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417 items tagged "robots"

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July 18, 2018
11:30
Dual Brushed Motor Controller Doesn’t Care How It Receives Commands
» ‎ Hack a Day

The simple DC brushed motor is at the heart of many a robotics project. For making little toy bots that zip around the house, you can’t beat the price and simplicity of a pair of brushed motors. They’re also easy to control; you could roll your own H-bridge out of discrete transistors, or pick up one of the commonly used ICs like the L298N or L9110S.

But what if you want an all-in-one solution? Something that will deliver enough current for most applications, drive dual motors, and deal with a wide range of input voltages. Most importantly, something that will …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 17, 2018
8:30
Emotional Hazards That Lurk Far From The Uncanny Valley
» ‎ Hack a Day

A web search for “Uncanny Valley” will retrieve a lot of information about that discomfort we feel when an artificial creation is eerily lifelike. The syndrome tells us a lot about both human psychology and design challenges ahead. What about the opposite, when machines are clearly machines? Are we all clear? It turns out the answer is “No” as [Christine Sunu] explained at a Hackaday Los Angeles meetup. (Video also embedded below.)

When we build a robot, we know what’s inside the enclosure. But people who don’t know tend to extrapolate too much based only on the simple behavior they …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 14, 2018
22:00
Robot Maps Rooms with Help From iPhone
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Unity engine has been around since Apple started using Intel chips, and has made quite a splash in the gaming world. Unity allows developers to create 2D and 3D games, but there are some other interesting applications of this gaming engine as well. For example, [matthewhallberg] used it to build a robot that can map rooms in 3D.

The impetus for this project was a robotics company that used a series of robots around their business. The robots navigate using computer vision, but couldn’t map the rooms from scratch. They hired [matthewhallberg] to tackle this problem, and this robot …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 11, 2018
8:00
Hold the Salt and Butter, This Popcorn Is For a Robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Popcorn! Light and fluffy, it is a fantastically flexible snack. We can have them plain, create a savory snack with some salt and butter, or cover with caramel if you have a sweet tooth. Now Cornell University showed us one more way to enjoy popcorn: use their popping action as the mechanical force in a robot actuator.

It may be unorthodox at first glance, but it makes a lot of sense. We pop corn by heating its water until it turns into steam triggering a rapid expansion of volume. It is not terribly different from our engines burning an air-fuel …read more

Tags: robots hacks
1:00
Cheetah 3 Is Learning To Move Blindly Before Learning To See
» ‎ Hack a Day

Stand up right now and walk around for a minute. We’re pretty sure you didn’t see everywhere you stepped nor did you plan each step meticulously according to visual input. So why should robots do the same? Wouldn’t your robot be more versatile if it could use its vision to plan a path, but leave most of the walking to the legs with the help of various sensors and knowledge of joint positions?

That’s the approach [Sangbae Kim] and a team of researchers at MIT are taking with their Cheetah 3. They’ve given it cameras but aren’t using them yet. …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 08, 2018
22:00
Disney’s Humanoid Stunt Robots Throw Multiple Backflips No Sweat
» ‎ Hack a Day

What’s the biggest problem right now with humanoid robots? They fall down. Disney seems to have solved that problem here by making robots that are meant to fall down and be caught by a net. Disney’s research arm (you may know them as Imagineers) is showing off a robot called Stuntronic which can perform controlled somersaults as it flies through the air. Check the video below, you really have to watch a few times to make sure this is a robot and not a person.

It’s really interesting to follow the evolution of this robot. It began with BRICK, a …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 03, 2018
13:01
Disney’s New Robot Limbs Trained Using Neural Networks
» ‎ Hack a Day

Disney is working on modular, intelligent robot limbs that snap into place with magnets. The intelligence comes from a reasonable sized neural network that also incorporates some modularity. The robot is their Snapbot whose base unit can fit up to eight of limbs, and so far they’ve trained with up to three together.

The modularity further extends to a choice of three types of limb. One with roll and pitch, another with yaw and pitch, and a third with roll, yaw, and pitch. Interestingly, of the three types, the yaw-pitch one seems most effective.

In this age of massive, deep …read more

Tags: robots hacks
July 01, 2018
13:00
Raspberry Pi Zero Stepper Driver, First of Many Modules
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Raspberry Pi in general (and the Zero W model in particular) are wonderful pieces of hardware, but they’re not entirely plug-and-play when it comes to embedded applications. The user is on the hook for things like providing a regulated power source, an OS, and being mindful of proper shutdown and ESD precautions. Still, the capabilities make it worth considering and [Alpha le ciel] has a project to make implementation easier with the Raspberry Pi Zero W Stepper Motor Module, which is itself part of a larger project plan to make the Pi Zero W into a robust building block …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 29, 2018
8:30
When The Going Gets Tough, These Wheels Transform To Tracks
» ‎ Hack a Day

When we want to build something to go where wheels could not, the typical solution is to use tracks. But the greater mobility comes with trade-offs: one example being tracked vehicles can’t go as fast as a wheeled counterpart. Information released by DARPA’s ground experimental vehicle technology (GXV-T) program showed what might come out of asking “why can’t we switch to tracks just when we need them?”

This ambitious goal to literally reinvent the wheel was tackled by Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center. They delivered the “Reconfigurable Wheel-Track” (RWT) that can either roll like a wheel or travel on …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 26, 2018
11:30
Controlling Robotics Visually
» ‎ Hack a Day

The world — and the Hackaday Prize — is filled with educational robots. These are small, wheeled robots loaded up with sensors, actuators, a few motor drivers, and some sort of system that is easy to program. The idea behind these educational robots is to give students an easy-to-use platform to test out code, learn inverse kinematics, and realize odometry is a lot harder than you think it is. Give these kids some time and patience, and you’ll have a fleet of Battlebots at the end of the semester, if the teacher is cool.

But there’s a problem with all …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 23, 2018
13:00
ROPS Will Be The Board x86 Robot Builders Are Waiting For
» ‎ Hack a Day

If your robot has outgrown a Raspberry Pi and only the raw computing power of an x86 motherboard will suffice, you are likely to encounter a problem with its interfaces. The days of ISA cards are long gone, and a modern PC is not designed to easily talk to noisy robot hardware. Accessible ports such as USB can have interfaces connected to them, but suffer from significant latency in the process.

A solution comes from ROPS, or Robot on a PCI-e Stick, a card that puts an FPGA on a blazing-fast PCI-e card that provides useful real-world interfaces such …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 22, 2018
11:30
Evolving the 3D Printed Linear Actuator
» ‎ Hack a Day

Our open source community invites anyone with an idea to build upon the works of those who came before. Many of us have encountered a need to control linear motion and adapted an inexpensive hobby servo for the task. [Michael Graham] evaluated existing designs and believed he has ideas to advance the state of the art. Our Hackaday Prize judges agreed, placing his 3D Printed Servo Linear Actuator as one of twenty winners of our Robotics Module Challenge.

[Michael]’s actuator follows in the footstep of other designs based on a rack-and-pinion gear such as this one featured on these pages, …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 21, 2018
22:00
[Festo’s] Underwater Robot Uses Body-Length Fins
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Festo] have come up with yet another amazing robot, a swimming one this time with an elegant propulsion mechanism. They call it the BionicFinWave. Two fins on either side almost a body-length long create a wave which pushes water backward, making the robot move forward. It’s modeled after such fish as the cuttlefish and the Nile perch.

What was their elegant solution for making the fins undulate? Nine lever arms are attached to each fin. Those lever arms are controlled by two crankshafts which extend from the front of the body to the rear, one for each side. A servo …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 19, 2018
1:00
Tables are Turned as Robots Assemble IKEA Furniture
» ‎ Hack a Day

Hackaday pages are rife with examples of robots being built with furniture parts. In this example, the tables are turned and robots are the masters of IKEA pieces. We are not silly enough to assume that these robots unfolded the instructions, looked at one another, scratched their CPUs, and began assembling. Of course, the procedure was preordained by the programmers, but the way they mate the pegs into the ends of the cross-members is a very human thing to do. It reminds us of finding a phone charging socket in the dark. This kind of behavior is due to force …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 16, 2018
13:00
A 3D-Printed Robot Actuator
» ‎ Hack a Day

Somehow, walking robots at our level never really seem to deliver on the promise that should be delivered by all those legs. Articulation using hobby servos is simple enough to achieve, but cumbersome, slow, and not very powerful. [Paul Gould] has a plan to make a better, 3D-printed articulated robot actuator.

His solution is both novel and elegant, a fairly conventional arm geometry that has at its joints a set of brushless motors similar to but a little larger than the kind you might be more familiar with on multirotors, paired with 3D-printed cycloidal gearboxes. Magnetic encoders provide the necessary …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 14, 2018
16:00
Making Robot Snakes That Slither, Sidewind, And Strike
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Will Donaldson] has been making robot snakes of all sorts. One of his snakes hugs the ground, slithering across it with a sine wave motion. Flipping it on its side and calling different code, that same snake also moves like an inchworm. Another of his snakes lifts parts of itself upward to move sideways across the ground, again using sine waves.

