Month: April 2013

Cloning the DARwin-OP

Cloning the DARwin-OP

Kansas City programmer Michael Overstreet wanted his own high-performance humanoid robot to experiment with, but was deterred by the $12,000 pricetag of an off-the-shelf DARwin-OP. Though a significant fraction of the cost is tied up in the top-of-the-line servo actuators the design requires to perform at spec, Michael believed he could build his own “clone” of the fully open-source design, at substantial savings, by 3D printing as many pieces as he could in fused filament, on home equipment.

Choose Your Own Adventure (With a Receipt)

Choose Your Own Adventure (With a Receipt)

At Minne-Faire this year, I ran into Jerry Bjelojac who has created the Choosatron, an Arduino-powered, coin-operated choose-your-own adventure machine that prints your quest out on a thermal printer. As technology has advanced, so has the way we tell stories. The interactive fiction genre evolved so quickly from text adventures to modern gaming that creatively […]