Review of the Bioloid kit & animation system

Original post by Collin Cunningham

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A Crabfu review: Bioloid kit

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Crabfu has done a nice in-depth review of the Bioloid robot kit for Trossen’s site.

More:

BIOLOID - DIY educational robot kits

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

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Another coat hanger walker

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Here’s a one-motor coat hanger walker I spotted on Flickr. It uses the same single-motor hacked servo and BEAM bicore circuit as the Jerome Demer’s project I featured in my book, Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots, but the leg configuration is different than Jerome’s and my bots, and the center of gravity is shifted (on ours, the battery packs are on either side of the servo case, here they are behind the servo). I know that some builders from my book ended up getting better traction by adding some weight to the back of the servo case, so some COG shift can be a good thing. I′d like to see this one in action to see the walking gate/stability.

Spiders?

More:

HOW TO - Build a one-motor walker
Two-motor quadcore BEAM walker
BeetleBot Revisited

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

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Robotic footstool will make you want to use it

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Here’s a funny video of a robotic footstool that uses the Parallax Propeller chip. The code for this project can be downloaded from their site as well. Check out the link below for lots more info.

Norris Labs, via LadyAda’s Ranting

Building Small Robots: Making One Cubic Inch Micro-Sumo Robots and Smaller

Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

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HOW TO - Build micro-bots

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

This Instructable details a number of tiny robots (e.g. a cubic inch sumo and a pager-bot that fits on a quarter) built by the author. If nothing else, it′ll give you an idea for just how difficult it is to build autonomous, programmable robots on this scale.