Friday Night Robotics – Light

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, January 23rd, 2009

For better or worse, I made a program for BubbleBoy that reacts to a light being turned on.

The program evaluates the light the same way MANOI’s hockey stick did. Once it goes over a particular threshold, it will begin to spin its hat and start saying “HELLO!HELLO!HELLO!”.

At first, I wanted to make BB react to sound, so I dismantled a “haut-parleur” that I got a while ago, thinking that it was a piezo speaker. It’s actually not a piezo, because when I was looking at the analog readings on the Arduino, nothing happened if I fiddled with it. Weird!

When it says on the LCD that I’m at “cheel”, it is hardcoded in. I tried to use the script that downloads a feed, but it doesn’t work for me, for some reason. I commented below that post with my setup and questions. =)

Aah I can’t wait until my Femsapien arrives from the EPFL! It is super boring without a humanoid to work on.

I’m not exactly sure what the moral of this FNR is supposed to be… annoy me and face ‘teh ultimate’ BubbleBoy?! Hahahaha

I’ll add the video later in another post, Vimeo has a wait time of 130 minutes – and YouTube … well who knows about YouTube. o.O

I’m going to be working on an AI Library for Processing with a few people here at the COSI (hopefully). Expect many more posts about that! Woohuu! =)

That’s all for now. *turns lamp off*

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot, School.

Friday Night Robotics

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, December 26th, 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
Best of all… it’s ROCK EM SOCK EM ROBOTS DAY! (Boxing Day)

Just as a fair warning, if this entry has more bizarre grammar mess-ups than usual, it’s because I ate too many jelly beans, and all I can think of is jelly beans! Robot jelly beans, jelly bean slushie, a meadow of jelly beans, jelly bean snow… *goes on and on* I think in pictures… and all I can think of right now is a DANCING JELLY BEAN ROBOT! Hahaha, joking. (Or am I?) ^_^

I hardly realized it was Friday today, so it doesn’t really feel like a FNR.

Last Friday, although I didn’t blog it, I was working on the LEDs that you’ll see on the stick, and the program! This Friday I tested and twirked the program so I can blog it.

Here is MANOI!

Do you notice something different about the stick?

The stick now has two perf boards on it! These perf boards have three yellow LEDs surrounding a LDR which has black construction paper around it.

The reason why I chose these yellow LEDs was nothing scientific. These were the only ones I had where I could have some consistency across the two boards. The LEDs on the left are inside of a yellow casing. The ones on the right are in a clear casing. There is a little bit of a difference in the readings of the LDRs, but they both work the same.

I would have really liked to do a different version of this but with an IR sensor and a FSR, but, as I mentioned above, these were the only things I had, and they will for sure get the job done!

What happens is the LDRs “spit out” a reading of the amount of light around it. I use the cardboard to ensure it is directed at what we want to be observing. When there is no object between the two LDRs, the reading is very high. Yet, when there is an object between the two, the reading drops a fair amount. This is because the LDR cannot sense the light from the opposite LEDs. I also tested this with a fairly white object (my DAD’s lead solder spool (eeew lead)) and it does work, meaning the reflected light from the LEDs back into the LDR (on the same board) does not obscure it. You can see for yourself in the video below.

I tinkered with the LDRs’ amount that it to create a threshold that will trigger MANOI’s shot. From what I learned at Stanford, this is simply called a neuron. It has input values, and if they meet a certain threshold,it will do something. This is a very primitive form of AI, but big things come in simple steps. =)

Here is a video of MANOI action! Pretend that the roll of tape is a hockey puck… it almost looks the same!

It is also on youtube, here.

At the beginning, you see the LEDs flash. This means that the Arduino is soon going to evaluate the LDR levels. It takes five samples from each LDR, one every 500 ms. It then makes an average, which is the baseline used for comparing the LDR value against the threshold.

Yes, I agree, that this can completely become messed up. I will probably implement a markov approach to create (and update) the baseline. However, I’ll probably only do that after I make a modified Bayes algorithm for the AI.

