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!
The Wind-up Birds project explores the reaction nature will have on robotics. The “birds” are mechanical woodpeckers that are controlled via a micro-controller. There is a lot more information, and pictures, on the website. How will nature treat them, with [hostillity] or acceptance? How will the wind-up birds adapt to heat/cold wet/dry conditions? Will small […]
Built with the LEGO NTX platform (plus PDA support processor), the Sundial Robot uses sensor data to calculate time of day the new/old-fashioned way – In operation, the robot rotates 360 degrees to calibrate the Compass Sensor. It then rotates in 5 degree increments, the light sensor is swept from vertical until the Touch Sensor […]
Inspired by previous styrobotic art, Cool Tools blogger Kevin Kelly and his son built this fine bot from repurposed packing foam – I had five years’ worth of foam accumulated. I had some space in my studio to assemble it. I got my foam cutters handy. So we began designing. The bot had to fit […]
In case you missed it – Adam & Jamie of Mythbusters fame demonstrated an 1102-barelled paintball gun @ Nvidia’s Nvision event. As a visual metaphor for parallel processing, the gun created a simple remake of the Mona Lisa in a single shot. More: Motion-triggered paintball gun
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 […]
I like the solution here for a horizontal accelerometer board on a vertical breadboard. At first he had the entire breadboard at horizontal, but this little hack is a more sensible solution. [This is from the balancing bot project I blogged about earlier]
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 […]
