roboticist
Latest
Arduino mechs learn RobotC, plot assimilation with Lego Mindstorms
Arduino boards have smoothed the creation of lots of eccentric thingamajigs, but robotics and controllers are still not for the faint of heart. Luckily, RoboMatter is coming to the rescue of would-be roboticists with a public beta version of its C-based RobotC language for Arduino. Joining Lego Mindstorm and other bots, Arduino will get RobotC's straightforward sensor and motor controls, along with a debugger and sample program library, while still keeping its native Wiring language. So, if you want to be a Kickstarter magnate , or just out-weird everyone else, rolling your own droid is now a bit easier.
DARwin-OP does the up, down, left, right DDR shuffle (video)
Some robots like to help around the house, others fulfill your Pixar fantasies, but this one's just training to boogie. Part of a summer long research project, DARwin-OP is taking a master class in Dance Dance Revolution from its amateur roboticist Geppetto. Perched atop a homestyle-DDR pad, the batman-like doppleganger bot does more of a slow shuffle step than full-on Running Man thanks to a slight bout of vertigo -- hence the balance bar. Once that minor kink gets straightened out, expect to see this dancefloor maniac add visual input to its repertoire -- letting televised arrows be its coordinated dance-off guide. Jump past the break for a video demo of the open platform automaton in action.
Wall-E meets his Canadian DJ maker, turns into a real robot toy (video)
What do you get when you cross a dj with a "Canadian roboticist?" An almost true-to-fiction Wall-E, that's what. In this rendition of garbage-bot gone cute, amateur robotics enthusiast DJ Sures (yes, he makes music) hollowed out a U-Command Wall-E toy and fixed him up with some servo guts. The voice-activated, semi-autonomous modjob has a built-in eye camera that recognizes motion, colors and faces, coming the closest we've seen to replicating the CG-romantic. The whole AA-battery powered affair runs on the EZ-B Robot Controller software shown off by Sures in the video below. And unlike other past re-creations, this little guy knows how to get down without the need for sped up video tricks. Clearly, the Pixar-bred bot's become the unofficial icon of the homebrew robotics community, so where's his official counterpart? You listening Disney? Get cracking.
