Saturday, November 5, 2011
Japan's latest show robot
The new Japanese humanoid robot HRP-4C displays a range of emotions
(good luck discerning what they are) during a press conference in suburban
Tokyo this week. Naturally, plenty of paparazzi were on hand.
(Credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)(good luck discerning what they are) during a press conference in suburban
Tokyo this week. Naturally, plenty of paparazzi were on hand.
She doesn't havethe grace of a
Cindy Crawford or
Elle MacPherson
(yet), but a few
struts on the catwalk
may help HRP-4C
loosen up and hit her
stride. The walking,
talking girlbot will be getting practice soon, as she's set
to make her catwalk debut at a Tokyo fashion show next
week.
Scientists from Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science
and Technologyreportedly designed the 5-foot (ish), dark-haired creation
to look like an average Japanese woman between the ages of 19 and 29.
Unlike the average Japanese woman, however, HRP-4C has 30 motors
in her body that allow her to walk and move its arms (somewhat loudly
and awkwardly, if the video below is any indication) and 8 facial motors for
blinking, smiling, and expressing emotions akin to anger and surprise.
and Technologyreportedly designed the 5-foot (ish), dark-haired creation
to look like an average Japanese woman between the ages of 19 and 29.
Unlike the average Japanese woman, however, HRP-4C has 30 motors
in her body that allow her to walk and move its arms (somewhat loudly
and awkwardly, if the video below is any indication) and 8 facial motors for
blinking, smiling, and expressing emotions akin to anger and surprise.
framework for the HRP-4C, sans face and other
coverings, will sell for about $200,000, and the
technology behind it will eventually be made public
so people can come up their own moves for the bot.
The government-backed AIST says she's mostly being
developed for the entertainment industry--for use in
amusement parks, for example, or as an exercise
teacher--and is not yet ready to help with daily chores.
So unfortunately for those eager to hire HRP-4C as a
home or office assistant, for now at least, her main job
is to look pretty--or odd, depending on your perspective.
developed for the entertainment industry--for use in
amusement parks, for example, or as an exercise
teacher--and is not yet ready to help with daily chores.
So unfortunately for those eager to hire HRP-4C as a
home or office assistant, for now at least, her main job
is to look pretty--or odd, depending on your perspective.
Robot Love and Obsessive E-bay Packaging
There are few times when E-bay toys exceed expectation. Then there are even fewer times (none before) that the package is arguably better than the toy. Here I'll call it a tie.
Hurricane Polimar
Hurricane Polymar Takeshi Yoroi, a skilled martial artist who fights crime while wearing a special suit and assuming the identity of Hurricane Polymar. When wearing the suit, he has superhuman speed, strength, & agility, and he is immune to bullets, heat, and poisonous gasses. His suit is made of memory plastic which enables him to assume different shapes, including five vehicles known as the Polymar Machine (race car), Polymar Drill (underground burrowing vehicle), Polymar Hawk (jet), Polymar Grandplus or Granpass (submarine), and Polymar Roller (tank).
Bill (bt1) has compiled one heck of an amazing Hurricame Polimer collection! Check out the detailed gallery entries on these rare toys, from the vehicles made by Takatoku to the character made by Grip.
Robotic Spider Melds Legos and 3-D Printing
Lego’s programmable robotics set Mindstorms is a fun toy for computing enthusiasts but if you really want to take it to the next level, check out Mark Weller’s project.
“I wanted to open students’ minds to go beyond ‘let’s put the parts together and program the robot,’” he says. “This project is more than sticking the wheels on a Lego set.” The school uses Lego Mindstorms to introduce freshman students to robotics.
Weller says he created the spider’s legs from 3/8-inch plastic sheet stock on a 3-axis CNC mill. But it can also be made by a 3-D printer such as Makerbot and RepRap.
As the video shows, the robotic spider moves with grace and turns around with flair, even on a smooth surface. Weller has posted the details of his Lego spider project and says he hopes 3-D printing enthusiasts will try it out.
Giant robot spider in Yokohama
On Saturday (April 18) evening, one of the mechanical spiders performed a water dance at Shinko Pier while the other looked on from its perch atop a nearby shipping container. For the performance, the spider moved its mechanical legs and shot steam and water and from its mouth and rear end, while suspended over the water from a large crane. Water cannons, fog machines, lights and live atmospheric music added to the drama.
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On Sunday (April 19), both spiders were scheduled to depart Shinko Pier, take a stroll up Nihon-Odori street, and head back to the red brick warehouse area.
[+]
La Machine's giant spiders will be on public display at Expo Y150 from April 28 to September 27.