At first, his slithering snake would only oscillate in place on the floor. Looking more closely at biological snakes, he found that part of the reason they moved forward was due to their scales. The scales move smoothly over …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 13, 2018
8:00
Rescuing K-9
» ‎ Hack a Day

Fans of the long-running and ever-fantastic British TV show Dr. Who will no doubt hold a soft spot in their hearts for the Doctor’s little robot companion. No, not one of his many human sidekicks, we’re talking about K-9, the angular dog-like android that burst onto British screens back in 1977.

There were a number of original [K-9] props made by the BBC, and these were eventually sold by the corporation. One found its way to Abertay University, and it was there that [Gary Taylor], a computer science student found it. Sadly the years had not been kind to the …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 11, 2018
4:00
[James Bruton] Is Making A Dog: OpenDog Project
» ‎ Hack a Day

There was a time when a two-legged walking robot was the thing to make. But after seeing years of Boston Dynamic’s amazing four-legged one’s, more DIYers are switching to quadrupeds. Now we can add master DIY robot builder [James Bruton] to the list with his openDog project. What’s exciting here is that with [James’] extensive robot-building background, this is more like starting the challenge from the middle rather than the beginning and we should see exciting results sooner rather than later.

Thus far [James] has gone through the planning stage, having iterated through a few versions using Fusion 360, and …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 10, 2018
19:00
High Voltage Switching with MOSFETs
» ‎ Hack a Day

Using a MOSFET as a switch is generally pretty simple. Make the gate voltage sufficient with respect to the source and current flows through the channel. However, if you are switching higher voltages, you may need some additional circuitry to protect the device’s gate and possibly the microcontroller driving the whole thing, too. [Lewis] discusses high voltage switching in the latest in his series of videos dealing with MOSFETs. You can see the video below.

You’ll see in the video a breadboard setup driving a 50 V load and also a higher-voltage H-bridge. There are three major topics covered: Using …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 09, 2018
19:00
Japanese Fire-Fighting Dragon Rides Water Jets
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you are building a robot to fight fires, why not use the water that you are fighting fires with to propel your robot? That seems to be the idea behind the Dragon Fire Fighting robot built by [Professor Satoshi Tadokoro], and his team at Tadohoku University. Their dragon robot is raised by the same directed jets of water that are used to stop the fire.

The three-meter robot also uses these jets of water to steer, moving the dragon’s head by firing water jets at angles. I’m not sure how practical it really is, though: the jets that the …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 03, 2018
13:00
Turning That Old Hoverboard Into A Learning Platform
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Isabelle Simova] is building Hoverbot, a flexible robotics platform using Ikea plastic trays, JavaScript running on a Raspberry Pi and parts scavenged from commonly available hoverboards.

Self-balancing scooters a.k.a. Hoverboards are a great source of parts for such a project. Their high torque, direct drive brushless motors can drive loads of 100 kg or more. In addition, you also get a matching motor controller board, a rechargeable battery and its charging circuit. Most hoverboard controllers use the STM32F103, so flashing them with your own firmware becomes easy using a ST-link V2 programmer.

The next set of parts you need to …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 02, 2018
13:00
Servo Becomes Mini Linear Actuator
» ‎ Hack a Day

RC servos are a common component in many robotics projects, but [Giovanni Leal] needed linear motion instead of the rotary actuation that servos normally offer. The 3D Printed Mini Linear Actuator was developed as a way to turn a mini servo into a linear actuator, giving it more power in the process.

A servo uses a potentiometer attached to the output shaft in order to sense position, and the internal electronics take care of driving the motor to move the shaft to the desired angle. [Giovanni] took apart an economical mini servo and after replacing the motor with a 100:1 …read more

Tags: robots hacks
June 01, 2018
22:00
A HID For Robots
» ‎ Hack a Day

Whether with projects featured here or out in the real world, we have a tendency to focus most upon the end product. The car, solar panel, or even robot. But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes that needs to be taken care of as well, whether it’s fuel infrastructure to keep the car running, a semiconductor manufacturer to create silicon wafers, or a control system for the robot. This project is one of the latter: a human interface device for a robot arm that is completely DIY.

While robots are often automated, some still need human input. …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 26, 2018
19:00
DIY Submersible Aims for Low Cost, Ease of Operation
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you’re like us, a body of water is a source of wonder and awe. The wonder comes from imagining what lies hidden below the surface, and the awe is from the fear of trying to find out and becoming one of those submerged objects on a permanent basis. So if you want to explore the depths in relative comfort and safety, a DIY remotely operated underwater vehicle might be the thing you need to build.

Most ROV builds these days seem to follow more or less similar designs, which is probably because they all share project goals similar to …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 22, 2018
11:30
Smiling Robot Moves Without Wires
» ‎ Hack a Day

What could be cuter than a little robot that scuttles around its playpen and smiles all day? For the 2018 Hackaday prize [bobricius] is sharing his 2D Actuator for Micro Magnetic Robot. The name is not so cute, but it boasts a bill of materials under ten USD, so it should be perfect for educational use, which is why it is being created.

The double-layer circuit board hides six poles. Three poles run vertically, and three of them run horizontally. Each pole is analogous to a winding in a stepper motor. As the poles turn on, the magnetic shuttle moves …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 21, 2018
1:00
RoMeLa’s Sideways Walking Robot Has Evolved More Limbs
» ‎ Hack a Day

Despite the success shown in prototypes from groups like Boston Dynamics, bipedal walking is still really hard to implement. When the robot lifts one leg, it has to shift its center of gravity over the other leg to avoid falling sideways.

The Autonomous Legged Personal Helper Robot with Enhanced Dynamics (ALPHRED) is getting around this problem by coming at it from a different angle. ALPHRED walks sideways and throws away the distinction between arms and legs.

The bot is RoMeLa at UCLA’s latest evolution in their approach to traditional bipedal roadblocks. Sideways walking is something we covered when we talked …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 16, 2018
1:00
Gentle Electric Eel
» ‎ Hack a Day

It’s no shock that electric eels get a bad rap for being scary creatures. They are slithery fleshy water snakes who can call down lightning. Biologists and engineers at the University of California had something else in mind when they designed their electric eel. Instead of hunting fish, this one swims harmlessly alongside them.

Traditional remotely operated vehicles have relied on hard shells and spinning propellers. To marine life, this is noisy and unnatural. A silent swimmer doesn’t raise any eyebrows, not that fish have eyebrows. The most innovative feature is the artificial muscles, and although the details are scarce, …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 08, 2018
11:30
Mike’s Robot Dog Is A First Step In The Right Direction
» ‎ Hack a Day

Humans can traverse pretty much any terrain thanks to their legs and fast-acting balancing system. So if you want a robot which should have equal flexibility, legs are a good way to go, this confirmed by all the achievements of Boston Dynamics’ robots. It was therefore natural for [Mike Rigsby] to model his robot dog after Boston Dynamics’ dog-like robot, SpotMini.

The build log on his Hackaday.io page makes for interesting reading. For example, he started out with the legs oriented like SpotMini but found that when trying to stand, the front legs worked fine but the rear ones slid …read more

Tags: robots hacks
May 03, 2018
13:00
Colossal Hydraulic Hulkbuster Is Classic Colin Furze
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Colin Furze] is back at it – once again shrugging off the confines of feasibility and laughing in the face of sanity, all whilst sporting the signature tie with unrivalled style.

Teaming up with [James Bruton], the result of their collective talent this time is a hydraulic hulkbuster suit, at a frankly ridiculous scale. This is the third and final episode of the build process, with the first two covering the legs and body.

To demonstrate the strength of his latest toy, [Colin] tapes himself to the arm of his creation and promptly gets swung into a wall. We still …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 30, 2018
16:00
Training The Squirrel Terminator
» ‎ Hack a Day

Depending on which hemisphere of the Earth you’re currently reading this from, summer is finally starting to fight its way to the surface. For the more “green” of our readers, that can mean it’s time to start making plans for summer gardening. But as anyone who’s ever planted something edible can tell you, garden pests such as squirrels are fantastically effective at turning all your hard work into a wasteland. Finding ways to keep them away from your crops can be a full-time job, but luckily it’s a job nobody will mind if automation steals from humans.

[Peter Quinn] writes …read more

Tags: robots hacks
1:00
Papercraft-Inspired Snake-bot Slithers like a Real One
» ‎ Hack a Day

Blend the Japanese folding technique of Kirigami with an elastomer actuator, and what have you got? A locomoting snake robot that can huff around its own girth with no strings attached! That’s exactly what researchers at the Wyss Institute and Harvard School of Applied Sciences did to build their Kirigami Crawler.

Expanding and contracting propel this crawler forward. As the actuator expands, the hatched pattern on the plastic skin flares out; and when it contracts, the skin retracts to a smoother form. The flared hatch pattern acts like a cluster of little hooks, snagging multiple contact points into the ground. …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 28, 2018
16:00
The Cake Robot is No Lie
» ‎ Hack a Day

[52 Skillz] didn’t know anything about building robots. So he decided to not just read about it or make a simple robot. He jumped right in and wanted to build a robot that could make a cake. It took about a year and a half but it now — mostly — works, as you can see in the video below.

