MANOI-in-a-box

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Team 229 is heading to a FIRST competition this week- and since I don’t have three tests on one day I can actually go to this one! WOOHOO!

The location of this competition is one of the most awesome ones… APPARENTLY iRobot scouts people there. Meaning, they’re hunting for smart brains to hire during the summer. :XD: Even though I don’t roll with military style robots (they aren’t supposed to be sociable), that’s pretty cool, to be honest.

I figured that it would be awesome to carry MANOI around and just having it wave its arms, with a Team 229 flag (see picture above). I think some High Schoolers may enjoy that.

Transporting MANOI for the past few years has been a hassle… so we finally found a good box with styrofoam stuff in it! The styrofoam is actually really nicely engineered, because it comes cut into rectangles, which means that you can easily customize it. This is how MANOI fits in its new box:

There is room for MANOI’s basic needs in there- the batteries and charger, ping pong balls, USB cables… etc.

The outside needs more stickers, but I have the classic FRAGILE one, and a “Made with LabVIEW” sticker — even though it’s not even relatively made with LV. Hahahaha! I’m thinking of printing out a picture of an Arduino and taping it on there.

The other day, a member of CUARC with a dremel cut a hole in this metal box for me… Can you guess what is on the inside?

IT’S A MINTYBOOST! YAY!

This will provide MANOI’s microcontroller with the power that it needs while cheering on Team 229

I haven’t programmed the motions yet for MANOI, but I can do that in the hotel tonight. I’m thinking that the legs will be stationary, and just have the arms move around. Also thinking of using the Wii nunchuck to control which sensors are being read or something. I will indeed post the code when I make it! =)

Posted in: Art, MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Robot Operating System – turtlesim

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, March 22nd, 2010

The Robot Operating System is a Free and Open Source software bundle of amazing libraries that can be used with your robot. There are oodles of libraries– OpenCV, Wiimote, iRobotCreate (!!! WOOT), NAO robots… and many more.

Installing the ROS has been an interesting process for me. I started with my Mac, which didn’t work (at first), then went to my Ubuntu 7 machine, killed it… Tried again on my Mac, followed everything down to the error that “file is not of required architecture) … Then I had Ubuntu 9 installed, installed ROS… posted a question about a “bug” (more of a misunderstanding on my end ) on the mailing list… and BAM! IT WORKS!

So, all in all:

• Haven’t made ROS work on a Mac yet
• You need to run roscore to initialize the ROS nodes
• This is awesome.

More later!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

A HUGE WAVE OF BLOG POSTS IS ARRIVING!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 12th, 2010

I’m ghostbusting all of the blog zombies out of here to document all of the robotic awesomeness that has happened in the recent history! It’s spring break starting in a few more hours, which totally means MAKEation (a vacation where you MAKE stuff) time! I started this blarg because I wanted to have a record of stuff that I’ve done, so here are some posts that will be arriving, in rough order of future to past:

1. MAKEation Wrap Up (March 21, 2010)
2. Interval MAKEation posts (idk)
3. MAKEation Start! (March 13, 2010)
4. Projects Statii (March 12, 2010)
5. Half of Spring 2010 Photography (For some reason a ton of people on facebook love it when I post the photos that I have taken during the semester, so I figured I might as well post them on here too) (idk)
6. Where I’m at and Where I’m teleporting (aka: where i am and where i’m going – reflection) (idk)
7. Well-Read’edness in Social Robotics (idk)
8. The epic journey of installing ROS on Mac OS 10.6 (idk)
9. BAM! iRobot Create (March 9, 2010)
10. Creepy Furby Hack (FNR – March 5, 2010)
11. Tap-dancing Styrobot? (FNR – March 5, 2010)
12. CMUcam2 in MATLAB (March 2, 2010)
13. coreplot in iPhone Apps (Feb 24, 2010)
14. Proposed ideas for PR2 and ROS (March 1, 2010)
15. Robot T-shirts (Jan 14, 2010)
16. Antarctic Night – Robots from contest to classroom (Feb 11, 2010)
17. Ethical Dilemmas of the 3 Laws of Robotics (Nov 3, 2009)
18. MANOI Walking (FNR – Nov 13, 2009)
19. Girl Scout Robotics Activity (Nov 8, 2009)
20. Shaking hands with a robot (Nov 3, 2009)
21. Learning about ATtinys (FNR – Nov 29, 2009)
22. Elvis + iRobot (FNR- Nov 1, 2009)

w00t! =)

Posted in: Other, Projects.

MANOI dancing to Yankadi

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Near the beginning of the Spring 2010 semester, a small activities fair was hosted for various clubs at Clarkson University. Autonomous Robotics Club originally didn’t have a table, but the orchestra let us have a little piece of theirs… =) Coincidentally, it was right near the Yankadi (west African drumming) club!

MANOI was running the Holiday Xtravaganza program, which made it look like it was ringing its bells in tune to the music!!! It was a really interesting sight to see, music from a robot and music from a group interacting together!

Here is a short video of some clips (mainly focussing on MANOI) of the event:

Music is a form of nonverbal communication, says Captain Obvious. So, it would be really worthwhile in the future to research how robots and humans can interact together through music. Perhaps in some elder care homes, drumming in a group with their personal robot (pets) can be a possibility! Maybe it wouldn’t be as intense drumming as this– it could be playing on a balafon or something.

