This is a project I’ve been thinking on for a very long time. Shortly explained this is a sphere shaped hexapod that I plan to give the following features:

• Roll freely like a ball
• Have different sort of locomotion for moving in any direction
• Variable inner-body dimensions
• Transform from a sphere shape into a hexapod and vice versa
• Walk like a hexapod

Before I started to make any exact sketches or started building anything, I shared my ideas with my friend Jeroen Janssen (Xan). We talked about this project when I visited him in Netherlands this summer. At first I was thinking of using a fixed sized inner body with 6 x 4 DOF legs, similar to what I used for the T-Hex hexapod. Another problem was finding a sphere shaped material that I could use. Jeroen and I went to a local toy-shop and I just asked him to look for ball-shaped object. After a little while Jeroen had found a globe! At that moment I got the feeling that using a globe could actually work. After a few months and some searching in different book and toy-shop’s I found a 28cm in diameter globe from Toysrus. It was also cheap and the plastic material seemed to be relative solid (about 3mm thick).

I’m cutting out 12 identical sphere parts. Using a simple handsaw and cutting along the lines of the Longitude every 60 deg. The line of equator was made of 1mm thick dark blue plastic band and was very easy to remove, that resulted in a perfect clean edge too! Here are some pictures of the sphere parts:

The map coating was very easy to peel of. The trick was to preheat the surface carefully and then start in one corner and just peel off the whole layer. To the left is the original part. The middle part has the globe/map layer peeled off and the right part is sanded by hand. As you can see the material is very transparent, I do have some future ideas of mounting several LED’s for some cool lighting effects.

 Morphing inner-body:

The principle is very simple. I’m using one digital 5645 servo in the centre of the body, the servo holds two delrin gears.

I’m using 7x of the LPA gear sets from Lynxmotion.  One gear with SES holes is mounted to each of the 6 outer body sections.

This construction makes it possible to adjust the body dimension by about x2 using only one servo.

The main reason for making the body like this is to hopefully make some more free space for each leg when the robot are in the walking mode. Even with the increased body size the legs are still going to be highly restricted in free motion caused by  the large sphere parts, but I think it will work I’ve already done some changes to the body section, like replaced the 1,5 mm aluminium parts used on the 6 outer sections to 2mm for more strength and stability. And also some more stuff like an holder for electronics.

There is still a lot of work left and I’m currently working with assembling all the legs. In total there will be 31 servos, 12* 5990 + 19*5645.

A little update on MorpHex (2010/11/19)

I just wanted to post some minor updates. I’ve added two decks (acrylic, I’m not sure to be honest) that are going to hold the electronics on one side and the battery on the other side:

       

One big challenge was to guide the power wires from the battery from one side to the other due to all the gears and the outher (variable) body parts. I solved it by carefully drill a hole through the battery-deck and inserting two brass tubes.

The power wires are going to be guide through these brass tubes. The tubes protects the wires from being crushed between all the gears. That would be very messy using LiPo power.. 

Picture from the battery-deck:

   

Talking about LiPo. I’m considering to apply the 5990′s directly to the LiPo without any regulators. So I’m using some self-made power distributors, the principle is very easy. Only ground and signal are connected to the SSC-32. A picture of the power distributors:

I’m using an ARC-32 board. Its from Basic Micro.

For making the hexapod work with a variable sized body there are some math to do, simple trig (law of cosine). The input value to the math algorithm is the angle of the inner body servo. Then you’ve to calc the new bodyradius and a new coxaoffset. When you have the body radius its pretty easy to find the new body dimensions (coordinates) for a circular body.

After that you need to adjust the positions of the feet corresponding to the new body radius. In the walking gait you can re-set the inital positions when the leg is lifted.

Next step is to work more on the code (sphere mode) and start mounting the actual sphere parts.

The post MorpHex Project – Morphing Hexapod – By Kåre Halvorsen – 81020 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

The TROLLLER 1D is an educational/hobby robot that can crawl (like a caterpillar) or curl itself into a circle and roll itself around.

The TROLLER 1D is my newest robot project. The concept uses a series of simple ‘links’ to make up the TROLLER. Its locomotion can be similar to that of a caterpillar or snake while laying flat, but the novel concept is that it can roll itself into a large circle and still propel itself (like tank treads) by shifting links in the proper sequencing.

Video demonstrating the TROLLER changing shape from round to oval and slowly moving forward about 1 revolution.

TROLLER 1D Prototype Test

Troller Prototype Images 

I laser cut and assembled a complete new TROLLER prototype.

I made this version wider, to make it more stable.  Then I doubled up some of the servos to get extra torque at the master link.

I still have countless hours of programming ahead of me; but a after a short while I was able to get it a complete revolution out of the new prototype.

TROLLER 2nd Iteration Prototype

Although the new prototype demonstrates my need for better servo motors and equipment it also is teaching me more about how to make this TROLLER go round-and-round.