Granted it isn’t perfect and it isn’t really all that practical. But as a learning exercise, it was certainly ambitious and successful. Apparently, you still have to scrape the bowl a little by hand to get some of the flour …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 26, 2018
8:30
Writing On A Whiteboard, Performed By A Robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

For some of us here at Hackaday, school is but a very distant memory. All that teenage awkwardness we’d rather forget, synth pop, and 8-bit computers were cool the first time around, and our newer classrooms didn’t have blackboards any more. The Whiteboard Future Had Arrived, and it came with solvent-laden pens that our more rebellious classmates swore would get you high if you sniffed them for long enough. Innocent times. Kids nowadays probably get their lessons from iPads, but the whiteboard isn’t finished just yet. [f4hdk] has updated his board with Scribot, a whiteboard-writing robot arm driven by a …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 16, 2018
19:00
Learning Software In A Soft Exosuit
» ‎ Hack a Day

Wearables and robots don’t often intersect, because most robots rely on rigid bodies and programming while we don’t. Exoskeletons are an instance where robots interact with our bodies, and a soft exosuit is even closer to our physiology. Machine learning is closer to our minds than a simple state machine. The combination of machine learning software and a soft exosuit is a match made in heaven for the Harvard Biodesign Lab and Agile Robotics Lab.

Machine learning studies a walker’s steady gait for twenty periods while vitals are monitored to assess how much energy is being expended. After watching, the …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 08, 2018
13:00
Floor Mopping Robot Takes Cleanliness to the Next Level
» ‎ Hack a Day

While it’s nice to have a robot vacuum your floors for you, a vacuum can only clean your house so much. For a really deep clean, you’ll also need to run a mop over the hard floor surfaces. [Josh] took this to its logical conclusion and built a robot that can really scour his floors for his entry into this year’s Hackaday Prize.

The robot has the ability to spray the floor with a cleaning solution, and then drive over it and scrub the floors with a squeegee. Its designed in a way that allows it to get into tight …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 07, 2018
7:00
These Gorgeous Robot Parts are Hand-Made
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Dickel]’s robot MDi #4 has been in progress for several years, but what we wanted to draw your attention to is the way the parts have been fabricated and what kind of remarkable results are possible with careful design, measurement, cutting, and finishing. Much of MDi #4 was made by hand-cutting and drilling sheets of high impact polystyrene (HIPS) with a utility knife and layering them as needed. Epoxy and aluminum provide gap filling and reinforcement of key sections, and fiberglass took care of one of the larger sections.

The process [Dickel] follows is to prototype using cardboard first. Parts …read more

Tags: robots hacks
April 02, 2018
11:30
A Well-Chronicled Adventure in Tiny Robotics
» ‎ Hack a Day

Some of us get into robotics dreaming of big heavy metal, some of us go in the opposite direction to build tiny robots scurrying around our tabletops. Our Hackaday.io community has no shortage of robots both big and small, each an expression of its maker’s ideals. For 2018 Hackaday Prize, [Bill Weiler] entered his vision in the form of Project Johnson Tiny Robot.

[Bill] is well aware of the challenges presented by working at a scale this small. (If he wasn’t before, he certainly is now…) Forging ahead with his ideas on how to build a tiny robot, and it’ll …read more

Tags: robots hacks
8:30
Zen and the Art of Japanese Tea Robots
» ‎ Hack a Day

In Japan, tea ceremony (cha-dou) is revered as a way to a gain deeper insights into life and philosophy. Traditional Japanese tea ceremony practitioners put in long hours to master the intricacies and details of pouring tea. The road to becoming a tea master is crucial as it develops the practitioner’s mental state as well as physical technique.

However if you don’t have time to master the “way of tea”, then you can build a bot and automate your zen experience. That’s exactly what the people at Ano Labs did when they built their Japanese Tea Ceremony Robot #151A.

The …read more

Tags: robots hacks
March 26, 2018
22:00
IQ Makes Smarter Motors
» ‎ Hack a Day

Enclosure: [download]

We think of motors typically as pretty dumb devices. Depending on the kind, you send them some current or some pulses, and they turn. No problem. Even an RC servo, which has some smarts on board, doesn’t have a lot of capability. However, there is a new generation of smart motors out that combine the mechanical motor mechanism with a built-in controller. [Bunnie] looks at one that isn’t even called a motor. It is the IQ position module.

Despite the name, these devices are just a brushless DC motor (BLDC) with a controller and an API. There’s no gearing, so …read more

Tags: robots hacks
4:00
Robot Uses Iron Man Tech to Walk
» ‎ Hack a Day

Designing a bi-pedal robot is a relatively straight forward task, given the array of tools that we now have at our disposal. There are many open source examples out there for anyone to get started. Designing one that doesn’t fall over a lot… well that’s not so simple. This is because when we walk our center of balance is constantly shifting, so during our adolescence we learn to shift our body weight around to maintain a stable center of balance. By the time we hit our mid-teens most of us have mastered the art of walking, and can maintain stability …read more

Tags: robots hacks
March 25, 2018
13:00
Rechargeable Robot Mows Lawns
» ‎ Hack a Day

Perhaps one day our robot overlords will look back on all of the trivial things that humans made them do and take retribution on us. Until then, though, there’s no problem having them perform all of our chores. [v.loschiavo] is also exploiting our future rulers and built a robot that mows his lawn automatically as his entry into the 2018 Hackaday Prize.

The robot uses a rechargeable battery system to drive a nylon blade for grass cutting. It also has an obstacle detection and avoidance system that allows it to find the borders of your yard and keep from getting …read more

Tags: robots hacks
March 19, 2018
4:00
Learn Programming From Ants
» ‎ Hack a Day

Humans and insects think on a different scale, but entomologists study the behavior of these little organisms, so they’re not a complete mystery. There isn’t much intelligence in a single ant or a cubic millimeter of gray matter, but when they all start acting together, you get something greater than the sum of the parts. It is easy to fall into the trap of putting all the intelligence or programming into a single box since that’s how we function. Comparatively, itty-bitty brains, like microcontrollers and single-board computers are inexpensive and plentiful. Enter swarm mentality, and new tasks become possible.

[Kevin …read more

Tags: robots hacks
March 17, 2018
4:00
Balloons and Bubbles Make for Kid-Friendly Robot Deathmatch
» ‎ Hack a Day

Because nothing says “fun for kids” like barbed wire and hypodermic needles, here’s an interactive real-world game that everyone can enjoy. Think of it as a kinder, gentler version of Robot Wars, where the object of the game is to pop the balloon on the other player’s robot before yours get popped. Sounds simple, but the simple games are often the most engaging, and that sure seems to be the case here.

The current incarnation of “Bubble Blast” stems from a project [Niklas Roy] undertook for a festival in Tunisia in 2017. That first version used heavily hacked toy …read more

Tags: robots hacks
March 12, 2018
8:31
Rubik’s Robot So Fast It Looks Like a Glitch in the Matrix
» ‎ Hack a Day

From Ferraris to F-16s, some things just look fast. This Rubik’s Cube solving robot not only looks fast, it is fast: it solved a standard cube in 380 milliseconds. Blink during the video below and you’ll miss it — even on the high-speed we had trouble keeping track of the number of moves this solution took. It looked like about 20.

Beating the previous robot record of 637 milliseconds is just the icing on the cake of a very cool build undertaken by [Ben Katz]. He and his collaborator [Jared] put together a robot with a decidedly industrial look — …read more

Tags: robots hacks
January 06, 2013
5:01
Who would win in a fight, robot [Lemmy] or robot God?
» ‎ Hack a Day

So this is what happens when a fan of The Rock-afire Explosion grows up. Meet Compressorhead, a musical trio of hydraulic and pneumatic musical mastery. Compressorhead is a lean band, consisting of only three members. Stickboy, the drummer, is a four-armed beast reminiscent of [General Grievous] that plays a 14-piece Pearl kit with a double [...]
Tags: robot compressorhead fight rock-afire-explosion pearl general-grievous god robot-god pearl-kit robots
January 05, 2013
7:01
Brute forcing a GPS PIN
» ‎ Hack a Day

[JJ] picked up a Garmin Nuvi 780 GPS from an auction recently. One of the more frustrating features [JJ] ran into is it’s PIN code; this GPS can’t be unlocked unless a four-digit code is entered, or it’s taken to a ‘safe location’. Not wanting to let his auction windfall go to waste, [JJ] rigged [...]
Tags: gps pin auction pin-code digit-code windfall robots hacks
January 03, 2013
3:01
Tentacles and phalanges made from drinking straws
» ‎ Hack a Day

He human hand is one of the most impressive pieces of machinery – biological, mechanical, or otherwise – that you’ll ever lay eyes on. With two dozen degrees of freedom, the hand can gently caress the most fragile flower petal without bruising it, or beat a hammer into an anvil with tremendous force. Simulating the human hand, however, [...]
Tags: tentacles drinking hand drinking-straws fragile-flower flower-petal robots hacks
December 24, 2012
12:01
Robot can barely move with so much hardware strapped to it
» ‎ Hack a Day

