Robo Writing

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

My fingers have poked so many keys in the last few days! And they will continue poking until they fall off!

Here are the two things that I have recently finished writing:
- Awesome Foundation Grant
- Research Abstract

Here are the two things that I need to finish:
- Math presentation
- Final research paper

WOOAH! You know, I think this is sort of the tragic downfall of research. You finish researching feeling like you saved the world (because you did), and now you have to go write so many things that eventually all the words start to sound the same, but if you place them in a different order they have a different meaning.

Here is what I wrote for the Awesome Foundation. It is extremely long (almost 500 words), but I believe my imaginative intro captures some attention. I was trying to go JKR style with Quidditch

In a jolt of electricity, two robots collide in maddening competition to score the game winning
goal. Their batteries are weak, their artificial intelligence is exhausted. Beading with
condensation from the overheating servos, the crowd roars in excitement. Robot #85 from the
Rusty Roboteers dodges the defense and swiftly uses its reinforced learning to predict where the
goalie will be, and SCORES the game winning goal! The 2028 National Robot Hockey League
is won by the Rusty Roboteers for the third straight year.
Taking a step back to the present, the only competitive sport that humanoids participate in is
soccer. Soccer, to some, is an endearing sport full of strategy. To others, it is a game that requires
too much waiting.

What if they could play hockey?

Currently, I am an upcoming freshman majoring in Computer Science at Clarkson University.
My passion is making robots do things that they normally wouldn’t. In particular, I have a
humanoid robot called MANOI that is able to play hockey.

Currently, it has a hockey stick that can detect a puck in front of it, and its ‘skates’ are made out
of lego. It can skate forwards, backwards, left and right.

However, MANOI does not gracefully stride across the ice to score a goal. Instead, it jerkily
moves its leg as it cannot take the risk of falling over, as it has no sensors to sense it if it is
falling or not.

This is a problem because I cannot advance any further with the current supplies. It is easy to
foresee that one day, MANOI will be able to skate graciously. In order to reach this goal, it needs
some additional supplies to be able to do so.

For instance, if I am fortunate enough to win this $1000, I could buy some servos to allow
MANOI to have extra degrees of freedom to move its legs more and take strides. Additionally, I
could add wrists to MANOI to add some flick shots! Many precise gyro sensors could be
purchased to monitor the key servos and employ reinforcement learning to make the skating
motions more optimal for speed, strength, and stability.

When MANOI is able to skate graciously, it will be truly awesome because it would mean that
robots have reached another stage of mobility. At that stage, ultimately, the possibilities of this
are endless.

One of my grand visions is an inspirational exhibit during an NHL game where miniature hockey
robots would be skating around and playing a game, autonomously. The goal would be to inspire
young hockey fans to pursue an education in science, while excelling at sports.

By inspiring the younger generation, we can ensure that more awesomeness will follow in the
years to come, and keep the cycle of inspiration flowing!

I hope it is awesome enough to catch some attention, and maybe even win! The cool thing about this is that I am happy with what I wrote. When I was writing my abstract, it was important to realize, and make others realize, that it really doesn’t matter if it is 100%. If the person writing it is happy with it, then it will go a longer way than if it is 100%.

I must return to more intense finger poking, but I am planning to take a MAKEation for the first three weeks in August! It would be neat to set a goal of blogging every day.

Posted in: Art, Other, Projects, School.

Cool Gear from Honours Program

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, July 13th, 2009

In Clarkson’s Honours Program, for summer research you get $300 for anything related to your research.

In the hobby robotics world, $300 can do a lot of damage!

I just wanted to mention here some of the super cool gear I have gotten from the Honours Program this summer, and how I plan to use it:

Purchase #1 (Sparkfun.com)

• Arduino MEGA ($64.95)
• 2 XBee 1mW Chip Antenna ($45.90)
• 2 XBee Explorer Regulated Boards ($19.90)

Total: $134.65
Remaining: $165.35

So the Purchase #1 was from Sparkfun, and it came in a nice-sized box. I love the Sparkfun boxes because of their colour and ruggedness. It’s like a super cardboard box!

The Arduino MEGA was just something that was needed. Originally, I intended for it to be used with the computer, attached to Processing, but it is being used for the control of MANOI’s servos. I remember I blogged about why I changed, it was a combination of the space, the fact that it fit in the box, and the way the headers are. It is even more better with the new soap boxes!

Two XBees and adapter boards, well that one is hard to figure out (lol). They are going to be used to transmit data from the computer (Processing) to the Arduino MEGA. I really like these boards because of their red colour and surface-mount LEDs, but the fact that it doesn’t work witht he FTDI cable sort of makes me want to use adafruit’s boards. However, I can use adafruit’s boards to program the XBee and use the sparkfun boards for the actual stuff.

Purchase #2A (Pololu.com)

• 0.100″ Breakaway Male Header ($0.99)
• 0.100″ Breakaway Double-sided Male Header ($1.49)
• Power HD Sub-Micro Servo ($9.95)

Total: $17.38
Remaining: $147.97

The normal male headers are needed for just about anything, especially when you are making the proto-boards (which I plan to do for the RGB LEDs). However, the double-sided headers are quite different. These I can use in jumpers to instantly make them male jumpers. It’s much cheaper to do this rather than just buying male headers!

