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…

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.

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.

Super Sanguino!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

I got my Sanguino yesterday night, so it was time to finally delve in and make one of these awesomeness things! PLUS, I get to do a nice blog post about it.

I’m happy that I got super shipping… I don’t think I would have received it in time otherwise!

See:

It even comes with bubble wrap!

Let’s get started

The board is really shiny, but it is more of an orangey-red than a red-red. However, it is really catchy. Too bad in the end it is covered by all the components though!

See, look how giant the chip is! Sweet!

It’s time to solder. This is the cleanest the soldering iron has been in a few weeks

The SANGUINO silkscreen is easily covered by the DIP…

These capacitors remind me of balloons hehe

It doesn’t have a chip on its shoulder… yet (get it? the 648P isn’t in yet hahaha)

This part was sooo confusing. The instructions said… “Insert the LED on the flat side of the board” or something like that. Flat side? I never knew that there was a non-flat side… BAHA!

If the red LED is not entered correctly, nothing will work…

The proper way to insert the LEDs is… negative, positive and negative, positive. It clearly didn’t say that on my silkscreen At least I only got one of them wrong

Sooo, after cleaning that LED up… it works! YAY!

The software was aggravating to get working, but I did manage to get it to work in the end. I’ll post up my version of the Arduino 12 IDE for Sanguino tomorrow, or something.

The number of outputs and inputs is so astonishing! It even has two TX/RX ports. I’ll probably finish off MANOI and Snowplow robot tomorrow, and think of a way to use the Sanguino in MANOI!

It would be cool to have an IR sensor right now for MANOI, so I could mount it on its stick, but instead I may try two LDRs with LEDs. I have the supplies for that, so I can easily implement a Bayes Filter algorithm to determine if the ball is there or not.

The Bayes Filter algorithm is a form of AI. I’ve been working on a tutorial about the BFA for uCHobby.com for a very long time. (TeX takes a long time to type).

Swweeeet!!!!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Exploring Stanford

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Stanford has an extremely beautiful campus! It’s full with wildlife- like tiny frogs, geckos and palm trees! It’s also a really giant campus – as I found out after playing The Game. (I’ll blog about The Game later). Apart from enjoying the puns on Bread-First Search (BFS) and Death-First Search (DFS) algorithms, I really enjoyed exploring the campus. Usually I took all of these pictures while going Fountain Hopping, but sometimes I just took them while walking to the class!
Fountain Hopping was an amazing activity. Basically, you find a fountain – and you jump in it! It’s so amazingly fun! One time where we went to the fountain outside of the hospital, we were kicked out. It was pretty awkward!
One of my favourite features of Stanford is the beautiful architecture. You really have to see it in real, but I hope my pictures will better illustrate it! The detail and texture is amazing.
The total GB count of all the photos I took is 9.46! But, I only chose the best and uploaded them, so with all the small versions and thumbnails, it totaled to 2.3GB.
There will be way more posts with way more photos! Here are 309 – Hope you enjoy them!! Clicking the image will open it in the lightbox (like normal), but if you click the camera, it will open the high res photos. Please don’t use any of the high res photos without my permission first Thanks!!
Click continue reading for all the pictures

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Art, Other, Projects.

RoboDevelopment Conference more pictures

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, October 28th, 2007

More pictures!! Yay!!!! Check it out!

Posted in: News, Robot News.