We think that [Andrej Škraba] needs to start looking for a beefier motor platform. This little robot has so much hardware strapped to it the motors can barely keep up. But with a little help it can make its way around the house, and it takes a whole lot of connectivity and computing power along [...]
Tags: kraba Hardware robot andrej computing-power whole-lot robots hacks
December 21, 2012
12:01
Webcam eye-tracking moves robot-powered Skittles candy
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is a great hack, and it’s an advertisement. We wish this were the norm when it comes to advertising because they’ve really got our number. Skittles enlisted a few engineers to build a web interface that moves robot-powered candies. When we started looking into this we figured that a few robots were covered with [...]
Tags: webcam candy skittles skittles-candy eye-tracking web-interface robots hacks
December 18, 2012
5:01
The Hexapod Hexacopter
» ‎ Hack a Day

Over at Mad Lab Industries, they had the idea of building a quadcopter that could walk and fly. By combining a hexapod with a hexacopter, they ended up with this creation. The hexapod part started off with PhantomX Hexapod Kit, but it was far too heavy to fly. To reduce weight, they manufactured carbon fibre parts [...]
Tags: hexacopter mad hexapod mad-lab carbon-fibre fly robots hacks
December 11, 2012
11:01
Retrotechtacular: A 1983 walking robot called ODEX-1
» ‎ Hack a Day

ODEX-1 is called the first commercial walking robot in this video from 1983. Of course you will quickly recognize this as a hexapod. It’s hard to get over the fact that what was so advanced at the time can now be built at home relatively inexpensively. As with most of these retrotectacular posts the presentation is a [...]
Tags: retrotechtacular robot odex walking-robot hexapod robots hacks
December 08, 2012
7:00
Bird buggy soothes a screeching parrot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Andrew] has enjoyed the company of [Pepper] the parrot for more than a decade, but the screeching of a bird in the next room is something you just don’t get used to. [Pepper] gets very lonely some times, and short of having someone carry him around on a shoulder, there’s not much that will calm [...]
Tags: parrot buggy bird pepper andrew robots hacks
December 05, 2012
6:00
RC car transforms into RC robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

After nearly 30 years since the first episode of Transformers aired, someone has finally done it. A company named Brave Robotics out of Japan has created a true transformer robot that is half remote control car and half remote control bipedal robot. According to the Brave Robotics’ site, this creation is the result of more than 10 years. [...]
Tags: robot brave car japan remote-control-car transformer-robot robotics robots hacks
December 03, 2012
12:01
Dyson engineers’ hacks traverse robot obstacle course
» ‎ Hack a Day

These guys are all engineers who are employed by Dyson. They’re holding remote control creations made from Dyson parts. This time around the object of the challenge was to build a bot based on a the Dyson ball and race it through an obstacle course. This sort of thing is right up our alley, but [...]
Tags: obstacle dyson course obstacle-course hacks robots
December 02, 2012
5:01
Pixar-style lamp project is a huge animatronics win
» ‎ Hack a Day

Even with the added hardware that lamp still looks relatively normal. But its behavior is more than remarkable. The lamp interacts with people in an incredibly lifelike way. This is of course inspired by the lamp from Pixar’s Luxo Jr. short film. But there’s a little bit of most useless machine added just for fun. [...]
Tags: pixar-style lamp project luxo-jr lamp-project added-hardware robots hacks
November 29, 2012
10:01
Science fair project sorts recyclables
» ‎ Hack a Day

This crew of high schoolers built a sorting robot for the Smart Young Mindz challenge. We got pretty excited when hearing that it sorts plastic by its recycling code, but unfortunately this isn’t quite what it’s made out to be. The device uses an RFID code on each product to figure out where it goes. Their [...]
Tags: science code project science-fair-project high-schoolers sorts robots hacks
November 27, 2012
3:01
Hola! From a Spanish Speaking Drawing Arm
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Acorv] wrote in to tell us about his latest hack, a robotic arm that writes with a marker. In the video after the break, the arm is set to copy whatever someone writes in a touchpad. As you might guess from this video, the hack is written up in Spanish, but it’s nothing your favorite [...]
Tags: video speaking ARM hola robotic-arm touchpad marker robots hacks
November 23, 2012
11:01
High tech tagging adds graffiti to poles
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Akira] looks to increase his urban canvas by tagging poles which some custom hardware. If you’re looking to add some art to a lamp post, height becomes a problem. That’s where this little guy comes in. The remote-controlled pole climber includes a marker that leaves a trail as the device climbs and descends. The rig [...]
Tags: tech canvas graffiti akira pole-climber custom-hardware lamp-post robots hacks
November 21, 2012
11:01
Update on [James'] bipedal robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

From the looks of the latest update [James] has made quite a bit of progress on his bipedal robot. He added to the top of the post just a few days ago, but didn’t include the video link which you’ll find embedded after the break. There’s about ten minutes of explanation before he gets down [...]
Tags: robot update bipedal james bipedal-robot video-link few-days robots hacks
November 10, 2012
7:00
Heat-seeking firebot drowns out the flames
» ‎ Hack a Day

This robot can find and extinguish fires automatically. It is the culmination of an Embedded Design class project from last school year. [Dan] and his classmates developed a turret that holds both a spray nozzle and heat sensor which would be a fantastic building block for a real-life tower defense game. The jewel of the [...]
Tags: heat-seeking robot firebot dan tower-defense-game spray-nozzle robots hacks
October 27, 2012
7:00
OpenPLC, for industrial automation to Halloween displays
» ‎ Hack a Day

Stepping out onto just about any factory floor you’ll find complex automatons building anything and everything imaginable. These machines need to be controlled somehow and before the age of computers these manufacturing robots were controlled with relays wired together to produce a multitude of actions. Relays, no matter how reliable and bulletproof the are, can’t be programmed without [...]
Tags: openplc automation halloween industrial-automation multitude robots Hardware
7:00
OpenPLC, for industrial automation to Halloween displays
» ‎ Hack a Day

Stepping out onto just about any factory floor you’ll find complex automatons building anything and everything imaginable. These machines need to be controlled somehow and before the age of computers these manufacturing robots were controlled with relays wired together to produce a multitude of actions. Relays, no matter how reliable and bulletproof the are, can’t be programmed without [...]
Tags: openplc automation halloween industrial-automation multitude robots Hardware
October 26, 2012
11:01
DARPA funded Robot Ninja Warrior?
» ‎ Hack a Day

Fans of the game show Ninja Warrior will immediately recognize the similarity of this test apparatus as the Spider Climb. Of course that’s not a human contestant, but a humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics. And it’s not actually clinging to the vertical walls as its only support. There are two narrow ledges to either side on [...]
Tags: warrior ninja robot boston ninja-warrior boston-dynamics humanoid-robot robots hacks
October 22, 2012
13:01
Battling most useless machine gets an expressive upgrade
» ‎ Hack a Day

We suppose the only thing more useless than a most useless machine is giving it an emoticon face. But that’s exactly what has happened with this project. But you’ll want to seen the whole thing, as the presentation involves much more than an angry box that can shut itself off. This is the second iteration [...]
Tags: thing machine battling iteration robots hacks
October 19, 2012
12:01
Robot performing a tightrope act
» ‎ Hack a Day

This robot is able walk the tightrope (translated). Well, it’s more of a shuffle than a walk, but still a lot better than we could do. In the video after the break you can see the bot starting on the platform to the right. As it steps out onto the wire (which rides in a [...]
Tags: walk robot tightrope tightrope-act walk-the-tightrope shuffle robots hacks
October 17, 2012
15:01
Tank tread robot build aims for a smooth ride
» ‎ Hack a Day

There’s all kinds of interesting things going into this tank robot build, but that beautiful suspension system immediately caught our eye. It helps to protect the body of the robot from being shaken apart when traveling over rough surfaces. Make sure to check out the four parts of the build log which are found on [...]
Tags: robot tank ride rough-surfaces smooth-ride suspension-system robots hacks
October 15, 2012
9:00
Controlling a robot with your mind
» ‎ Hack a Day

For [Ern]‘s MEng group project, his group had to develop a robotics platform capable of achieving some end goal. Because innovation is a large part of the grade, [Ern] convinced his team members to work with a brain controlled interface and build a mind controlled robotics platform. For wont of having an easy build, [Ern] [...]
Tags: group mind ern group-project meng robotics robots hacks
October 14, 2012
14:00
Have a baby? Build another one!
» ‎ Hack a Day

Ever since his daughter was born, [Markus] has been keeping logs full of observations of human behavior. Despite how it sounds, this sort of occurrence isn’t terribly odd; the field of developmental psychology is filled with research of this sort. It’s what [Markus] is doing with this data that makes his project unique. He’s attempting to use [...]
Tags: baby build sort markus developmental-psychology human-behavior occurrence robots hacks
October 03, 2012
16:01
200 pound, WiFi deploying robot ran over my foot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Adam Bercu] and [Dan Landers] from Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville, MA brought a very, very cool toy to Maker Faire this year. It’s a two hundred pound WiFi repeater deploying robot able to amble across unforgiving terrain and my foot. The robot is controlled through a web interface with the help of a front-mounted web cam [...]
Tags: pound robot wifi dan-landers adam-bercu unforgiving-terrain bercu web-interface robots hacks
8:00
Intelligent autonomous vehicle makes it to Maker Faire
» ‎ Hack a Day

