BotDev

Deskbot Prototype

Tolga — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:14:52 +0000

This is the prototype of our new project. Most of its functions are secret for now, but basically this is a robot built to navigate on a desk environment without falling down or bumping in to objects.
It is communicating with your computer through bluetooth to accomplish various tasks.
As the last piece of information I will tell for now, the robot is able to organize your items on your desk in a virtual grid to keep your desk clean. (isn’t that what we all need?)

Here is a sensor testing video;

Deskbot Prototype from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Night Vision Goggles

Tolga — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:49:46 +0000

Well this is my first non-robot post to the blog. Tho you can consider it as a robotic project if you think that it is a device replacing a couple of human light sensor with an electronically augmented version. The goggles are mostly made of scrap material. It includes an IR sensitive small security camera, a couple of video glasses and some high-power infrared led. The rest of the goggles are from parts extracted from other broken electronic devices, including the box (which used to be the back cover of my old printer).
The working principle is simple, it uses IR lighting, which can’t be seen by naked eye, but can be seen with an IR sensitive camera. The camera projects the image to the video glasses and the result is being able to see even in complete darkness.
I’ve seen a couple of try on this subject on web, people made night vision scopes by using broken camera modules. Tho they were only providing image for a single eye, while this version is providing the image to the both eyes. Construction may be a little more expensive, but it is definitely worth it.

The purple light coming out from the leds is not visible to naked eye.

Vacuuminator, the home-made vacuum cleaner robot

Tolga — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:37:07 +0000

Hey there robot lovers,
The vacuum cleaner robot on the previous post is now complete and here are some pics and a video.
At the moment I am working on a docking station for the robot to charge itself and automatically clean the house every day, at the same hour. It will be awesomelicious.

This is the prototype circuit, we will print a new circuit now.

And here is a video that you can see how vacuuminator tracks items (couch and table in this example) in order to clean the edges and corners.

Vacuuminator, the home-made vacuum cleaner robot from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Vacuum Cleaner Robot

Tolga — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:17:01 +0000

I am bad at keeping the house clean. While we build new robots we screw up the house, and I hate the vacuum cleaning after every damn project. To take care of this situation, we have decided to build a vacuum cleaner robot. The great thing about this project is that once it is complete this robot will vacuum all the mess it has created during its development. Something like ERKE DÖNENGECİ. Or not.
The robot is being completely built by scrap materials, mostly recycled from broken vacuum cleaners.
Vacuum mechanism is from an handheld small vacuum cleaner, the casing is from a big rowenta vacuum cleaner, it will have 2 heavy duty gear motor and the A.I. will be written with arduino.

Here, a few pic from the development, it will look cooler, after the paintjob.

These are the gearmotors and the prototype circuit board of the robot.

This can give you a clue about its final appearance:

Jeffrey the Quadruped Finalized

Tolga — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:58:45 +0000

Hey robot lovers,
This is the final version of our quadruped Jeffrey. We have removed the prototype circuit with the boarduino, printed a new circuit. And a protective case has been added on the circuit board. As a final touch we have added sound effects, blinking green eyes and a few random animation to the robot. Plus now the robot is powered by a lithium polymer battery, instead of 4 AAA + 1 9V battery, which decreases its weight and allows it to move faster.

Jeffrey the Quadruped Finalized from MrBeaver on Vimeo

Jeffrey the Quadruped

Tolga — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:51:57 +0000

Jeffrey is a really small quadruped robot, which is actually a pre-research for our next hexapod project. It is built in 1 night (hell yeah \m/).

This is an old video of it, you can observe that Jeffrey is actively avoiding items with a “fearing” motion.

Jeffrey the Quadruped from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

This is a newer video. You can see that the walking and rotation patterns are upgraded and the robot is much more balanced. And in an addition to its obstacle detection, now it is able to detect edges of the surface he is on, in order to avoid falling down.

Jeffrey the Quadruped / Edge sensing tests from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Building a new hexapod

Tolga — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:07:47 +0000

Hey there robot lovers. We have just started building a new hexapod. It will be a really small and agile one. Here is a test video of one of the legs of the robot. Btw, let me warn you, we were quite caffeinated while shooting the clip.

