Automaton

Just in case you'd ever lain awake at night wondering to yourself how you might build a robotic hand you could eat... well, wonder no more.

More information can be found at the MAYA Make group's website. Happy fooding.

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!

How cool would it be to show up at a Halloween party wearing one of this?

Guess what? You can. The trick top hat was created by automatier Dug North and its design is available in MAKE magazine's special Halloween edition. Dug on the hat:

The project requires two costume "coachman's" hats, plywood, some small pieces of wood, two L-brackets, two springs, a brake cable and lever, a cable crimp, some washers and screws, and...brace yourself...a rubber finger puppet. Terrifying!

PS: The description above is from Dug's Automata/Automaton Blog, a great blog with, yes!, a great name (although his automata are of the mechanical figure/object variety and this blog's are of the robotic variety).

iRobot wasn't the only company to introduce new products at Digital Life yesterday in New York City. Spykee, designed by a French company and marketed in the US by Erector (of Erector set fame) may compete with the iRobot ConnectR as an Internet-controlled telepresence robot. Spykee, which will cost $299 when it's released in November, is available in one of three configurations -- which you build yourself. Once built, Spykee can be used as a digital music player, VOIP phone (over Skype), do audio and video, and be controlled remotely as "video surveillance". It also appears to auto-dock for recharging whenever it needs to.

Though this only really appeals to budding mechanical engineers, Spykee might appeal to the young'uns as a robot kit as well as a toy.

What conferences can professional roboticists attend? How can a high school student in Des Moines get involved with a robotics team? What engineering camps can a middle schooler attend? The just-launched RobotEvents.com has put together calendars and directories of all the events your inner robot geek could possibly want to see. Alternatively, those seeking to promote their robotics-related organizations, competitions, and off-season events can advertise them (for a fee) on the site. This is a really nice way to bring all the cool stuff together in one place -- and check out the neat fundraising plan they recommend to teams trying to raise money!

Happy belated Thanksgiving from the Automaton crew -- we hope you had a great holiday!

Thinking of holidays, I'm commissioning an artistically-inclined friend of mine to make me custom Christmas cards this year, and between the two of us we've been investigating ways to incorporate robots. There's a surprising lack of robot cards out there, so it's becoming a DIY venture. For the arts and crafts types among you -- or those hoping to indoctrinate your children with the awesomeness of robots -- you may be interested in these rubber stamps we found:

A company named "Bam Pop!" makes a number of what I can only describe as "cutesy" rubber stamps and other crafty paraphernalia, and they have a few robots on this page. In particular I thought that the "hellobot", shown to the left, could be very versatile for greeting cards.

(Image from bampop.com)

Slightly less cutesy, but still very friendly, is this one from Etsy. I think it wants a hug. I also think the technical considerations of it balancing on a single wheel warrant a discussion.

(Image from etsy.com)

And finally, the Robot Kid from A Muse could not only make a nice greeting card, it could also inspire your child's next Halloween costume.

(Image from amuseartstamps.com)

Why do they all have square heads? I can't think of any robot we've looked at on this blog to date that has a square head.

Anyway! Found any other good stuff for robot arts and crafts? Let us know!

Saturday morning I attended the official kickoff of the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition season. The big reveal of the 2008 game in Manchester, NH marks the beginning of 6.5 weeks of stress, sleep deprivation, and a lot of Mountain Dew for high school students all over the US and in countries like Israel, the UK, and Brazil.

FIRST is the brainchild of iBot and Segway inventor Dean Kamen, and started as a high school competition in a New Hampshire gymnasium. It has now grown to encompass not only tens of thousands of high school students but also middle school and elementary school students around the world through FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST LEGO League, and Junior FIRST LEGO League. Each division has a separate season, regional competitions, and championships.