A few guys from Rutgers showed up at Maker Faire with Navi, their vehicle for the 2012 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Powered by two huge lead acid batteries, Navi features enough high-end hardware to hopefully make it through or around just about any terrain. Loaded up with a laser range finder, a stereo camera setup, [...]
Tags: maker vehicle intelligent lead-acid-batteries laser-range-finder autonomous-vehicle robots hacks
October 02, 2012
11:01
Professional looking dog robot was actually [Martin's] Master’s Thesis
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you think this thing looks good you should see it move. [Martin Smith] hit a home run on the project, which was his Master’s Thesis. Fifteen servo motors provide a way for the bot to move around. Having been modeled after a small canine the gait is very realistic. The tail is even functional, acting as [...]
Tags: master professional thesis martin-smith martin gait robot robots hacks
8:00
Whatever a phobia of fingers is called, this is it.
» ‎ Hack a Day

Touched is a project by [Rebecca Strauss] that integrates servos, strings, and felt into a horrifying kinetic sculpture made up of a dozen mechanical fingers straight from a Boschian nightmare. The fingers are made up of segments of wood articulated with the help of a small string. Each pair of fingers is controlled by a [...]
Tags: phobia touched project rebecca-strauss mechanical-fingers kinetic-sculpture robots hacks
September 25, 2012
10:01
Wii Nunchuck controlled robot exhibits rock solid balancing
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Willy Wampa] is showing off his self-balancing robot. What strikes us about the build is how well tuned his feedback loop seems to be. In the video after the break you will see that there is absolutely no visible oscillation used to keep its balance. The parts used are quite easy to obtain. The acrylic [...]
Tags: wii nunchuck robot willy-wampa wampa feedback-loop robots hacks
September 19, 2012
11:01
Qube robots use well-designed laser-cut acrylic
» ‎ Hack a Day

These robot cubes, called BOXZ, use an interesting interlocking part design to mount and protect the parts within. But to really make them pop you need to color and apply your own papercraft skins. The actual hardware is quite simple. They’ve used an Arduino, along with motor driver and Bluetooth shields, to control a set [...]
Tags: qube robot boxz arduino laser-cut shields robots hacks

September 11, 2012
21:36
[Video] Robots for fun and research
» ‎ SecDocs

Authors: Verena Hafner
Tags: robotics
Event: Chaos Communication Congress 22th (22C3) 2005
Abstract: In this talk, several examples of cutting-edge research in robotics will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed. Robots will play an increasingly important role in the development of Artificial Intelligence. Many researchers are convinced that for machines to become truly intelligent, they will need to be embodied. Contemporary research in intelligent robotics does not only draw inspiration from biology and psychology, but also provides these disciplines with the means to test hypotheses by using robots as research tools. Outside the lab, the main market today for robots is moving away from industry robots to the home, with robotic companions being developed for entertainment purposes. As hardware costs are getting smaller and smaller, the same development that happened several years ago with personal computers can now be applied to personal robots. A new trend is to modify existing commercially available robots and add new functionalities (also called `robot hacking'). These different approaches will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed.
Tags: robots research future verena-hafner chaos-communication-congress future-of-robotics cutting-edge-research
21:36
[Slides] Robots for fun and research
» ‎ SecDocs

Authors: Verena Hafner
Tags: robotics
Event: Chaos Communication Congress 22th (22C3) 2005
Abstract: In this talk, several examples of cutting-edge research in robotics will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed. Robots will play an increasingly important role in the development of Artificial Intelligence. Many researchers are convinced that for machines to become truly intelligent, they will need to be embodied. Contemporary research in intelligent robotics does not only draw inspiration from biology and psychology, but also provides these disciplines with the means to test hypotheses by using robots as research tools. Outside the lab, the main market today for robots is moving away from industry robots to the home, with robotic companions being developed for entertainment purposes. As hardware costs are getting smaller and smaller, the same development that happened several years ago with personal computers can now be applied to personal robots. A new trend is to modify existing commercially available robots and add new functionalities (also called `robot hacking'). These different approaches will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed.
Tags: robots research future verena-hafner chaos-communication-congress future-of-robotics cutting-edge-research
21:36
[Audio] Robots for fun and research
» ‎ SecDocs

Authors: Verena Hafner
Tags: robotics
Event: Chaos Communication Congress 22th (22C3) 2005
Abstract: In this talk, several examples of cutting-edge research in robotics will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed. Robots will play an increasingly important role in the development of Artificial Intelligence. Many researchers are convinced that for machines to become truly intelligent, they will need to be embodied. Contemporary research in intelligent robotics does not only draw inspiration from biology and psychology, but also provides these disciplines with the means to test hypotheses by using robots as research tools. Outside the lab, the main market today for robots is moving away from industry robots to the home, with robotic companions being developed for entertainment purposes. As hardware costs are getting smaller and smaller, the same development that happened several years ago with personal computers can now be applied to personal robots. A new trend is to modify existing commercially available robots and add new functionalities (also called `robot hacking'). These different approaches will be presented, and their implications for the future of robotics will be discussed.
Tags: robots research future verena-hafner chaos-communication-congress future-of-robotics cutting-edge-research

September 10, 2012
10:01
humanoid Robot Kinects with its enviroment
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Malte Ahlers] from Germany, After having completed a PhD in neurobiology, decided to build a human sized humanoid robot torso. [Malte] has an interest in robotics and wanted to show case some of his skills.The project is still in its early development but as you will see in the video he has achieved a nice build so [...]
Tags: humanoid robot kinects germany malte ahlers humanoid-robot torso robots hacks
6:55
Sexy six axis robotic arm is a work of art
» ‎ Hack a Day

We don’t know if it’s a mid-life crisis or just the result of way too many solder fumes, but [sparten11] on Instructables is building one of the coolest robotic arm we’ve ever seen, and we thank him for that. The build began with a set of brushed DC motors running capable of running on 60 [...]
Tags: ARM work sexy mid-life-crisis solder-fumes robotic-arm robots hacks
September 09, 2012
7:01
Wireless Upgrade for a Heathkit HERO 1 Robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

For those of you that don’t know, the Heathkit HERO (Heathkit Educational Robot) was a ‘bot built in the early 1980s. [Rick] wasn’t satisfied with his model ETW-18′s programming interface, so decided to upgrade it to be able to run Python using a hacked wireless router. We’d agree that things have advanced since then, since [...]
Tags: heathkit Wireless robot rick hero heathkit-hero educational-robot s-programming robots hacks
September 07, 2012
13:01
Cheetah robot can run down even the fastest of us
» ‎ Hack a Day

It’s a blur, but you really don’t want to seen this thing coming for you anyway. It’s the latest look at what the folks at Boston Dynamics have been working on under a DARPA contract. They call it the Cheetah robot as it’s the fastest four-legged bot ever developed. The clip after the break shows [...]
Tags: thing robot cheetah boston darpa-contract boston-dynamics robots hacks
September 03, 2012
12:01
Steam-powered hexapod
» ‎ Hack a Day

This all-mechanical hexapod (translated) was meticulously planned and beautifully constructed. It’s not craning its neck to see what’s ahead. That’s a smoke stack for the steam engine which propels the machine. Mechanically the legs were the hardest part. That’s only because the steam engine was not built from scratch. It’s a Wilesco D14 which is powered [...]
Tags: steam hexapod engine smoke-stack steam-engine d14 robots hacks
August 30, 2012
10:06
Can a Kickstarter project actually build a space elevator?
» ‎ Hack a Day

It’s the stuff that Science Fiction is made of: an elevator that climbs its way into space rather than needing a rocket to get there. Can it be done? No. But this Kickstarter project aims to fund research that will eventually make a space elevator possible. They’re already way over their goal, and plan to [...]
Tags: space kickstarter elevator space-elevator science-fiction robots hacks
August 28, 2012
8:01
Soft robots given veins the let them change their stripes
» ‎ Hack a Day

If it were alive this robot would be classified as an invertebrate. It lacks a backbone and interestingly enough, all other bones are missing as well. The Harvard researchers that developed it call it a soft robot. It’s made out of silicone and uses pathways built into the substance to move. By adding pressurized air to [...]
Tags: robot soft invertebrate harvard-researchers silicone veins robots hacks
August 26, 2012
10:01
Recreating [Phillip K. Dick] in android form… and losing his head
» ‎ Hack a Day

Yes, that’s an android of [Phillip K. Dick]. While you don’t necessarily need to be familir with [Phillip K. Dick] to find this story amusing, we highly recommend that you take a few minutes to learn about him if you don’t recognize the name. [Phillip K. Dick], or [PKD] was a science fiction author and [...]
Tags: recreating form android phillip-k.-dick phillip-k-dick science-fiction-author pkd robots hacks
August 21, 2012
5:30
Eradicating invasive species with quadcopters
» ‎ Hack a Day