Hexapod Leg Test from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Solar Hopper

Tolga — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Making a robot jump is a hard task. Making it jump with solar energy is harder. Well this solarbot prototype jumps about 4-5 cm high, by using solar power. It uses a 1381 solar engine. Pumps the energy to a modified servo (circuit and pot is removed, its basically a gear motor now). The servo arm pulls the upper body of the robot down, which is attached to the legs with a spring, and releases once it reaches to the maximum position. This way the legs quickly hit the ground in order to make the solarbot jump.
I am only uploading the photos now, since the video with the desk lamp is so slow and will get you bored. I will upload a video once I can catch some sun light. COME ON SUN, ITS ALMOST SPRING, SHINE ALREADY. For the love of cyber gods, Its all cloudy lately, I am as depressed as my poor solarbots.

Sebastian 3000

Tolga — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Haven’t you ever wanted to have a robot servant? Serving around sandwiches and cookies at your cool parties? Yes, I know you did. And here he is! Sebastian 3000, your immortal non sleeping servant that will cheer up every party you throw, or will kill you in your sleep with his ultimate mustache of destruction if you forget turning it off.
Anyway, Sebastian 3000 is a sanguino powered robot, with 2 hardcore tank treads driven by 2 gigantic gearmotor (a lovely set from solarbotics). he has 2 servo in his neck in order to let him look almost any angle he need. He can create maps of his vision by scanning the environment angle by angle with its infrared rangefinder. Plus he is using an awesome high speed obstacle avoidance algorithm in order to find his way in a complex party environment with many moving obstacle (we call them humans).
Here, a couple of photo:

And a video, as a test run it carries some tools. Imagine them as a bunch of delicious cookie.

Sebastian 3000 from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Solar Frog Mark IV

Tolga — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:04:00 +0000

The last step in solar frog evolution, the mark IV. It has a cnc cut plexiglass legs and body. The circuit board is printed to fit it perfectly in the design (thanks to Jim Qode for his ultra tiny board design). It uses 2 solarbotics high quality solar cell which creates a total of 10.5V in direct sunlight, and the high voltage average lets the robot work under weakly lighted places.
Here are some photos:

And here is a video under a weak lighting. The bot runs much faster under direct sunlight (in theory of course. Lately its cloudy and rainy every day. I guess it has something to do about the earths angle/coordinate relation with the sun. Oh wait, its called winter! )

Solar Frog Mark IV from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Solar Frog

Tolga — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:47:00 +0000

Hey guys, I have been developing a new solar walker (hopper) on my free times. I have built 4 of them, by improving on each version. I finally came up with the latest version of my new bot Solar Frog mark IIII.
Here is the design:

Here is a video of mark III. I dont have a video for the final one, but I will upload it soon. (the new one has awesome plexyglass legs and body)

Solar Frog Mark III from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Rock & Paper & Scissors in Amber 08

Tolga — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:13:00 +0000

We have joined to the exhibition Amber 08 ( http://www.a-m-b-e-r.org/ ) with our robot arm playing Rock & Paper & Scissors. I don’t have the photos and videos from the exhibition yet, but check out these final photos of the robot with the protective stand we have prepared *winks to Kemal and Gulay* for the exhibition.

Unnecessary calculations, “Was the protective stand really required?” We have done some tests with 10 subject and reached these calculations:
- %60 of the subjects tried handshaking with the robot
- %20 gave the robot a high five
- %10 spilled coke on it (this wasn’t a part of the experimentation, happened randomly, but still.)
- %10 of the subjects tried pulling its finger, while hoping it will respond by farting. (I have decided not to see that subject again.)

Rock, Paper and Scissors Robotic Arm

Tolga — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:20:00 +0000

We have finally completed the plexiglas mechanics and built the real arm. And Jim Qode has completed the camera tracking functions. The only thing left is integrating them together. Here is a video of the test movements of the final arm.