The current elder generation has been closely tied with music… the radio was really popular back then, TVs weren’t all that common yet. Introducing personal robots into this type of a scenario would make sense, it wouldn’t be too intimidating for the elders since they have been accustomed to music for a very long time.

Here are two more videos of MANOI and Yankadi:

Yankadi is really great music activity since it’s so creative and doesn’t require any rhythm at all (if you’re playing in a big group). Plus, the sound is amazing!

Art and technology!! ^_^

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot, School.

Friday Night Robotics – Creepyyy Furby Hack!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 5th, 2010

Pat (a fellow member of COSI), had an awesome idea of a hack. We could hook up an Arduino to a Furby to make it into a fortune teller! The idea is based off of one of those creepy fortune-telling devices or something.

So he brought his Furby after Fall break, and we opened it up.

Getting the skin off was easier than we thought it would be! Presto:

We did not expect to see as many gears as we did, check it out:

What on earth could all of those gears be for?!!?!

Here’s the wires on Furby’s right side:

Furby’s left side:

After doing some digging through the internet and just poking the Furby, we figured out that…:

• The gears control the movements of the Furby- there’s no microcontroller to do this! (Back side)
• The wires on the right side are for the IR emitter and detector and LDR in the Furby’s forehead (Right side)
• There’s a switch in the tongue! (Right side)
• The motor wires are the ones with the resistors (Left side)
• We still have no idea what those other wires do (Left side)
• The motor doesn’t work with just +5V… Hmmm!!!

Figuring out the motor was a huge roadblock. If we couldn’t figure this out… then it just wouldn’t work! A few months later of Furby sitting on my desk idly staring at me it hit me! I could use MANOI’s battery to power the Furby!

The result:

(Video on Flickr)

We’re still not too sure what to think about the result. It’s hilarious though!! There is motor burning smell when we run it, but nothing is hot. Weird eh!

All we have to do now is hook up the sensors, maybe add a speaker… and this could definitely provide some super lolz!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

PR2 Robot

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, March 1st, 2010

WillowGarage in its recent history announced this amazing opportunity where 10 of their PR2 robots would be given away to various hackerspaces, universities, and companies to beta test.

The PR2 robot is full of amazing and drool-worthy technology. We’re talking about cameras in the arms (which are back drivable) that have a great range of freedom with customizable end-effectors, a base that is mobile and can conquer small obstacles, a modular head with stereo-scopic vision, a 5MP camera, a laser range finder in its neck… and so much software from ROS. For me, I was most surprised about the accessible log hard drive of 1.5 TB, as well as the 2x24GB of RAM. Amazing capability for so much number-crunching power! It’s everything that can be wanted in a high-end research robot!

Clarkson University did send in a letter of intent to the CFP, but didn’t end up submitting the proposal. However, I am able to share the parts of the project that I proposed (and worked on for an incredible amount of time)!

One of the major topics of discussions in robotics today is how to make robots appear as though they can be sociable. To make a robot sociable is to allow it to use natural social cues that interest whomever it’s interacting with– basically giving it an artificial persona. How can we, as designers of robots, make humans believe that the robot has a persona? Why is this important anyway?!?!

In a medical-related field of robotics, where the robot is working with a patient to reach some sort of goal, the patient has to remain optimistic in order for the process to be successful. The presence of an artificial persona within the robot can easily exhibit natural social cues that the patient will understand in order to maintain the level of optimism.

The robot has to appear and behave sociably in order for an artificial persona to be evident and to exhibit understandable social cues to the patient. When the patient understands these social cues, a bond will be created between the patient and robot. By the patient forming a bond with the robot, the process will be transformed into a meaningful task that changes over time as goals are overcome and new problems are tackled.

In order for the robot to exhibit the necessary natural social cues, we envision two main hardware additions that could be made to the PR2 robot:
- Ears, mounted on the top of head bolt-patterns
- Eyebrows, mounted on the side of head bolt-patterns

By allowing the PR2 robot to have ear and eyebrow movements, social cues will be able to be communicated effectively to the patient. This effective communication will be crucial in order for the patient to understand what the robot is trying to express within the process.

Adding two simple features to a robot, ears and eyebrows, adds an incredible amount to the sociable degrees of freedom. It’s so important for a robot to have these added DOF in order to portray that it is an approachable piece of equipment, has a persona and character to it, and is not your everyday robot.

We have to keep in mind that NA culture perceives robots completely differently than that of Japanese culture. In NA, robots are not friendly. In Japan, robots are thought of as heros to humanity. If we can embed the feeling that a robot has some character inside of it, then people will take a different opinion on it. ^_^

Pretty much everyone that I know at Clarkson knew I was trying to write up the proposal for this, and how excited I was at this amazing opportunity! It basically chewed up most of the spare time for 2-ish months (hence no blog posts). It’s sad that we/I never got the chance to show off this idea to WillowGarage via the proposal, but I think some WillowGaragers read this blog… so hopefully they will read this post too, and enjoy it! If any of the winners want to add something like this to their robot, I would be more than happy to help in some way. =)

The ideas in this post are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in: Projects, Robot, School.