¬Friday Night Robotics

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, November 28th, 2008

During the day I programmed MANOI without testing it, so I’m going to test it today (Saturday).

I’m so exhausted from trying to debug this router thing. I can’t stand networking!!! I mean, you’re pretty much trying to overcome little pieces of chaos all the time. I think it was Cantor who came up with the thought that if you take two rectangles and cut them in three, throw away the middle piece (I think), then repeat the pattern on the new rectangles- you’ll get something infinitely large, yet infinitely sparse. So… you’re basically trying to configure something that will work 80% of the time, while trying to leap over hurdles that you can’t control or see- that will appear from nowhere, PLUS the other random throw offs. This could make someone go crazy!!!!!

I applied to be a BETA tester of the Roboduino on Thursday (I think), but the applications were already closed (it didn’t say that on the website). It’s kind of funny, since I was the first person to mention BETA testing. Hahahaha! I’m really confused about it though :S From what I understand, the applications were open Wednesday morning, then closed Wednesday night. But… if you lived in Australia, wouldn’t that mean you never had a chance? You would only realize the apps were open when you woke up, which would be Wednesday night- so they would be closed, already. Maybe there will be GAMMA (or ALPHA) testers though, so I won’t lose hope!

I guess the highlight of tonight’s FNR was when I stayed up till 11 to watch Daily Planet.

I love the in-depth meteorite coverage they have been giving. It’s so cool how it landed in a place called Lone Rock!! Hahahaha I only hope that it isn’t damaged too much by landing in the pond though >.< I didn’t bother to watch the rest of the show since it seemed only about biology.

OH YEAH! I also made a prototype of a decoration that I’m going to put on the tree. It’s 2 inches wide, 4 inches long… and it has a robot on it. In the middle of the robot, there’s an LED. You can press near the bottom of the decoration to turn it on/off.

I’m thinking of making three and putting them on Etsy for $2.50 (+ $5 shipping) to see if they would sell. All of the profit would be going towards a book that I want that explains Jacobians and Inverse Kinematics and transforms/rotations from frame to frame.

Posted in: Other, Projects.

THE LIST!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

My list… YAY!!

Need
University Sweater/Shirt from the store!!!!!!

Want (almost need)
Robot Modeling and Control
Sharp GP2D120 IR Range Sensor – 4 to 30 cm
Sanguino v1.0 Kit

Canon PowerShot A590 A570 IS Digital Camera HD² Professional Accessory Kit
Opteka 10x HD² Professional Macro Lens for Canon PowerShot A570 A590 IS Digital Camera
Opteka HD² 0.20X Professional Super AF Fisheye Lens for Canon PowerShot A570 A590 IS Digital Camera
Opteka Close-Up Set (+1, +2, and +4) with 10x Macro Lens for Canon PowerShot A570 A590 IS Digital Camera
Opteka 2.2x High Definition² Telephoto Lens for Canon PowerShot A570 A590 IS Digital Camera
Opteka 10x HD² Professional Macro Lens for Canon PowerShot A570 A590 IS Digital Camera
Canon LA-DC52G Conversion Lens Adapter

Want
OWI RobotiKit Walking King Crab
OWI RobotiKit Frightened Grasshopper
Owi Happy Hopping Frog Mini Solar Robot Kit
Images Scientific Bi-Directional Flexible Bend Sensor FLX-02
Phidgets Force Sensor
Inex Temperature Sensor Board
Miga Motor NanoMuscle 2-wire Rotary Actuator
Lynxmotion Pan and Tilt Kit / Aluminium

Reflectance Sensor
Color Light Sensor Evaluation Board

Peggy 2.0 Light Emitting Pegboard kit

Maker’s Notebook

Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (Paperback)
Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (Paperback)

Want (lowest factor of need possible)
Open Heart Kit

Posted in: Other, Projects, Uncategorized.

Friday Night Robotics

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, November 21st, 2008

Today I finished off a part of a project that I can’t blog about, then worked on MANOI. I didn’t really do much, all I did was configure (AKA: plug in) the force-sensing resistor and watch the results on Arduino’s serial monitor.

I was really surprised with the FSR! I thought there would be some jitter when it isn’t being touched (or, has no force on it) but it wasn’t. It’s value stayed at 0!

I can’t really add much AI to hockey MANOI until I get an IR sensor. I would mount the IR sensor on the side of the stick to see if there is a ball. That, combined with the FSR, would make a good scenario for the Bayes filter algorithm.

