Robots: Al.I.S.E

Here is my latest robot. Al.I.S.E is an Aluminum, Infrared Scanning Entity; or just an old-school style crank arm hexapod :) This project was based on the mechanicals of the "Hexapod Monster" kit I built and reviewed back in 2008. I scaled it up a little, and added 2 super torquey gear head DC motors I found at a surplus store in Minneapolis. Power comes from a 9.6v RC transmitter pack, along with a separate 9v for the BS2 microcontroller. Motor control is handled by a Solarbotics 1198 CMD driver board kit. I used pencil top erasers for her feet, and found that using scrap pieces of solid core cat5e cable came in really handy for sub-board inter-connects. Obstacle avoidance is fairly rudimentary at this point, as I am only using 1 IR sensor along with flanking IR LED's. It still seems to work fairly well though. I definitely need to tweak the coding some more. Check out the movie I made of her backing away from some library books and making a run for the front door!

Robotics: Wireless Controlled Arm

This is a follow up to the wireless gripper post. Constructed from pine, spruce, aluminum, 3 HS-55 and 2 Futaba S-33 servos this arm has 4 degrees of freedom and is controlled by a sony IR remote controller. The Basic Stamp 2 processor translates the IR signals and creates programmable pulse lengths to power the servos. After seeing the video below, you'll see that this design could use a lot of refinement, such as a more efficient and functional gripper, more powerful servos and software that includes kinematics. Robotic arms are very challenging, so I looked to other designs to avoid stupid mistakes. The main influence for this project was the lynxmotion Lynx 5 arm . The code for the BS2 was adapted from Parallax's IR Kit . After I clean it up, I'll post the code that runs this arm here in an update.

Robotics: Wireless Gripper

My latest project aims at constructing a simple robotic arm that can be controlled with an infra-red stereo remote control. At this point I have completed the gripper portion of the arm. This gripper is based on the design of Karl Williams from his book insectronics I used a portion of the code from my previous robot, the infra-tank which can be downloaded here. I also used the same micro controller from the infra tank, the parallax basic stamp 2. My next step is to build the base and shoulder portion of the arm. The pictures above would provide enough reference for you to build your own. If you do, please share the results in the comments section.

Robotics: Infra-Tank!

Here is a 47 sec. clip of my latest bot I call Infra-Tank due to the fact that it is controlled with my infrared stereo remote controller. This is a custom design/build, but is based on the parallax boe-bot. The tank tread kit is from tamiya and the aluminum plate chassis is from K&S Engineering. It uses 2 servos modified for continuous rotation, and is guided by the BS2 microcontroller from parallax. You can build your own by using these directions as a rough guide. I would eventually like to attach a web cam or gripper- but the weather is finally starting to get nice here in MN, so I need to get my airplanes ready! Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.