I was supposed to get two servos, but there was a communication malfunction so I only got one. The servos are going to be for ears on MANOI. Ears are a simple, yet effective, way to make a robot show emotions & actions. I don’t really know where this stems from originally, but it feels like Mickey Mouse cartoons really make this evident as he has big ears, bigger than his own head!

Purchase #2B (Sparkfun.com)

• 2 Breakaway female headers ($3.00)
• Gyro Breakout Board – MLX90609 – 300 degree/sec ($59.95)

Total: $69.17
Remaining: $78.00

This has not arrived yet… but I am so PSYCHED to get my hands on a GYRO! Gyro sensors measure rotation. So, I could put this on MANOI and attach/make an interrupt loop so that if it senses that it is falling, it will try to not fall OR maybe I could get it so that a capacitor holds reset low for 5 seconds so the MEGA & SSC-32 would not be on when MANOI falls and bounces. THIS IS SO AWESOME!! I’M GETTING A GYRO!! WOOT! I know you are all jealous!

The two breakaway female headers are also useful to have when proto-ing boards.

So I still have $78.00 left to spend. I still have to buy that second servo, and while I’m at Pololu.com I’ll probably also buy some servo extension cables.

If I have enough money left, I’ll probably buy a second gyro so that I could mount both of them on MANOI’s knees to tell if one leg is falling faster than another.

This is so exciting!!

UPDATE: Purchase #3 was just made

Purchase #3 (Pololu.com)

• Power HD Sub-Micro Servo ($9.95)
• 5 x #780 Servo Extension Cable 12″ Female-Female ($14.95)
• 5 x #785 Servo Extension Cable 24″ Female-Female ($18.75)

Total: $59.60
Remaining: $18.40

Purchase #3 will get me my 2nd servo that I need for the ears, and will give me some servo extension cables that I need for the lights. I wish the servo extension cables cost less, but what can you do.

Posted in: Projects, Robot, School.

Tech Tent!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, July 11th, 2009

If you are in up-state New York today, drop by the Potsdam festival to the Tech Tent!

MANOI will be there playing hockey, and there will be a FRC-like game called Puck Push!

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Projects, Robot, School.

Friday Night Robotics – Arduino a la Soapbox

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, July 10th, 2009

I was always looking for a good place to put Arduinos in. Those black boxes you get from electronic stores were always too heavy and not colourful enough… finally, VOILA! It appears before my eyes…

A SOAPBOX!

How awesome is that? At Kinney’s they come in several different colours:

• Lime green
• Dark green
• Purple
• White
• Blue
• Pink

The lime green is by far the best one.

This is what it looks like on MANOI!

Inside, is an Arduino MEGA!

The only tricky part for the MEGA was that I had to make a hole for the USB cable:

The plastic isn’t the easiest to cut, but it is easy if you have patience. I don’t have patience much, so I sliced my finger with an XActo a bit. It’s not too bad though, and it is an excuse to wear Spongebob bandaids. If you know you can’t do it, I would strongly suggest you get someone that knows how to do it. Otherwise you will hurt yourself

This is sooo cool though!

Wave Shield a la Soapbox:

Ethernet Shield a la Soapbox:

Arduino Diecimila a la Soapbox:

Sanguino a la Soapbox (needs to be cut to fit):

Boarduino a la Soapbox (could probably fit 4 of these in there):

Phewephewphhpweh! The soapboxes only cost $1.49 each.

~~~~

This entire week I was constantly debugging MANOI in order to get it to play hockey again. Midweek my friend lent me her Chinese super glue. I glued myself to the super glue… so I bought some Krazy glue (witht he brush) and some Elmers glue.

I also found some snaps at Walmart which help incredibly to snap on the hockey stick to the hand.

My process was just constantly layering on more and more glue. Once the Elmers dried, I would add more Krazy glue. Once the Krazy dried, more Elmers… etc etc. The goal was to get it working for Saturday morning (the Tech Tent).

Everything did work by then, but it was quite a journey!

Now I am trying to find a way to have MANOI express its feelings (without movements). I was trying to do something along the lines of antennas. Take a look:

I’m not entirely sure though… I mean, doesn’t it look kind of weird?!?!?! It’s more scary than social!

From this angle it doesn’t look too bad:

Does anyone have any ideas/thoughts/comments?

I have also been working on getting my Arduino MEGA multi-cored by connecting with other Arduinos. Basically, the MEGA will only be controlling the servos and the other Arduinos. The other Arduinos would be controlling the LEDs, music, ethernet, you name it.

The thought came to me today that I also can make it so that the MEGA is wireless and communicates to the SSC-32 wirelessly (through an XBee). I am so excited I don’t know what to do first!!!

In the middle of the week I am going to make a blog post about the Nunchuck code People will probably find it handy.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.