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!
MAKE Flickr photo pool member Todd writes “I bought a $10 electronic baby in china town. I cracked it open and soldered a couple of switches to the the speaker. Now the baby is possessed and I have hacked a baby.” Flickr photos & Link with video of the baby in action.
Robotic dog for your phone – “Tea Vui Huang’s Aibo Memories is a 3D Playable Sony Aibo for Mobile Phones. The direction stick on the mobile phone can be used to make Aibo stand, sit, lie down and jump up. 3D animation of the 7 Series ERS-7M3/W Pearl White Aibo was designed on the Sony […]
Tom writes “The first of 2 planned Robotic Feral Public Authors has been completed and is ready for its first field trial in London Fields next week: The robot has two sensors (air quality and carbon dioxide) and GPS location sensing. The sensors were selected to reflect the concerns voiced in our community pollution mapping workshop back in November, which identified air pollution as the key environmental issue of local residents. The robot communicates its Lat/Long position and sensor readings back to the Urban Tapestries public authoring system via a WiFi connection.” [via] Link.
This might be a good Roomba mod project…“Grower is a small ‘rover’ vehicle which navigates around the periphery of a room. It hugs the room’s walls and responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air by actually drawing varying heights of ‘grass’ on the walls in green ink. The Grower robot senses the carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the air via a small digital CO2 sensor.” Thanks James! Link.
Neoteric writes “This is my second robot after getting the kit for Christmas. No prior electronics experience. The robomaid redo I have been working on is complete. I call it Robomaid2. It uses the outside of this product. It uses 5 IR pairs. 2 in front, 2 on the side, one in back. The front pair is for detecting mfront collisions. The theory of the side pair is that the robomaid2 can hang very close to the walls and cupboard bases, where most of the dust is. (I have not completed the code for this, although it works pretty well like it is) The back IR helps when the robot gets a little too cramped. It rotates, and the back IR helps it get out of loops by kicking the robot forward.” [via] Link.
MAKE pal Jean interviewed Garnet Hertz (we covered his work in MAKE 02)“Aside from exhibiting a dead frog with a miniature web server embedded in it ( allowing web visitors to re-animate it’s limbs! ), this quest has more recently lead him to using a living roach atop a modified trackball to control a 3 wheeled robot, infra-red sensors providing navigation feedback to the cockroach, with the hope of creating a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as CPU!” Link.
This little robot car from Nakamura-san at Himeji Soft Works in Japan drives around then it transforms into a real robot and walks around. I want to build one of these or buy one immediately. [