The goal of this project is to refine the second iteration prototype design into a functional robotic product kit. The first version will be the TROLLER 1D. This version of TROLLER will only be capable of moving along 1 dimension. By limiting the focus of this project to a single dimension, I will be able to perfect the initial two concepts –’Propulsion by Self Rolling‘ and ‘Crawling‘.

Propulsion by Self Rolling works by shifting the links in sequences to rotate itself around the perimeter. To refine this concept the TROLLER 1D will use motion sensing capabilities like the sensors found in a Wii remote (accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors). These sensors will allow the control programming to learn how to roll at different speeds, how to change directions, and how to transition into crawling mode. Crawling propulsion will be achieved by mimicking the movements of a caterpillar. Proper sequencing of the servos will allow smooth transitioning.

TROLLER First Full Servo Test 10-24-12

Mechanical design: I will begin this effort by refining the mechanical link design into a ‘Master Link‘ and ‘Link Units‘. The ‘Master Link‘ will enclose the main controller, motion sensing & wireless communication circuitry, a battery pack, and servo motors. The ‘Link Units‘ will have servo motors and additional battery packs It would then take 1 Master Unit and 3 or 4 Link Units to make up a full TROLLER 1D.

Below is drawing showing the newest CAD layout and the design I’m putting together now. Click On The Images to enlarge.

Motion Sensing & Control:  The main controller will be responsible for controlling the TROLLER 1D.  It will use wireless (Bluetooth or WiFi) communication to the host PC and motion sensing electronics to measure acceleration and rotation, while rolling.  This circuitry will be designed during the project phase.

This Kickstarter effort will provide the funding needed to further develop the motion sensing and locomotion concepts and turn my crude prototype into a functional product kit.  The funds will be used to purchase and test more powerful servo motors, micro-controllers, motion sensing circuitry, wireless Bluetooth or WiFi modules, and the hardware needed to assemble the TROLLER.

More Resources About This Project – http://kck.st/JO98iM

The post TROLLER – Cylindrical Robot Project appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

About This Project

Here is “InMoov”, the robot you can print and animate. You have a 3D printer, some building skills, This project is for you!! This is a hand builded for a job (still picture commercial), it was supposed to be mobile but not animated and mostly be able to take human hand positions. Cables or fishing rods might be added in order to control it, but it was not the purpose of this work at first. I am now working on another model(for the fun), trying to animate it, I really would like to do it with computer control but I have never worked in that field.

It has evolved quite a bit since I started with designing the hand. Both arms are now functional with a torso and a head. I am using two Arduino boards controlled through MRL.

With the help of Myrobotlab and GroG, we will be trying to make the robot see and grab objects after a voice command.

This hand was printed on a 3D Touch and designed in Blender, controled through Netfab and sliced with Kisslicer.

RESOURCE Files (3D Printable Files ) and Necessary Software

In this project first we recommend you to download all necessary files, software etc. Examine them first then follow the steps.
Here are the links to download free robotic resources of this project.

-Download GLC PLAYER Software: If you are not familiar with .STL file format download this free software (http://sourceforge.net/projects/glc-player/)
This is GLC Player, it will open .SLT file format which is 3D printable document format. (Please recommend us if there is a better software)

 -Download .SLT Files for Robotic Arm of INMOOV –  RIGHT HAND – After downloading this  zip file open it to a folder and you can browse .stl files with GLC Player. Here you will find RIGHT HAND fingers, etc. parts which you can print with a 3d printer.

 -Download .SLT Files for Robotic Arm of INMOOV –  LEFT HAND – After downloading this  zip file open it to a folder and you can browse .stl files with GLC Player. Here you will find LETF HAND fingers, etc. parts which you can print with a 3d printer.

 -Download .SLT Files for Robotic Arm of INMOOV – ROTATIONAL WRIST – After downloading this  zip file open it to a folder and you can browse .stl files with GLC Player. Here you will find WRIST parts which you can print with a 3d printer.

VIDEOS About Inmoov Animatronic Hand Robot

Here are some videos about inmoov, in these videos you will see the assembled robotic hand and arm.

Video Working on Right Robotic Hand – Part 1   

Video Robotic Left Hand Details and Fingers moving with cables – Part2

Video Robotic Right Hand Improvements and Servos for Fingers – Part 3

Animatronic Fore Arm And Hand Assembled and Connected to Computer Video – Part 4

 Robotic Arm Attached to Shoulder and Working – Part 5

Testing Robotic Hand and Wrist with Servos – Part 6

Robotic Hand Grabbing a Ball – Shoulder, Arm, Hand Assembled to Function Together – Part 7

Robotic Arm Improvements on The Biceps – Part 8

InMoov Arduino Animatronic Robot Hand 3D Printer – Part9

Assembly Sketchs Robotic Arm 

Click on the images to enlarge…

For More help on Assembly – http://inmoov.blogspot.com/p/assembly-help.html

OTHER RESOURCES For This Project

This Projects Blog – http://inmoov.blogspot.com

Software For This Robot – http://myrobotlab.org/service/inmoov

Forum of This Project – https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/inmoov

