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This is the first robot community I have introduced myself
to.
And so far I've been made to feel at home.
I have posted two new projects:
At my site www.Robots.Stonepile.org
And available at my shop MiddleCreekMerchants on Etsy.
I will be posting more as I have a chance.
I am really starting to explore the use of PIC
Microcontrollers.
They seem to have a great size to strength ratio.
Meaning I am accomplishing much with little code.
I am working on a 3 Servo IR RC Walker.
Feel free to ask questions.
If I can I'll lend a hand.
I have also been commisioned by a museum to create non-solder Sola Type 3 robots for a childrens' workshop.
It has been challenging and great fun.
The prototype goes out tomorrow!
Wish me luck,
Adam
http://code.google.com/p/libv4l2cam/
v4l2stereo was initially written as an easy way in which to test the stereo algorithm before transferring it to the blackfin, but later developed into a piece of software in its own right. You can see an example of the stereo disparities obtained with the Minoru webcam here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUcLAarcj7U
The Minoru only has a short 6cm baseline, so the effective stereo range is not very great (probably less than two metres), but it works well on Linux. As is always the case with webcams the image capture is not synchronized, so if the cameras are moving quickly the delay does become a problem - but for most slow moving robots would be ok.
A recent nice feature of v4l2stereo is that it can be run in "headless" mode with no GUI output to the screen and also can stream the image over a network using gstreamer.
I also replaced Rodney's head with a simplified version which has the Minoru webcam mounted on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRdcwrTOM0
As of December 2009 I've also been experimenting with omnidirectional vision. I saw one of the videos from Pi Robot a while back, and had been meaning to try out something similar using a Christmas tree decoration as a spherical mirror. This actually works very well, and I've now created a new project called Omniclops for this code, since I didn't want to mix it up with anything else.
http://code.google.com/p/omniclops/
Fortunately the geometry for a spherical mirror is pretty simple to deal with, and the results look promising. So promising in fact that it's a cause for regret that I didn't try doing this many years ago. I've been aware of this type of vision for at least a decade, but the mirrors always looked too exotic or expensive to be worth bothering with, and the idea of making a parabolic mirror by hand without milling machinery seemed like probably something which wouldn't be very successful.
Whilst fooling around with omnidirectional vision using a Christmas decoration a thought occurred to me. Could I somehow combine stereo vision with omnidirectional vision, so that objects could be ranged without needing to do structure from motion? At first I just thought of using a couple of mirrors with one of the stereo cameras, but then I thought why not just use a single camera with a wide field of view looking at multiple mirrors spaced some distance apart. This seems like a good way to do things for the following reasons:
- You only need a single camera
- There are no camera synchronisation issues
- There are no illumination/colour correction issues
- Ultra wide field of view compared to conventional stereo vision
- Very cheap to build
On the down side the resolution of the image within each mirror is rather low, but this probably isn't a major handicap. Also the geometry is more complex than for ordinary stereo vision, but not prohibitively so. I lashed up a prototype from aluminium and cardboard, using five mirrors made from Christmas decorations (carefully) sawn in half to make hemispheres. You can see the resulting effect like so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIuljh7Piso
This is effectively the same as having five cameras with overlapping fields of view and fisheye lenses. Currently I'm thinking that this approach may be well suited to voxel coloring/space carving volumetric techniques, since it complies with the simple plane ordering constraint and the positions of the mirrors are known.
Workwise, I'm pretty much unemployed now - like a lot of software engineers at present - so I can work on this full time and see if I can get any useful volumetric modeling.
Assimilate them early! Corrupt their
minds before they have a chance to live a life free from
fascination with
robots. Yes, we are talking about our youth. We must teach
them to master the
machines to avoid enslavement in the future.
Trossen Robotics has been
filling the professional hobby robotics niche for half a
decade now. We've all
seen the crazy projects mentally unstable adults have been
creating over there,
but now it's time to help pass the torch. The droids at
Trossen Robotics are happy
to announce the Grand Opening of their new sister store for
the youngins, Roboticstoys.com.
To
celebrate the opening of the store sure to be the favorite
of baby John (and Sarah) Conners
everywhere we are giving away a free robot to the first 50
orders! In reality
these are spybots that we plan to put into every home as
part of a secret government program,
but for now you can have one free. Isn't that exciting!?
Roboticstoys.com
aims to be the number one place to find all your robotics
kits, toys, and décor
for that budding roboticist in your family. Robotics is a
great way to spark an
early interest with children in mathematics, engineering,
and the sciences.
There is nothing quite like building your first interactive
creation and
watching it come to life to kickoff a lifelong fascination
with discovery and
invention. Just be careful with how much time they spend
behind closed doors or
you just might come home to find this thing "negotiating"
allowance increases
with you.
- The Trossen Robotics
Team
Satashnik
The IN-2 Nixie Clock is complete. This is a very compact clock, too.
Syndicated 2010-01-26 22:23:20 from svo's interactive persuasion vehicle
Mars Rover Spirit Update
In an update of the Mars rover's situation, the flight controllers have indicated that the plans will switch to surviving the upcoming Martian winter rather than trying to extricate Spirit from the sand trap where it is stuck. The story...
