Making a robot can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s the perfect combination of creativity, engineering and problem solving. However, if you’re just getting started in robotics, it can also be overwhelming. To make things easier for those who are just starting out, we’ve put together some tips and tricks to help makers bring robots to life! From the basics of assembling your robot to software implementation, these pointers will give you everything you need to get started on your robotic adventure!
Raphael Lang of Stuttgart, Germany, built this cool robot from junk: A DIY crawler robot powered with a battery screw driver and with all-terrain legs or better called segment paddles. It’s made totally from the scratch. The leggs are flexible and grip instantly on different kinds of surfaces. The main energy unit is a powertool […]
At the Center for Biorobotics in Estonia, Eszter Ozsvald built a mechanical fish named A.riel that can model the movements of actual fish surprisingly well, and using only one servo inside a carefully made silicon-based mold. It took many iterations before the final product, but found that in the end she could develop the same vortex patterns as actual fish. Her site has extensive documentation on the build process and is definitely worth a look for the mold-making processes alone.
Enviably agile and purposeful, the mobile robot makes its way through grounds rendered off-limits to humans as the result of a chemical accident. Depressions, ruts and other obstacles are no match for this eight-legged high-tech journeyman. Its mission: with a camera and measurement equipment on board, it will provide emergency responders with an image of […]
Liquid Robotics’ Waveglider is an autonomous submersible that explores the ocean using the power of the sun and waves. As Roger Hine explains at Bay Area Maker Faire 2011, the Waveglider can either traverse the waters on its own, converting the up-and-down motion of the waves into forward propulsion, or can be controlled remotely by a user with a GPS satellite link.
A Climbing Robot Based on Hot Melt Adhesion” by Marc Osswald and Fumiya Iida from the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory at ETH Zurich, was presented at IROS 2011 [IEEE Spectrum via Hacked Gadgets]
See what Microsoft had to offer in their tent at World Maker Faire New York 2011. Microsoft sponsors Maker Faire and we’re excited to see them embrace the maker movement. Since bringing their Gadgeteer prototyping platform to Maker Faire last year, they’ve seen makers start using their .NET-programmable modular devices, inspiring them to make the hardware more widely available. Microsoft also brought their Kinect robots built on the Robotics Developer Studio 4 platform. They’re running a competition for robot concepts ($10K prize) built on RDS4.
It’s not every day you get to see a demonstration of something that previously only existed in works of fiction. I’m sure we’ve all seen the clunky video of highly stylized humanoid robots like the Asimo or the eerily visceral quadruped Big Dog. Nothing will prepare you for the life like movements of Boston Dynamic’s PETMAN. The closest approximation would be the CGI animations of the robots from the 2004 blockbuster ‘I, Robot.’