Robotic As A Spider
[+]
A pair of giant robotic spiders designed and built by French performance art group La Machine have come to Yokohama to take part in the upcoming Expo Y150, a 5-month festival commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of the city's port.
[+]
Although the Expo Y150 festivities are not scheduled to officially begin until the end of April, the enormous steampunk spiders could be seen prowling the Yokohama waterfront this weekend.
Here is some superb video of the spectacle on Friday (April 17) night, when one of the 12-meter (40-ft) tall, 37-ton mechanical spiders was observed in the red brick warehouse area of Yokohama -- far from its natural habitat of Nantes, France.
Robotic Car with Microcontroller
I wish I could say I had a half-million dollar budget to put towards a Stanford styleGrand Challenge vehicle, but I'm afraid I've already earmarked that money for thermoptic camouflage and bionic calf implants.
Still, it seems like you just can't be a self respecting hacker these days unless you have an autonomous Humvee or two.
So, I decided it would be a worthwhile project to create a smaller scale robotic car. After a quick treasure-hunt under the sofa cusions and a trip to Radio Shack, I had everything I needed. This project looked to be as easy as taking toys from a baby.
Here's a video of the robot car in action (right click and save). Keep reading and I'll show you how you can start making your own.
Overview
In this article, I'll go over the basic design of the robot RC car. I'm saving some of the nitty gritty details for a second post. This will give all you readers some time to come up with a better way of doing things, and it will give me time to beg our palrobogeek to assist me with some CAD drawings of the motor control circuit.
Ingredients
You really just need three things to build the base platform for your robot RC car:
- programmable microcontroller
- cheap RC car
- motor control circuit
If you have one of those nice, servo controlled, proportional speed and steering cars, you can probably skip the motor control circuit and interface directly with the control servos on the car. We're going the cheap route with this howto, though, so we'll be using a very simple RC car and bypassing its circuitry, controlling its motors directly.
The Brains
I chose to use the Basic Stamp for this project because, well, that's what I had handy. You could just as easily use a PICAXE, and OOPic, or maybe even a small embedded PC with a parallel port.
The design I settled on requires 4 I/O ports to control the motors. In the future you'll need more ports to handle sensor data or perhaps a GPS device. It all depends on how elaborate and complex you intend to make your control system. The number of I/O ports available and program storage space will probably determine what you choose for your robot's noggin.
The Brawn
The car I'm using has 2 motors: a smaller on that controls the steering, and a larger one that drives the rear wheels. They both are run off a 6 volt supply.Since I stole this car from a baby, I wanted to make this mod as minimally invasive as possible. All we really care about are the 2 motors and the battery, so I ended up just soldering 6 wires: two to each of the motors and two to the battery connectors. The electronics are completely bypassed and it can still function as a normal RC car when the rest of our setup is disconnected.
The Messy Details
Unfortunately, the Basic Stamp can't source enough power to drive the car's motors directly. Instead, I needed to power the motors directly from the car's battery and use the microcontroller to switch the power to the motors.
Initially this had me thinking about using relays. A little current on the microcontroller side of the relay opens and closes the higher power circuit on the motor side of the relay.
One thing I wanted to be able to do, however, was control the speed of the motor. An easy way to do this is using Pulse Width Modulation, turning the I/O pin off and on quickly to limit the power delivered to the motor over time.
The problem is that I don't think the response time on a relay is fast enough to do this reliably. We need to move away from electro-mechanical switches.I ended up going with a modified h-bridge circuit, similar to Steve Bolt's design. With this transistor based circuit, you can use 2 I/O pins to control the motor.
H-Bridge Modifications
When you supply enough current to the base of a transistor, it becomes saturated and the resistance on the collector drops to almost nothing. In this way, you can use a relatively small amount of current on the base to enable a lot more current to flow through the collector pin.
I found that the Basic Stamp wasn't able to provide enough juice to saturate the transistors in the h-bridge. No-saturation equals increased resistance, which also equals poor motor performance and hot smoking transistors.
So, where 1 transistor is good, 2 are better. I was able to solve the problem by replacing each transistor in the circuit with a Darlington pair. Basically, each transistor gets a buddy that amplifys the input current to its base pin.
The other alteration I made was to add protection diodes. When the motor is spinning and unpowered, it can generate electricity spikes that can force current the wrong way through the transistors and damage the circuit. The protection diodes allow a path for this electricity to bypass the transistors (and the rest of the circuit).
Preliminary Results
I wrote a quick program to drive the robot around and it seems to work really well.
I'm looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions. I'll post a part 2 soon with updates, a circuit diagram, and a starter program that you can run on your own vehicle.
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