The game this year is called Overdrive. Six teams (three teams on each of two alliances) are on the field at once with their roughly 34" x 34" x 72", 120 lb robots, and must complete laps around a small track while herding a 40" diameter, 10 lb inflated "Trackball" across a finish line. Points are scored for laps completed, times the Trackball crosses a team's finish line on the ground, times it crosses the line by being "hurdled" over a 6' high overpass, and for teams who manage to balance their Trackballs on the overpass before the two minutes of the round times out. Each year the game is different, and each year a new technical challenge comes up: this year, instead of the standard 15 seconds of completely autonomous operation and subsequent 120 seconds of teleoperation, the 15 second autonomous round may be replaced by a hybrid supervisory control mode, where the robots are largely autonomous but may be retasked by a human player using an infrared remote control on the side of the field. A short animation explaining the game can be found on the NASA robotics website.

Teams receive their kit of parts today, which they can augment further using a limited budget. In late February the robots will be shipped off to regional competitions around the country (as well as in Israel and Brazil) where they will meet in competition with other teams' creations. Winners of the regionals and of several important team awards will go on to the Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.

FIRST is a great way to show high school students how cool robots can be, but it does a fantastic job of achieving its real mission: inspiring students to get excited about and pursue science and engineering. FIRST has academic and industry partners who offer a combined $9M in scholarships every year to the more than 35,000 students who participate in the program and a study from Brandeis University has shown how effective FIRST is in increasing graduation rates, increasing college attendance rates, and increasing the number of students pursuing science and engineering at schools that have formed teams. As the various politicians who attended Saturday's kickoff noted, programs like FIRST are critical to maintaining US competitiveness in the global market for science and innovation.

While it's too late to start a new team for the year -- team registration usually happens in September or October -- it's not too late to get involved as a mentor for these students or as a volunteer at one of the competitions. Find out what's going on in your area!

Korean company Grandport is showing off their really neat Skyschool i-robo robot course kits. There are Beginner, Junior, Senior, and Expert courses, with a few levels within each. Each level has twelve weeks' worth of 90 minute exercises using the kit of parts and a textbook. The courses start with basic mechanism assembly and circuit board use and a proprietary GUI-based programming, and later incorporate Microsoft Robotics Studio integration, sensors, and navigation. The kits can include ultrasonic or IR sensors, Bluetooth modules, and several different types of motors.

Here's a picture of one of the models they had on display. Most of the kits are good for 10-11 different types of models.

PLEN is "the world's first desktop-sized humanoid robot", according to its creators at Systec Akazawa in Japan. PLEN comes in a kit full of parts to assemble your own little humanoid, including accessories like rollerskate feet, and with software that allows you to develop, save, and upload your own unique motions. You then control PLEN through Bluetooth-enabled devices like cell phones or PDAs. Below, PLEN demonstrates his skating prowess. (Here's another video of him, kicking a ball)

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

Given what I last wrote about, this article from Network World is well timed: a startup called Willow Garage out in California is working on an open-source personal robot. From the article:

One of its immediate goals is to build 10 robots and make them available to university researchers as a common platform that can be tinkered with and improved. Willow Garage will also supply "an open-source code base integrated from the best open-source robotics software available"

Cousins reminisced about the time when a teenager might spend all day tinkering with his car. Stricter automobile-safety rules have made that practice a bit risky, but anyone with enough expertise will be encouraged to build on the Willow Garage robotic platform and find new uses for it, just as software developers constantly find new uses for the personal computer.

"We don’t know what the killer applications will be," Cousins said.

This sounds exactly like what the Forbes article was talking about: a personal robot that will enable hackers to find the new uses and abilities that will define the next decades of robotics. This is a more directed approach than other "hacker" robots like the iRobot Create or the LEGO Mindstorm, which are more about education and learning than they are new applications.

Willow Garage looks like an interesting company even beyond this program -- in addition to this personal robot, they're working on autonomous cars and surface craft. That's a pretty broad range of research, but there are enough similarities between the technologies that if they've got the right team of experts, I think some really cool stuff will come out of this.

Image from willowgarage.com/

I recently had a chance to play with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit. I mentioned the Mindstorms in a previous post about robot kits, but this is the first time I've had free reign with one -- and the first time I've used one of the NXTs. Keep reading for the review.