What I did tonight does have something in common with robotics….

WALL-E!

You might think that I watched the movie… but I didn’t! I watched the special “The PIXAR Story” on Disk 2. I had major problems figuring out what DVD to get too… I had my mind set on the 3 disk one. When we get to the store, there is no 3 disk one… and they’re all packaged in French! I can’t read what the fudge it’s saying!! Then there’s like Blue-Ray and HD and normal and super and GOLD ULTIMATE EDITION and it’s all like “omg -.-”.

It’s pretty neat how similar robotics and animation is. When it all comes down to it, you’re trying to make an inanimite object move, interact, and have character! I still haven’t finished exploring all of the features on Disk 2… but it’s pretty AWESOME!

Posted in: Other, Projects.

Hockey MANOI + Wii Nunchuck

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Today (Thursday) I got my MANOI working with my Wii nunchuck!

It was super easy since I already had the configuration ready because of my other robot.

Here are some pictures:

The SSC-32 is barely visible anymore!

The big transformer powers the battery to give it 12-13V (constantly). The small transformer is for the Arduino, cause I couldn’t find a 9V battery

MANOI’s Leg

MANOI

MANOI’s back- the battery and Arduino are attached to tape using velcro

The way it works is the Wii nunchuck has an i2dc interface with the Wave Shield, which is on the Arduino. Using the Nunchuck library, you know what button is being pressed and values of the accelerometer.

I already made functions to determine if the nunchuck is tilted home, left/right or up/down. Soooo, I just added the “skating” functions to that, and the condition that the C button has to be pressed. There’s more control this way.

To shoot, it’s just the Z button.

The most surprising part of all of this was when I realized that MANOI “skates” better when I added all the stuff to his back. I guess it adjusted the center of gravity just right!

There’s a video here:

I still have some more stuff to do… like add a few more motions and sound.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Gumball

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

I added a new Processing thing I made… called Gumball.

It’s not that cool, but great to play with for like 20 seconds. =P

Posted in: Art, Projects.

Friday Night Robotics!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, November 15th, 2008

This is my Hockey MANOI work in progress robot. It needs a lot of improvement before I actually take it outside (hopefully there won’t be snow by then). It’s using a plastic stick that I found lying around (check out the pics)

So far it’s going okay, I guess. Trying to make a robot balance with many moving parts is difficult though, and really exhausting. There’s lots of things that I’ll need to fix… The program is basically a sequence of movements:

- Forward 6 times
- Shoot 3 times
- Backward 6 times
- Shoot 3 times

The Forward and Backward movements do vary slightly, but they both result in the robot going backwards. I’m trying to think of a way to fix it that will be the best way, like attaching a few heavy rocks to the front of the robot won’t be the best way in this case. Once the robot shoots after going Backward, there’s too much movement and it falls over.

I’ll probably have an if statement in the Shoot movement asking what was the last movement. If it was backwards, the shot will be more slow and less intense so it won’t tip over.

The stick also has to be mounted better… it moves WAY too much =P (those tie wraps serve no purpose)

Despite all of the falling over, it’s fun to be trial’ing and error’ing to see how the robot can balance And it’s working off of an Arduino! I plan to add the Wave Shield, with some hockey sounds/songs that MANOI can play — there will also be a FSR on the stick so the robot will know if it should shoot or not ^_^

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

SOFREEZINGCOLD

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

ITS SO FREEZING COLD! I think I’m gonna transform into an ice-cube!! ZGG!

Speaking of cold… You know when you first start to skate, you pretend you’re walking? You hardly go anywhere, but you do go somewhere because of the friction… My robot can now do that! I was playing around with MANOI, gave him some roller-skates (actually: lego wheels), and programmed it in. After a few trials and errors, it works! MANOI now can look like a goofy Canadian newbie skater. SWEET!

I’m trying to find a small hockey stick that I can tape to its hands, but I have a feeling Ill have to make one myself. Carving it will be okay, I’m just worried about how I would make it thin- like half an inch. I’ll probably use one of the sanding power tools to do that (since I don’t want to saw my hand off (or fingers (but then again, they may just fall off because I’m SOFREEZINGCOLD (wow this is a lot of nested brackets (LOL))))).

I hope to play hockey with my ‘bot on Saturday… this will be interesting!

I updated my blarg to WordPress 2.7 B2, and stylized a new theme! I’m not sure what I should name that lonely RSS elephant over on the right though. Syndie, the syndication elephant? LOL!

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.