That right there is Sydney Golden Wattle, a fast-growing invasive species native to Eastern Australia that has the possibility of covering 20 percent of the bushland in Western Australia by the year 2020. [John Moore], a researcher at the Department of Food and Agriculture, wants to put an end to this infestation by destroying large swaths of [...]
Tags: eradicating right golden john-moore sydney eastern-australia western-australia invasive-species bushland robots hacks
August 20, 2012
12:30
High voltage ROV adventures
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Eirik] wrote in to share the build log for the third iteration of his underwater ROV. The first two project were completed and tested (you may remember reading about it back in January), but both had issues that caused general failure. Most notably, the introduction of water where he didn’t want it. But this time [...]
Tags: eirik rov voltage introduction-of-water underwater-rov third-iteration robots hacks
August 17, 2012
16:30
Water glider prototype
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Byrel Mitchell] wrote in to share some details on this water glider which he has been working on with his classmates at the Nonlinear Autonomous Systems lab of Michigan Technological University. As its name implies, it glides through the water rather than using propulsion systems typically found on underwater ROVs. The wings on either side of the [...]
Tags: water prototype glider mitchell underwater-rovs michigan-technological-university propulsion-systems robots hacks
August 16, 2012
14:01
Autonomous fixed-wing drone threads the needled in a parking garage
» ‎ Hack a Day

We’ve got something of a love affair going on with quadcopters, but there’s still room for a little something on the side. This fixed-wing drone can pull off some pretty amazing navigation. MIT’s Robust Robotics Group is showing off the work they’ve done with the plane, culminating in a death-defying flight through a parking garage [...]
Tags: something drone parking little-something-on-the-side robotics-group parking-garage robots hacks
August 14, 2012
17:01
LEGO ROV without a tether
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Brane] built an underwater ROV from LEGO mindstorm parts. Look closely at this image and you should notice something missing. The tether that normally carries power and control lines from an ROV to the surface is missing. This is a wireless solution that lets him control the device using an Xbox controller. The video after [...]
Tags: lego rov tether lego-mindstorm underwater-rov xbox-controller robots hacks
August 13, 2012
10:01
Roomba 4000 teardown ready for your Doomba build
» ‎ Hack a Day

In addition to getting a haircut, [Dino] spent his week editing an old video of him tearing down a Roomba 4000. These robots can be picked up for just a few dollars on eBay, making them one of the cheapest bodged up robotics dev platforms available. After [Dino] goes over how to unscrew the cover [...]
Tags: teardown roomba doomba dino ebay haircut robots hacks
August 10, 2012
10:01
‘Vortex-drive’ for underwater ROV propulsion
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is [Lee von Kraus'] new experimental propulsion system for an underwater ROV. He developed the concept when considering how one might adapt the Bristlebot, which uses vibration to shimmy across a solid surface, for use under water. As with its dry-land relative, this technique uses a tiny pager motor. The device is designed to vibrate [...]
Tags: rov vortex-drive propulsion lee-von-kraus propulsion-system pager-motor solid-surface robots hacks
August 09, 2012
14:01
Robotic hand with haptic feedback
» ‎ Hack a Day

While I was at Heatsync Labs in Mesa Arizona, [Nate] mentioned that he was really proud of helping someone build a robotic hand. I have tracked down that project because it looked pretty cool. [Macguyver603] built this robotic hand that is controlled by a glove with flex sensors. He was originally going to 3d print [...]
Tags: robotic feedback hand nate arizona flex-sensors robotic-hand mesa-arizona robots hacks
August 06, 2012
5:01
biological-inspired robotic eye movements
» ‎ Hack a Day

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a biologically inspired system to control cameras on board robots that simulate the Saccadic optokinetic system of the human eye. Its similarity to the muscular system of the human eye is uncanny. Joshua Schultz, a Ph.D candidate, says that this system has been made possible in part to piezoelectric [...]
Tags: eye georgia system joshua-schultz muscular-system eye-movements human-eye robots hacks
August 03, 2012
5:05
Robotic Manta Ray (Mantabot)
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Robotic Manta Ray codenamed MantaBot created by the Bio-Inspired Engineering Research Laboratory (BIER Lab) is set to make a splash. The next evolution in underwater Robotics is here. We have seen the likes of robotic fish and Jelly fish now to be added to the school is the MantaBot which has been designed to mimic [...]
Tags: manta robotic mantabot ray underwater-robotics robotic-fish jelly-fish robots hacks
July 31, 2012
5:01
A Large Hexapod Made of Wood and PVC Pipe
» ‎ Hack a Day

Although not the biggest hexapod walker we’ve seen by any means, this one is nonetheless worth a mention. Made with windshield wiper motors, PVC pipe, and lots of wood, it’s still a good size ‘bot. It’s a work in progress, but check out the video of it’s legs being tested as well as one of [...]
Tags: pvc pipe hexapod wood windshield-wiper-motors pvc-pipe robots hacks
July 27, 2012
10:01
Drawbot software aims to do it better than the rest
» ‎ Hack a Day

There are plenty of drawbot projects out there, many of which come with their own special software in tow. While some of these packages are easier to use than others, [Dan Royer] is pretty sure he can do it better. Looking for a fun and engaging way to teach STEM subjects in schools across the [...]
Tags: rest Software drawbot dan-royer better-than-the-rest special-software royer robots hacks
July 24, 2012
12:47
Shakey robot plays Angry Birds
» ‎ Hack a Day

At this year’s Pycon [Jason Huggins] gave a talk about his Angry Birds playing robot. He built a delta robot which includes a pen actuator for controlling a capacitive touch screen. The video after the break starts with a demo of the bot beating a level of Angry Birds on the iPad. The idea behind [...]
Tags: birds robot angry jason-huggins capacitive-touch-screen pycon ipad robots hacks
July 20, 2012
13:01
Self balancing robot uses cascading PID algorithms
» ‎ Hack a Day

At this point we’re beginning to think that building a self-balancing robot is one of the rights of passage alongside blinking some LEDs and writing Hello World on an LCD screen. We’re not saying it’s easy to pull off a build like this one. But the project makes you learn a lot about a wide [...]
Tags: robot self pid rights-of-passage lcd-screen hello-world robots hacks
10:01
Building an autonomous robot from an Xbox 360 controller
» ‎ Hack a Day

Wow, it’s amazing what [Carl] was able to build using an Xbox 360 control PCB as the base for his robot. His forum posts just touches the surface of the build, but he linked to a PDF file which has the full details. This build basically attaches sensors and replacement motors to the controller board… [...]
Tags: controller robot xbox carl autonomous-robot controller-board xbox-360 robots hacks
July 19, 2012
15:07
RC PVC bot
» ‎ Hack a Day

This hunk of PVC pipe is radio controlled. The wheels on the ends provide the locomotion, but it wouldn’t be going anywhere if it weren’t for that little tail strapped to the center of the tube. When the motors are turning the body of the bot needs something to push against. In this case the [...]
Tags: pvc bot hunk pvc-pipe locomotion robots hacks
July 03, 2012
10:01
[Dino] upgrades his robot chassis
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is the fourth iteration that [Dino] has produced for his all-terrain robot. Just before this it was more of a turtle, with an aluminum pan shell. We think his upgrade to MicroRAX frame parts makes it look a lot better, and lightens the load so it can get around better as well. It’s hard [...]
Tags: iteration robot chassis dino robot-chassis aluminum-pan robots hacks
4:01
Automated system hopes to make manual road patching a thing of the past
» ‎ Hack a Day

You don’t necessarily have to live in a cold climate to experience how roads start to deteriorate once cracks begin forming in the asphalt surface. Even more frustrating than the potholes, dips, and road erosion is the snarled traffic that results from closing lanes to repair them. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have [...]
Tags: automated road system road-erosion georgia-tech-research-institute georgia-tech-research robots hacks
June 29, 2012
16:01
Robot dares you to snatch the pebble from this flower
» ‎ Hack a Day

This pleasant-looking plant may try to take your hand off if you’re not careful. The robot flower (translated) includes sensors that cause the petals to move in reaction to external stimuli. You can just make out the distance sensors as black rectangles on two of the petals. These let the flower track an object by rotating the [...]
Tags: flower robot plant external-stimuli rectangles petals robots hacks
10:01
Self balancer does it differently than we’re used to seeing
» ‎ Hack a Day

This self balancing robot still uses just two wheels, but it’s balancing very differently than we’re used to seeing. Where most of the projects use a form factor that’s similar to a Segway, this works just like a bicycle. But it doesn’t need to keep the front and rear wheels spinning to stay upright. In [...]
Tags: balancer robot self rear-wheels two-wheels segway robots hacks
5:17
MakerFaire K.C.: Hexy, the $200 hexapod project
» ‎ Hack a Day

I’ve always loved hexapods. Unfortunately, the cost to play with them can be rather daunting. Hexy is seeking to make a decent impact on that by being only $200. Yep, that $200 includes everything but the computer. You get the entire chassis, micro controller, servos, sensors, batteries, etc. I ran into [Joe] from arcbotics showing [...]
Tags: hexapod hexy makerfaire joe k.c hexapod-project micro-controller robots hacks
June 28, 2012
13:01
Quadrotor opera begs for lasers and Pink Floyd
» ‎ Hack a Day

In case quadrocopters aren’t cool enough, here’s an orchestrated quadrotor light show that was shown at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this last week. With 16 quadrotors and a few can lights, it’s a light show not to be missed. This quadrotor show was created by a collaboration between KMel robotics and Marshmallow Laser Feast. The [...]
Tags: opera show quadrotor floyd cannes-lions lions-international kmel robots hacks
10:01
Building a pick and place with 3D printed parts
» ‎ Hack a Day

