“Look What You’ve Done to Me, MAKE Magazine!”
“Now I’m having trouble sleeping at night as I lie there thinking of all of the cool things I can build.”
Robotics
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!
Octopus Soft-Robot Tentacle, Suckers!
Everyone loves a soft robot, and I’m fond of the marine variety. This bioinspired prototype tentacle, made of silicone rubber, not only curls and extends in eerily squidlike fashion, it’s also got pressure sensors embedded beneath its suckers so it can grasp objects, like a cephalopod should.
Balloon Gripper with Positive Pressure Mode Can “Shoot” as Well as Grab
Last March, roboticist Eric Brown and co-workers at the University of Chicago made headlines with their new, unconventional robot gripper design: a balloon filled with coffee grounds or other grainy material and fitted with a vacuum line. At atmospheric pressure, the balloon is squishy and can be “mushed” around an object—even traditionally hard-to-grip stuff like […]
Flying Bots Spot Paradrop Targets With Hacked AR Code
The clever designers at Chicago’s Tanagram adapted code developed to recognize those little black-and-white augmented-reality markers (“fiduciary markers”) for target acquisition on a DARPA-funded robot that can autonomously deliver humanitarian aid and other supplies to 20′ square markers unrolled on the ground. What’s great about fiducial marker tracking technology is that it is pre-built to […]
Make: Talk 005 – Carol Reiley, Surgical Roboticist
Our maker this week is Carol Reiley a surgical roboticist at Intuitive Surgical and the founder of Tinker Belle Labs. Carol’s on the cover of the current issue of MAKE, Volume 29, and is the co-author of two how-to projects in this issue.
Air-Powered Origami Robot
This “multi-gait soft robot” may be moved by sequentially inflating its various air pockets. Kinda creepy-cool the way it undulates under an obstacle! [Wired Science via b_b]
Arduino-Powered Robot Balances on a Ball
We are Jeroen Waning, Brian Kosoris, Bahati Gitego, and Yuriy Psarev, and this is our senior design project here at Southern Polytechnic State University… (A) Ball-Bot is a robot (fully autonomous) that balances on a ball. In our case, it was a vertical aluminum structure approximately 3′ tall and balanced on a basketball. Our system […]