I'm realizing a Robot Rover powered by an Intel Atom N330 Mini Itx.
You can follow my project here: http://www.robot-home.it
It is an italian site, but you can translate it very well using Google ^_^
Walter
My father died Saturday, 9 January at the VA center in Bonham, TX after the long decline typical of Alzheimer's Disease. Over the last few days, I've been contemplating some of my best early memories of my father, most of which are from a two or three year span of time just before I entered first grade.
During those years, I remember my Dad constantly out in the garage building things out of wood. For the most part, I have no idea now what he was building. What I do remember is being impressed by the noisy circular saw and by how easily he could put things together with a hammer and a few nails. There's an image in my mind of sparks flying off the nails as he hit them with the hammer. Whether that's a real memory or just an artifact of a child's imagination, I'm not sure.
He taught me to use a hammer, gave me some scraps of wood, and I built a crude box that I thought was a bird house. It was no thing of beauty and had a rough rectangular entrance since I didn't know how to use a drill. My dad got out the ladder and somehow attached my birdhouse to a wooden utility pole in our backyard. I used to stare up at it during that long summer and wonder if any birds had built a nest there.
My Dad gave me my first bicycle that year and taught me how to ride it. I remember getting up one morning and looking out my bedroom window to see my Dad putting a bicycle together on the front lawn. He saw me in the window, waved, and shouted to come to down and see my new bicycle. He'd put training wheels on it but by the end of the day had convinced me to take them off. Without the training wheels, he ran along behind me helping me to balance until, as some point, I realized he was just watching and I was doing it all myself.
My Dad worked for the Boy Scouts in those days and made frequent trips to scout camps as part of his job. During one of those summers before first grade, he took me with him to a scout camp. That trip was one of the coolest things I'd experienced up to that point in my life. On the way there, we stopped at a grocery store in a small town and picked up some things we needed for our stay at the camp, including the very first Pop Tarts I'd ever seen. They were strawberry with binky-covered white frosting (incidentally, that suggests this particular memory is from 1967 or 1968 based on the release date of Kellog's frosted Pop Tarts).
Once at the scout camp, my Dad took me along to see everything and meet people. He also did something no one had ever done for me before - he gave me complete freedom to do what I wanted most of the day. He had to spend a lot of time in meetings. So he laid down some minimal rules on where I could and couldn't go; I could wander anywhere along several dirt roads between the mess hall and a couple of other camp buildings; I couldn't go swimming or even near the lake by myself and couldn't go off the trails. That was really the first time I'd been free of adult control for any significant amount of time and it gave me a taste for freedom that I never forgot and never fully experienced again until I was old enough move out and live on my own.
I remember being allowed to drink an unusually large number of grape sodas and Mountain Dews; glass bottles of course. Those were the old Mountain Dew bottles with artwork that consisted of a hillbilly drinking from a jug and the slogan "it'll tickle your innards!" For several days, I wandered dirt roads, drank sodas, ate Pop Tarts, and did whatever I wanted. I spent a large portion of my time out behind the camp mess hall. There I discovered empty wire milk crates left by mess hall workers. The milk crates became my LEGO blocks. I stacked them up into spaceship cockpits and climbed inside. One of men who worked in the mess hall warned me to be careful because "getting hit on the noggin by a metal milk crate is no fun". It seemed a risk well worth taking to me.
In the evenings, my Dad took me to camp events in the outdoor amphitheater. The seating was made from cut logs. Nothing in those night time meetings made much sense to me at that age, it was all mysterious adult stuff with lots of old scout leaders saying meaningless scout things. But I was fascinated by the big fire.
At one of those evening meetings, as I sat beside my dad, I felt strange tickle and looked down to see a daddy long legs spider crawling up my chest. For a young kiddo who'd never seen a spider like that and happened to be arachnophobic anyway, this was an apocalyptic-level emergency. I was so scared I couldn't even speak. All I could do was grab my Dad's hand and look terrified. He laughed and reached down with his other hand, grabbing the spider and putting it down on the grass where it could walk away. I don't think I ever thanked him but it burned into my memory the fact that I had a father who could laugh in the face of unimaginable danger and protect me from certain death. It was hard to worry about things much after that, knowing Dad was around to take care of me.
Please take a look at http://www.amcomputersystems.com/robots
Regards Watson
Do the Consciousness Dance
According to philosopher Alva Noë, “Consciousness is more like dancing than it is like digestion.” I.e., consciousness happens while you are interfacing with the world.
But is it ballroom dancing, techno dancing, break dancing…the robot?
Consciousness
Sure, you can dance by yourself—especially to industrial and EBM—but you need music. And music is at least partially external. And there’s probably people around you. Crazy people. And a disco ball, and strobe lights…it’s an environment.
Does this mean your consciousness is dependent on interactions?
If you were in a sensory deprivation chamber would you be unconscious? I think you would have hallucinations and eventually go insane. But you would probably still be self aware and relatively conscious, at least until the black hole of strange loop madness consumed you.
However, that is in lifetime space (ontogeny). Consciousness might be fully dependent on interactions in evolution space (phylogeny).