You might have noticed something different about MANOI’s other hand. I’m giving it a gripping claw so that it can grip stuff. It won’t be meant to hold on to anything precious, but it could emphasize an effect here or there.

While I was adding on the boards, there was just not enough room for all of the stuff that I needed… like +5V and -Gnd. I made a thing with headers and inverted headers so I can easily plug it in!

It saves much needed space on the wave shield:

Just to add, today I was using an Arduino with an ATmega328.

There are more pictures that you can look at in this photoset on Flickr!

This project is almost finished! I just will add in an algorithm improving the AI, make more videos… and that’s it! I will continue the project later on, though with a few more things. I’ll add servos that can rotate the leg so I can make the robot actually skate, and many more things that I am still thinking of.

Can you believe that the Trossen Robotics robot contest deadline is really soon? Yikes!!
I just have to take a few more videos and work out what I will say in my post… what do you think the judges will be looking for? Hopefully it won’t end up like BubbleBoy in crabfu’s competition… x_x

Though, when crabfu was on Daily Planet (I actually saw it on TV (like two months before all of the robot websites started to go crazy over it), not on youtube) he described his robots as having character because you can interact with them through a control pad.

I think that is completely opposite, because then it is just the human expressing their character through a machine. When you don’t have to use a remote, yet the robot still interacts with its environment, that’s when a robot truly has character. :d

Now we know why BubbleBoy obviously lost… He can have his definition, and I’ll have mine. His works are very interesting though! I never knew you had to start a fire to make a steam thingy move. I figured you would just boil water or something… hahahaha (I never thought as far as you would need fire to make water boil, though… EPIC NOT-WIN!) XD

I hope you really enjoyed this blog post. It makes a lot more sense now that one can see what the finished robot will look like!

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Friday Night Robotics – Snowed Out!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, December 12th, 2008

Well, this FNR I really did not do much, so I figured I could blog about the snowplow robot I’ve been working on.

It’s basically the line following robot I started at Stanford. It has a gearbox, which is held in place with a micro servo, so it can turn and stuff. On top of the gearbox is another micro servo to lift the snowplow. All of the wheels are from lego…

The micro servo doesn’t lift the plow in reality, but I wanted to see if it could. Hahahaha! I bought a Futaba servo, which is 4x bigger than a micro servo, so it should work.

The snowplow is going to be pretty simple once I waterproof it all, it will just push snow. The grey part you see on the bottom of the plow are XACTO knife blades, so it can cut through the snow. ^_^

While making this, an idea of a roomba-like snowblower came to my mind. But, a robot snowblower would be too dangerous. To set the scale, I’m thinking about a robot that would be around 30cm tall, 20cm long, 20cm wide. If some of us can barely operate snowblowers SAFELY… what makes anyone think that our stupidity would decrease if we were given less control? I could just see some bozo leaving an autonomous snowblower clear the driveway when a few people are walking along and… well, you get the point. It’s too dangerous, you would have to have so many sensors on it to ensure safety, and even then it’s not guaranteed.

All of this snow is bogging down the blogging! Snowplow robot to the rescue! :->

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Friday Night Robotics – Adventures with ATmega328

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, December 5th, 2008

During the week I was testing various things and shields to see if they worked okay with the ATmega328. The wave and motor shield worked okay, but the WiiChuck library did not.

I don’t even think it’s a problem with the new avr-gcc or the board- the code for the shield is made for Arduino 0012, whereas the WiiChuck library wasn’t. Lots of people have problems with Arduino 0012, it has so many bugs compared to Arduino 0011.

My plan is to have two Arduinos going: the 328 would be controlling the SSC-32 and the Wave shield. It would listen for input, maybe a few numbers, and move the robot accordingly. The numbers would be sent from the other Arduino, which is using the WiiChuck code.

I can actually expand on this idea more and get another few Xbee Kits and an Xbee so that the two Arduinos could talk wirelessly.

Here’s a picture of when my ATmega168 flew under a cabinet-thing =) :

Oh yeah! I’m getting a Sanguino with super shipping, so it should be here really soon! Thanks E.V. =) =)

(Then I’ll have to re-think my robot AGAIN! Hahahaha)

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

¬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.