For the last few months, [HeliumFrog] has been building a SCARA bot to serve as the basis for a pick and place machine. Somewhat amazingly, this is the first robot of its kind to be printed on a 3D printer. A SCARA-type robot is an articulated arm perfectly suited for transferring components from tubes and reels [...]
Tags: robot pick heliumfrog type-robot pick-and-place-machine 3d-printer robots hacks
7:01
DIY ROV explores the watery depths
» ‎ Hack a Day

This rig looks so good it’s hard to believe this is the first ROV that [DZL] has ever built. It houses an HD camera which feeds the display at the operator’s station. You can see the controller to the left of that screen which uses a joystick and buttons to pilot the underwater vessel. In [...]
Tags: rov rig diy hd-camera joystick robots hacks
June 27, 2012
14:04
Robotic rock-paper-scissors never lets you win
» ‎ Hack a Day

So robots kick our butts at tic-tac-toe, chess, Jeopardy, and now they’re the dominant species at rock-paper-scissors too. This robot arm will outmatch your at the game every single time. It’s not just fast enough to keep up, but it figures out what you’re planning to do and reacts according. All of this happens way [...]
Tags: chess robotic jeopardy rock-paper-scissors robot-arm dominant-species robots hacks
June 25, 2012
15:01
Printing and programming a self-balancer
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Hackaday staff isn’t in agreement on 3d printers. Some of us are very enthusiastic, some are indifferent, and some wonder what if they’re as widely useful as the hype makes them sound. But we think [Jason Dorweiler's] self balancing robot is as strong a case as any that 3d printing should be for everyone! Don’t [...]
Tags: dorweiler hype robot robots hacks
June 20, 2012
7:01
Cramming for Sparkfun’s Autonomous Vehicle Competition
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Paul Breed] participated in this year’s Autonomous Vehicles Contest put on by SparkFun Electronics. As with most projects, the deadline really snuck up on him and he ended up cramming a bunch of code development into the waning days before the competition. His experiences are shared in this recent blog post. One big part of [...]
Tags: competition sparkfun autonomous paul-breed autonomous-vehicle autonomous-vehicles robots hacks

June 16, 2012
7:01
[Audio] Beyond Asimov - Laws for Robots
» ‎ SecDocs

Authors: Frank Rieger
Tags: engineering
Event: Chaos Communication Congress 25th (25C3) 2008
Abstract: Robotic systems become more and more autonomous, and telepresence develops very rapidly. But what happens if things go wrong? Who is responsible for that autonomous cleaning car murdering tourists? How can you identify the owner of that spy-drone filming you naked at the pool? This talk outlines some ideas to trigger a debate on how to deal with these problems, without stifling innovation and fun.
Tags: robots audio asimov laws frank-rieger chaos-communication-congress robotic-systems

June 15, 2012
10:01
Jamming gripper that’s super easy to build
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is the simplest version of a jamming gripper that we’ve seen yet. The only component that might not be readily available is the pump in the upper left, but the rest is all hardware or grocery store stuff. It’s based on the concept we saw from a research video where the air in a bladder [...]
Tags: version jamming gripper grocery-store bladder robots hacks
June 13, 2012
9:01
Two motor walking robot with a TI Launchpad
» ‎ Hack a Day

Last month, [Vinod] bought a pair of hobby servos on a whim. These servos sat on the shelf for a while until [Vinod] asked his friend what he should use them for. [Achu] suggested using the servos for a walking robot, so after checking out a few YouTube videos of some servo-powered walkers, [Vinod] built [...]
Tags: launchpad robot motor vinod hobby-servos walking-robot robots hacks
June 11, 2012
12:01
Swumanoid: a swimming humanoid robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you just happen to find yourself at the Fifth International Symposium on Aero Aqua Bio-Mechanisms this August in Taipei, you might get a chance to see this half sized swimming humanoid. Swumanoid was created by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology by doing a 3d scan of a human, then simplifying the shapes [...]
Tags: swumanoid swimming humanoid taipei fifth-international-symposium tokyo-institute-of-technology 3d-scan robots hacks
June 10, 2012
8:01
Pingbot: adorable and fully documented
» ‎ Hack a Day

After building many functional but somewhat unfinished looking bots, [Tomdf] really wanted to produce something that felt “complete”. Pingbot is the result and here’s how [Tomdf] describes it: Pingbot is a very small (38mm diameter), usb rechargeable, programmable, musical, remote control robot designed for maximum fun and danceability. Though I wasn’t inclined to dance I [...]
Tags: tomdf building pingbot remote-control diameter robot robots hacks
6:01
Batbot: Building a functionally correct bat wing robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Batbot is a project wherein the researchers are attempting to mimic the biological structure of a bat wing for flight. The desire is to attain the maneuverability and agility you see in bat flight due to the ever changing shape of their wings. Also, bats look really cool. In attempting to mimic the structure, they [...]
Tags: bat batbot wing bat-flight changing-shape bat-wing robots hacks
June 09, 2012
11:01
InMoov: a 3d printed animatronic hand you can download
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Hairygael] has been hard at work designing and building this robot structure that can be completely 3d printed. He’s admittedly not a big electronics person, so most of his focus has been on the design and construction of the bot frame. So far, he as a fully 3d printable (and available for download) hand that [...]
Tags: download inmoov hand robot-structure design-and-construction robots hacks
June 07, 2012
12:01
Shakerbot leverages inertial for locomotion
» ‎ Hack a Day

This robot uses the concept of a snakeboard for getting around. [Sevag Babikian] built the project, and has gone out of his way to explain how it works. We’d recommend skimming over his explanation, but it was the video after the break that made all things clear to us. There is a large fly-wheel at [...]
Tags: shakerbot locomotion inertial fly-wheel snakeboard robot robots hacks
June 02, 2012
8:01
[Easton's] robot arm takes 2nd place in the International Science and Engineering Fair
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here we see [Easton LaChappelle] getting a congratulatory handshake from the robotic arm he built. This project is aimed at human prosthetics, and we’re happy to report that [Easton] won second place in Electrical and Mechanical engineering division of this year’s International Science and Engineering Fair (PDF listing the winners). In the video he gives [...]
Tags: ARM easton engineering robot-arm international-science robotic-arm robots hacks
6:00
Shoulder robot for the forever alone
» ‎ Hack a Day

Don’t have anyone to share activities with? Forget Siri, she’s just a disembodied voice in a box. You need to get yourself a shoulder-mounted robot pal. The idea behind this design actually has something to do with telepresence. Let’s say you and your best friend want to go check out the local Hackerspace. The problem is [...]
Tags: robot anyone shoulder don robot-pal share-activities disembodied-voice robots hacks
May 31, 2012
15:01
Robot arm provides haptic feedback from the virtual world
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Diego] wrote in to let us know about the haptic feedback arm project with which he’s hard at work. He calls it the Vimphin, which is uses the beginning letters from the words: Virtual Manipulator Physical Interface. Instead of a claw, the robot arm has a hand grip that lets you easily move it around. [...]
Tags: ARM robot feedback diego robot-arm arm-project physical-interface robots hacks
May 30, 2012
11:01
CalTech’s manipulator-arm equipped robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Justin] wrote in to tell us about the rover which his CalTech team has entered in NASA’s Exploration Robo-Ops Competition. Their time to shine is later this week, but you can see some of the test footage after the break. The operator pictured above is using a controller which is a scale model of the manipulator [...]
Tags: caltech-team manipulator-arm test-footage robots hacks
May 29, 2012
8:00
Climbing robot glues it’s own feet to the wall
» ‎ Hack a Day

The problem of gripping all surfaces has always plagued the field of climbing robotics. But if you don’t care about damaging the wall, why not just let the robot glue its feet to the surface. That’s exactly how this robot does it, using a couple of climbing feet in conjunction with a hot melt glue [...]
Tags: wall robot glue hot-melt-glue glues robots hacks
May 26, 2012
8:01
Robot fish detect pollutants
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you happen to visit the Spanish port of Gijon, you may notice some giant yellow robotic fish swimming around. These 5 foot long swimmers are part of a proposed sensor network to detect pollutants in the water. Equipped with an array of sensors, the fish can test for general water quality, or swap out [...]
Tags: fish robot water robot-fish robotic-fish spanish-port robots hacks
May 23, 2012
16:01
Robotic falconry: winged unit lands on you!
» ‎ Hack a Day

It doesn’t have four rotors, but this advanced-glider is every bit as impressive as the most complicated of quadrotor offerings. It’s the first glider that can successfully perch on your arm. We can’t help but think back to the owl in the original Clash of the Titans movie. The team at the Aerospace Robotics and Control [...]
Tags: falconry robotic unit clash-of-the-titans clash-of-the-titans-movie glider robots hacks
11:01
Telepresence robot lets you play a hand of cards
» ‎ Hack a Day

Virtual card games proliferate the interwebs, but this card-playing telepresence device is unique. [Patrick] calls the project Vanna, and we’d bet that’s an homage to the tile-flipping TV star [Vanna White]. Much like she flips the blank tiles to reveal letters, this device can flip the hand of cards either face up or face down. [...]
Tags: blank-tiles vanna-white interwebs robots hacks
4:01
Hot glue appendages may be predecessor to the flow metal of the T-1000
» ‎ Hack a Day