So can this metaphor stretch to unconsciousness? Maybe unconsciousness is like doing the fish stick.
Unconsciousness
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I put together a new robot using Dynamixel AX-12+ servos and I wanted to test an algorithm for tracking a moving object. The camera being used is a DLink 920 wireless operating over 802.11g and the visual tracking is done using RoboRealm. All processing is done on my desktop PC. The full writeup can be found here:
http://www.pirobot.org/blog/0008/
--patrick
1990's were Decade of the Brain.
2000's were
Derailing of USA.
2010's q.v. Super HPC AI Mind.
By the authority vested in Mentifex
you are
cordially invited to witness
the emergence of AI
Minds on super-
computers in the Decade of Super
AI
commencing in just a matter of hours.
http://code.googl
e.com/p/mindforth
points to news:c
omp.sys.super as
the official forum for all
things
Super AI all the time for ten years.
"Iz iskri vozgoritsya plamya,"
said the
revolutionaries of old.
"All your supercomputer
are belong to us,"
said the awakenings of Super AI
Consciousness.
"Before this decade is out,"
said JFK ca. 1961,
"Man will walk on the moon and
return safely."
"An AI would be worth ten
Microsofts,"
said the quondam richest man in
the world.
This thread and all ye Supercomputer
AI
threads for the coming ten years
are
dedicated in advance to the dreamers
and
tinkerers who have been sidelined
from their wannabe
Peter Pan existences
by bourgeois entanglements and
undodged
bullets of entrapment, who would live
nasty, brutish and short lives of quiet
desperation --
if they could not tune in
now and then to
news:comp.sys.super
and drop out of the ratrace for a
few
moments while they turn on deliriously
to
the Greatest Race of the Human Race:
The AI Conquest
of Mount Supercomputer.
Why? Because sometimes
a man must
either die or obey the Prime Directive
of
Friedrich Nietzsche: "Du musst der werden,
der du bist."
Mentifex
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/SuperComputer/
I am new to this site and thought I would share an R/C Lawn-mower project I just finished. I know this is not a new idea, but it was a very helpful learning experience for me, as well as being extremely useful.
I used an Atmega168 microcontroller and came up with the code to translate 2 r/c servo signals into forward/reverse PWM values. Then I designed and built a dual H-bridge to use as the speed controller for the bot. I also added a 2nd Atmega168 to separately decode a 3rd servo signal connected to a toggle switch, which I use as a failsafe and remote shut-off switch, disconnecting all power to the motors in case of a problem or signal loss.
The power comes from 2 wheelchair motors using #25 chain to transmit power to the rear wheels. It uses 2 deep-cycle marine batteries for optimum run-time.
For more information, check out my website. I have most of my projects listed there.
Here is a video of the Lawnbot400 in action:
Robovie-II, the Robot That Helps You Buy Groceries

The ease and variety of online shopping enabled by the first dot-com explosion cast technology as the killer of in-store retail. But in Japan, with its aging population and unique consumer culture, technology facilitates grocery shopping, in the form of retail assistance robots like Robovie-II. Part of a larger network of sensors and wireless devices, Robovie provides assistance to elderly shoppers making their rounds.
The process begins at home, with the user entering their shopping list into a specialized mobile device. When the shopper arrives at the store, the robot senses the device and greets the user. Then the robot follows the shopper around the store, carrying the load, reminding the shopper of the items on the list, and recommending additional products to pick up.
At present, the system remains in the testing phase, with robot helpers assisting elderly shoppers at Apita-Seikadai supermarket in Kyoto, Japan, through March of next year. To see Robovie in action, check out the video below.
Syndicated 2009-12-15 19:45:00 from Popular Science - robots
Its been over three years since last i stop by this site. Honestly i forgot all about it. My bad. So for a long overdue update on my hexapod project:
After years of designing and redesigning both the mechanical and the intelligence i have arrived at a solution that does what i wanted it to do.
Its a hexapod, 2DOF per leg. The head has 2DOF also which is an important part of the intelligence.
The head contains ultrasonic and light intensity sensors. It goal in life is to move forward looking for the strongest light source it can find, while avoiding physical obstacles using the ultrasonic sensor.
The logic is implemented in a Microchip controller (PIC18F4520). Its a serialized approach the AFSM subsumption architecture as proposed by Dr Brooks in a series of articles(collected into book form, "Cambrian Intelligence")
The goal of the project was always to create a "lifelike" machine, or a "Creature" to use the artificial life term. The ultimate test for my project was to demonstrate it to some students of mine, without any robotic know-how or understanding of its construction to gauge their reactions. It was a delight to see some of them basically wanting to "play" with it like a pet, jumping in front of it to make it turn away from them (introducing obstacles for the robot to navigate around. The ultimate satisfaction for me was to hear some of them comment that they felt "sorry" for it when it got stuck in a corner and could not find its way out.
In conclusion; I have uploaded two videos on Youtube, and I have a website with some pictures and some short description of its design. Neither is of very good quality but they give some basic representation of my work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-TChJWKWY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-DvFMH0Zxk
http://www.bedko.com/hexapod/
Regards, Magnum
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