Well Ive been closely following James Brutons robot designs and have come up with my own full sized biped mechanism based on similar principles.

I tested it last night under manual control and I think with a bit of tweaking, pretty soon I may have something that walks.

I had a look at James Brutons design for bipedal locomotion and Ive had a go at making a similar project for my Android. Now I think it is possible to make a simple human sized biped using a minimum number of components.

I saw the new star wars film yesterday, you guys have to see it. I actually think its the best one in the series!

When I was a kid star wars was part of the reason I got interested in robotics in the first place. I always loved the way Lucas made the droids look so natural and normal.

In this new flm R2D2 is seriously funky and has loads of new features. I think Im going to dig out my old R2 unit project and put some decent features on it. - I was running out of imagination for my projects until I saw this film, Its definately worth seeing.

I've had a bit of roboticists block recently. Its gone now. I find that you start an ambitious robot project, you build it half of it and test with some software. If youre not careful Before you know it the test software turns into the final app and you run out of ideas because you've created a robot that only does what to you tell it to.

Well Im over that now. I've decided what I want my robot to do and more or less how to do it. I used to rely on windows to do all the control timings (bad move) anyhow Im going to use PIC for all that now. Watch this space.....

Have you guys heard about the bizarre developments in robotics in the United Arab Emirates? it sounds like something out of Star Wars Pod racing or something. They are trying to stop children from illegally riding camels in races and are proposing to replace them with humanoid robot jockeys (!?) see the link here

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&cid=1548&ncid=1548&e=24&u=/afp/20050411/lf_afp/a fplifestyleuaecamel_050411143456

My girlfriend invited all of her friends round to my flat to meet up because we were all going out for the day. I was a little worried that with all the junk and stuff in my room they'd take one look around and think I was a computer geek or something. Not so at all! They came round, saw the droid and insisted that I showed it to them working, those girls wouldnt leave it alone after that!

I dont know if you guys ever get this but I think I've got cyberneticists block at the moment. I used to find that with mobile robots after you've built them you go back and can make them do cool things like programming them to go to a certain point in space and return, or use A* path planning etc. With mobiles there is always something new you can do with them.

I've found that with humaniod robots however after I've built the basics of the torso, I get to a point where I can program the arms and waist to go to different locations, open/close grippers and things like that but I dont know what else to do with it now. I've got cameras and lasers and stuff like that but I think Im running out of imagination....

Hi guys. Im about a quarter of the way through building a humanoid robot. Its about the size of an average 10 year old child. I was planning to use my own design of servomotor for the leg joints for powered walking but I came across this website

http://news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050218/ap_on_sc/robot_toddlers_5

After seeing that I thought maybe I should radically change the design of my legs. Does anybody know more about passive dynamic walking?

My girlfriend came round last night she got me I Robot for valentines day. I saw it and I thought although it was different to the book it was pretty good anyway.

Before she came I replaced the waist and neck joints of my droid with ballbearing roller plates. Those joints move as smoothly as anything. I showed the robot moving its arms and other joints and she was pretty impressed. I think it's gonna look good when I'm finished...

I've developed a super simple servomotor/speed controller interface using only three transisors and a comparator. It can be used to convert almost any DC motor into a servomotor using standard PWM radio control signals. Im planning on using the design to control the legs of my droid. I did develop another servo design earlier, but it was full of op-amps and too fiddly to set up. This one just works...

I finally decided to bite the bullet and actaully start doing something with the bits of android on my shelf. I've built a servo waist joint and lead acid battery compartment which both seem to work quite well.

I started playing with hip motors for the two legs (810:1 ratio mind!). I dont know if the thing will balance properly when I've finished it but I'm going to build it just the same. I've ordered a pair of Hitec 815BB servos for the shoulder joints which should allow the arms to lift more than 200g. The old Hitec 715s were good but I ended up burning one of them out with a dodgy PSU.

I swear I'm going to lose the deposit on my flat because of all the metal swarf and solder in my carpet, but Oh well, I cant help being a compulsive robot builder!