Rock & Paper & Scissors Playing Robotic Arm from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Mars Roller, Solar Stinger and Solar Juggernaut

Tolga — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Ive made these 2 little and 1 giant solarbots a few month ago. But somehow I forgot to post them to the blog. Here they are;

Solar Stinger. Uses two serial attached 4.5v solar panels. Which lets him collect the voltage required even on weak desk lamps. It uses two pager motors to vibrate its legs to move:

Mars Roller. This guy is a really small solar roller, which quite looks like the mars rollers. It uses a 0.33 F gold capacitor, a really efficent gear motor (that I stole from a small broken r/c car of my cousins (melkur, sinkur, wink) ) and a 6v solar panel. This guy charges in 30-40 seconds under direct sunlight, and cover about 10-15 meters at once. I know, its neat.

Solar Juggernaut. Probably the biggest solarbot Ive built. I came to building a big solarbot idea once I figured out that solarbots with small wheels can not move on grassy environments. But the idea behind building a solarbot is building a small life form that can take care of himself, by feeding on sunlight, avoiding dangerous obstacles etc. And since most of the life forms in nature, has adapted moving on grassy surfaces, Ive decided to build a big and tough solarbot, which can endure many physical damage, and be able to move on grass with its giant wheels.
Solar Juggernaut has 2 walkman geat motors, 2 solarbotics 70 mm rubber wheels, 2 giant 4.5 volt 150mA solar cells and 2 separate operating solarengine that has been completely covered with hot silicone (which makes it water proof. you know. there is something troublesome called rain, in nature.) One day I plan freeing this guy by releasing it in a field or something. It would be awesome if I could add a light weight gps tracker.

Rock, Paper and Scissors

Tolga — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:34:00 +0000

We have recently started building a robotic arm, with Jim Qode. This arm will track your hand movements with a cam, and will play the rock, paper and scissors game with you, in a realtime action.
Here are a few photo and video from the development stage. The hand here is the test version, the final one will be more eye candy, as the mechanic parts are designed digitally and will be prepared on a cnc machine with plexiglass sheets.

We have used a Sanguino kit to be able to control all the servos.

Test video of the hand movements:

Rock, Paper and Scissors Robot from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Zvicnik, the Quadropod

Tolga — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:48:00 +0000

We have finally got time to finalize the quadropod on my previous post. And now we have started building a smaller quadropod and a tiny hexapod at the same time.
Here is a video from Zvicnik (got the name from the sound he makes)

Zvicnik the Quadropod from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Arduino Operated Quadropod

Tolga — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:23:00 +0000

Recently we have been working on the biggest robot project that I have worked on till now, with my friend Jim Quode. It is a scrap bot at the basic, all the parts, including the gearmotor are homemade. It is controlled with an arduino microprocessor.
This video is for testing its basic movement ability and interaction with the environment with a simple AI.

Quadropod AI Test from MrBeaver on Vimeo.

Tiny Solar Walker

Tolga — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:19:00 +0000

I am currently working on a solar walker using a bicore. Which is a hard task tho, I have managed to set up the basic circuit running with a solar engine. It is not finished yet. Once it is finished I will post more photos and video.

Mr. Walkman

Tolga — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:13:00 +0000

The walker on my previous post had a quite low performance on walking. 2 days ago, I have accidentally found 2 really cheap toy trains on my local market and bought them immediately. I have disassembled their gearboxes and worked out a connection with the walkman motors own gears. The result was a success. The attachment of the gears and legs, and the trimmings required to make it walk with its new heavy-duty legs took about 10-12 hours.
Then I have worked on its obstacle sensors in order to make it reverse and go to another direction in order to prevent it from getting stuck.
Finally I have made a simple head with flashing eyes to add some smooth personality.
+In addition, I have done the connections required to attach a pic chip to the robot, to make it software controlled in near future.

Here is a video, demonstrating the obstacle avoiding of the robot (yes, it falls from the table in the end of the video. but thanks to the flexibility of its epoxy jointed body, it didn’t get any damage)

Walkman Powered Walker

Tolga — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:38:00 +0000

Made out from walkman motors (most would think its impossible to do a walker with them). This walker has a photofobic behavior (it runs away from the light basically).
This is a test video, I am still working on the gears to make it more efficent. More video and pic will be added soon.