Automaton

Hexapod robots have long fascinated roboticists, and now you can find the six-legged creatures swimming in the Caribbean or harvesting timber in Finland. There's also a legion of do-it-yourselfers creating their own hexapods just because it's fun.

One of them is J. de Vries, a 42-year-old webdesigner from Neustrelitz, Germany. When he's not taking care of his daughters (15-month twins), de Vries works on Marvin, the hexapod in the image below.

Marvin uses nine Atmel microcontrollers (ATmega16, 32, and 64) and 20 servomotors. It's only 30 to 40 percent finished, de Vries says, adding that he plans to include some onboard sensors after perfecting Marvin's locomotion.

"I don't have any degree in engineering and I never saw an university from inside," de Vries says. "But since I was 12 years old, my dream was to build a robot. ... Last year I learned a lot about microcontrollers, servomotors and the required electronics while building a quadcopter with brushless motors. And that was the beginning of realizing my old robot dream."

De Vries has a web page with videos, images, and technical details on Marvin (in German).

The National Underwater Robotics Challenge [warning: frames, marquees, and other non-standard HTML abound], sponsored by Honeywell Hometown Solutions, is held yearly at Chandler High School in Arizona. Teams of students of almost any age can work together to build a remotely operated vehicle capable of performing some sort of underwater mission -- the 2008 competition (to be held next June) requires the ROVs to work around a crashed plane carrying vials of an important medicine and perform a number of tasks.

In addition to a neat "how-to" page full of cheap ways to design and build subsystems for the ROVs, the organization now sells a complete ROV kit of parts, complete with instruction manual, for $250. Even if you're not part of the competition, this would be a neat thing to explore a backyard swimming pool or lake!

Check out some of the videos of the missions to see what the students have done.

One of my coworkers, Mike Cimpher, built this little biped in 2001. He says it consists of "12 servos, 2 ICs and an accelerometer." Being an artist as well, his video does a really neat job of showing the transition of development -- from something that falls apart all the way to something that stands up and walks.

Each year I get a handful of family members and acquaintances asking if I know about any robot kits their kids or grandkids might like for [insert winter holiday of choice here]. Since I know the question is coming from one of my uncles this year (howdy, Uncle Jim!), I figured I'd head it off at the pass and write it all down now for anyone else who's asking the same question.

So after the jump, ladies and gents -- the Automaton Guide to Robot Kits, Version 1.0!

We've all had those days when we suddenly say to ourselves, "Gosh, I wish I had my very own Predator drone. The things I could keep under surveillance! The neighbors I could buzz! Yes, my life is empty without it." Fortunately, for people like us, there is DIY Drones, a site dedicated to telling you how to build your own unmanned aerial vehicle for under $1000 using things like LEGO Mindstorms kits or BASIC Stamp kits to add navigation and other behaviors to RC airplanes.

Via MeFi. Photo from diydrones.com

From the creator of the Yellow Drum Machine comes this pair of robocars that can turn a living room into a furniture-ridden racetrack.

Here's how fritsl, the maker, describes the hardware and control:

Wall Racers was made by 2 cheap (and crap driving) RC cars. I gave them sensors (SRF05), tuned with an extra battery, and gave them own logic / "robot-brains" (Picaxe 28).

Primary target is to stay close to the wall, drive fast, and overtake the other :)

He says he wants to market this as a toy (he's looking for partners), which sounds like a great idea. In the meantime, you can find instructions here to make your own.

If you've got two iPhones and a LEGO Mindstorms kit, you too can build your very own iPhone-controlled LEGO rover. Just check out what they've done over at BattleBricks; they provide the LEGO model and source code for you to join in the fun. Basically, one iPhone generates color patterns on the other iPhone's screen that the NXT brick can recognize and respond to.

Now imagine what they'll be able to do with the 3G iPhone's GPS receiver...

Via Ars Technica