Converting STL Files into CAD Problem

http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=34865

http://www.solveering.com/products/products_stl2step.html

https://sketchfab.com/search/inmoov

The post Humanoid Project INMOOV appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Target audience of Veterobot

At the first step we are targeting researches in robotics, artificial intelligence and computer vision as well as hobby robotics enthusiasts. For this purposes, we identified and addressed the following key requirements:

-should be complete open (hardware and software)
-equipped with typical and widely used set of sensors
-easy customizable to integrate new or different types of sensors and actuators
-energy efficient yet powerful on-board computer
-provide bi-directional communication link to transmit sensor and control data in real-time
-set of software modules which support distributed data processing and provide hardware abstraction layer.
-considerably lower cost comparing to the similar available products

Chassis and body

We are using Dagu Rover 5 Tracked Chassis with two motors and two quadrature encoders.
The whole body is 3D-printed and provides:

– rotated “head” (to mount camera on it)
–  folding mast for EMS-sensitive sensors (such as, for example, digital compass)
–  place for exchangeable batteries
–  “doors” to access the inside electronic connectors
–  extension options for additional electronic, sensors and actuators

Application of the 3D printing significantly simplifies customization of the body. In addition, it opens the natural way to integrate new types of sensors and actuators. All 3D models are developed using popular open-source modeling tool Blender. All the models required to print the body are also available as open-source. The following set of pictures provides some examples:

The first two pictures shows our current model and the last two represent rendered 3D models of the alternative bodies we are currently working on.

Sensors and on-board electronic

In the full configuration the following sensors are available:

• four ultra-sound range finders (on the sides, front and back)
• two video cameras
• pan/tilt compensated digital compass
• GPS receiver

The front sonar and cameras could be mounted on the “head” which is rotated by the servo motor. All peripheral devices are connected to the on-board computer over USB and connectors provided by the daughter board. Current robot version uses TI’s BeagleBoard-xM as on-board computer. BeagleBoard is an open-hardware embedded computer with dual-core CPU (ARM+DSP). It provides enough power to compress video stream with H.264 codec in real-time, control the hardware and run advanced navigation algorithms. We are using standard in modeling domain Nigh batteries. For development, the robot could be powered with external power supply.

Connectivity

Robot is equipped with the IEEE 802.11 b/g/n WLAN-Adapter. Currently, we are testing the operation mode with 3G-Modem (UMTS). It is already possible (there is an available software) to remotely control the robot over the Internet using real-time video streaming from on-board camera. Of course, the autonomous operation mode is also possible. In particular, we support cloud-robotics paradigm: complex navigation algorithms could be executed on external powerful computer if the on-board computer does not provide enough performance.

Software

The whole software is open-source and is available on git-hub. We offer the complete stack from operating system up to communication infrastructure and client-side user interface and visualization applications.

• -We provide customized image based on popular Angstrom Linux distribution which is optimized for the the BeagleBoard.
• -We are using Xenomai Linux real-time extension for motor control and other time-sensitive tasks.
• -Sensors and actuators are remotely accessible (over the network) using corresponding software components.
• for all remoting purposes we are using ZeroC’s Ice (Internet Communication Engine) middleware.
• it allows developers to use wide range of programming languages (C++, Python, Ruby, Java and all .Net-languages) to develop own software components.
• Ice also supports different communication paradigms such as for example Publisher/Subscriber, RPC-stile remote invocations, etc. It provides great flexibility for developers when designing own software components.

There is an OpenGL-based application “cockpit” available to remotely control the robot manually. Sensor data (including video from cameras) are rendered in real-time and control commands are sent back to the vehicle. Keyboard and USB joysticks are supported as control devices. The following picture illustrate the current version of the cockpit application.

To demonstrate how to develop solutions for typical problems from robotics domain using our platform we implement several homework assignments from “Programming A Robotic Car” online course taught by Prof. Sebastian Thrun. These examples illustrates the applicability of our platform in educational domain. In particular, comparing to popular LEGO Mindstorms systems, our system offers more computational power and more flexible set of software building blocks to solve typical robotics problems. Cloud-robotics and distributed autonomous robotic systems are promising future directions. Our platform is the step towards this direction and our customers could benefit by reusing our software and hardware and concentrate on their areas of competence.

MAIN STEPS

We are constantly developing and improving our robot. As a result, the building instructions could quickly become outdated. However, our project wiki is kept up to date. That is why we decide to provide here high-level overview of required steps and refer to the corresponding wiki articles for more details.

If you decide to build the robot yourself, here are the main steps to accomplish:

STEP 1 – 3D print the robot’s body.

Currently we are using Ultimaker 3D printer. All the models (original Blender files and generated STL files) are freely available from our git repository.

Download 3d Files for parts of the image below:

For This Project Web Site: – http://veterobot.com/

For Assembly Instructions: – https://github.com/veter-team/veter/wiki/assembling

This Project’s Blog:  http://veter-project.blogspot.com/

The post Veterobot Project appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.