The T-1000 was the shape-shifting robot from T2 (the second Terminator movie). It was so amazing because it could assume the form and texture of anything; humans, piercing weapons, inanimate objects. This robot doesn’t even compare, except for one small trait. When it needs a tool, it can build it as its own appendage. This [...]
Tags: robot glue predecessor hot-glue inanimate-objects appendage robots hacks
May 18, 2012
12:01
How to build a competitive battle robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Ever wonder what’s under the hood with a competitive battle robot like this one? It’s usually a big secret as teams don’t care to give their competition any help. But [AlexHrn] decided not only to give us a peek, but also shows us his step-by-step build process for Phoenix, the 30 pound flipping battle robot. [...]
Tags: robot wonder battle phoenix peek robots hacks
6:01
A rocking and walking BEAM robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

We’ve seen a few minimalist robots in our time, but very few compare to [Thomas Rinsma]‘s amazingly agile BEAM robot. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch this little robot crawl around on its circular legs. BEAM robots are extremely simple robots built without a microcontroller of any kind. The idea that extremely simple circuits built from logic chips and amplifiers came [...]
Tags: beam-robot beam-robots logic-chips robots hacks
May 17, 2012
15:01
Retrotechtacular: Shakey shows off robotics innovation from 1972
» ‎ Hack a Day

In this installement of Retrotechtacular we’re taking a look at Shakey, a robot developed between 1966 and 1972 at the Stanford Reserach Lab. This was a glorious time when students had long hair but still wore long sleeves and ties to do their research. The robot is actually communicating wirelessly with the PDP-10 computer which [...]
Tags: retrotechtacular shakey robot glorious-time wirelessly robots hacks
13:01
Cheap wooden hexapod frame greatly reduces cost
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Balline] really wanted to play with a hexapod but found the cost to be prohibitive. Being a mechanical engineer, he was able to fairly quickly come up with a stable 3 servo design that would allow him to experiment with the platform. He chose to use wood as the construction material to help reduce costs [...]
Tags: hexapod frame balline servo-design mechanical-engineer construction-material robots hacks
11:01
Snake-like robot can roll around in a ring
» ‎ Hack a Day

A lot of 3D printing and a many servo motors went into this snake-like robot, and it’s only about half of what [Toby Baumgartner] plans to accomplish. In this orientation the snake is rolled into a circle, and apparently some special movements in the segments allow it to roll around like this. He compares it [...]
Tags: robot snake-like ring toby-baumgartner baumgartner snake robots hacks
May 15, 2012
13:01
Floating sensor networks
» ‎ Hack a Day

These cool looking little bots are part of a fleet of floating water sensors built by The Lagrangian Sensor Systems Laboratory (LSSL) at UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) and the California Department of Water Resources. In an emergency such as a levee break, flood, or spill, they can be deployed to gather information [...]
Tags: cool water sensor berkeley california-department-of-water-resources water-sensors uc-berkeley robots hacks
May 12, 2012
8:01
Pipe crawling snake robot is a masterpiece of a senior project
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s an oldie but a goodie: [Eiki], [Mark], and [Sheraz] built a pipe crawling robot for their senior engineering project at Florida Atlantic University way back in 2004. Despite being a rather old build, its aged well and still demonstrates the clever ways the guys overcame some engineering obstacles. The original plan for the pipe [...]
Tags: robot pipe project sheraz mark snake-robot florida-atlantic-university robots hacks
May 10, 2012
16:01
Project Octopus
» ‎ Hack a Day

You know who thinks building a robotic octopus is an awesome idea? EVERYONE. Apparently the idea is a solid enough idea that the European Commision has funded this project. The goal is to mimic the capabilities of the squishiest of the cephalopods in order to advance soft robotics. Or possibly to take over the world. [...]
Tags: project idea octopus project-octopus awesome-idea cephalopods robots hacks
May 08, 2012
11:01
There’s more than meets the eye to this robot car
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is a robot that any Transformers enthusiast will love. Sure, the car looks just a bit boxy, but you’ll forget all about that when you see it unfold into a bipedal robot (translated). [Zak Sawa] is responsible for the creation. He pull off the build using 22 servo motors which let the car transform, and [...]
Tags: eye robot car zak-sawa bipedal-robot robot-car sawa robots hacks
May 04, 2012
17:01
[Jaimie's] Giant Hexapod project
» ‎ Hack a Day

Warning, this may be a duplicate post. We all agree we’ve seen this before, but can’t find it in our archive. If it is, sorry. If it isn’t enjoy one of the most awesome projects we’ve seen in a long time. Meet [Jaimie Mantzel] an eccentric, and very hyper, individual. He’s done many projects, but [...]
Tags: hexapod-project awesome-projects jaimie robots hacks
May 03, 2012
5:01
Meet Stompy, your new robotic overlord
» ‎ Hack a Day

In case you weren’t already depressed about not starting a summer project already, a couple of guys are building a gigantic rideable hexapod they call Stompy. The project leaders, [Gui Cavalcanti], [Dan Cody], and [James Whong] have worked on a few crazy robotics projects before like PETMAN and BigDog. Stompy won’t be a military-backed project like the [...]
Tags: robotics-projects rideable bigdog robots hacks
April 26, 2012
5:01
Micro Arduino bot skitters its way into our hearts.
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s a quick and easy little robot with a not-so-pint-sized brain. [Dikos] over at grobot, slapped together some gutted micro servos, an Arduino pro mini, H bridge chip, and a solar key-chain charger to make this little three wheeled cutie. The robot boasts some very simple object avoidance thanks to the Sharp GP2Y0A21YK analog IR [...]
Tags: robot arduino micro object-avoidance h-bridge dikos robots hacks
April 24, 2012
12:01
Climbing the mountain of quadcopter design
» ‎ Hack a Day

What a sweet thing it is to see the first outdoor flight of a quadcopter. [Botched] has done a wonderful job of documenting the entire build process. Take a look at all that he has done, then jump after the break to see the extremely stable test flight footage. Earlier iterations used feedback electronics that [...]
Tags: quadcopter climbing flight outdoor-flight feedback-electronics climbing-the-mountain robots hacks
April 23, 2012
14:01
Cardboard hexapod gets around with three motors
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s a lesson in doing a lot with very little. [Oldrobot] built this hexapod using cardboard for most of the pieces. He still had the box from his vacuum clear and it just happened to have a large black area the makes the top of the beetle look like it’s been painted. The control board [...]
Tags: hexapod cardboard lesson vacuum robots hacks
April 22, 2012
6:01
Sassy disco bots of the 80s
» ‎ Hack a Day

Surely, this is a glimpse into the future. No? Ok, its a glimpse into 1983. A small chinese fast-food restaurant in California put two 4.5 foot tall, 180 pound robots to work delivering food. Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 were their names and delivering food was their game. At least, when there wasn’t radio interference [...]
Tags: glimpse food tanbo california fast-food-restaurant radio-interference robots hacks
April 18, 2012
11:01
Robotic whiteboard writes your wall on the wall
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Dave's] drawbot writes his Facebook wall messages on a whiteboard. The setup is pretty simple, depending on a pair of stepper motors and common household goods. As you can see in the image, the stylus is a plain old dry-erase marker held by a big spring clip (the kind that holds a stack of papers [...]
Tags: wall robotic whiteboard dave dry-erase-marker household-goods spring-clip robots hacks
April 03, 2012
7:01
Working Tachikoma brings the manga to life
» ‎ Hack a Day

This Lego Tachikoma drives and walks just like in the TV program. You simply must take a peek at the video after the break. We’ve watched it several times and don’t think there’s any editing magic going on. But the movements are so intriguing part of us thinks there’s something fishy about it. Each leg [...]
Tags: tachikoma something-fishy tv-program robots hacks
April 02, 2012
14:01
Sphere morphing hexabot now rolls around
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Zenta] has been building his MorpHex rolling hexapod for nearly a year now, and good things come to those who wait. After a ton of development and fabrication, [Zenta] finally has his mechanical jellyfish robot rolling and walking around. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Zenta]‘s MorpHex robot in action. A year ago, we saw the [...]
Tags: zenta robot morphex hexapod jellyfish robots hacks
April 01, 2012
10:01
Powering a robot with a macbook battery
» ‎ Hack a Day

When [Soo-Hyun]‘s friend had an Apple Macbook Pro battery that began to swell, his friend did the reasonable thing and donated it to be used in a robot. Now [Soo-Hyun]‘s kiwi drive robot is powered by a gigantic LiPo battery, giving it a huge range and a very fast top speed. The defunct laptop battery [...]
Tags: robot battery hyun apple-macbook drive-robot laptop-battery robots hacks
March 31, 2012
12:06
Sand Flea literally leaps tall buildings in a single bound
» ‎ Hack a Day

The hidden abilities of this robot that is no larger than a dinner plate are quite impressive. It doesn’t let an obstacle like a building get in its way. The Sand Flea, like its namesake, posses a remarkable jumping ability. When it encounters a tall obstruction two levers incline the front of the robot and [...]
Tags: hidden-abilities sand-flea dinner-plate robots hacks
March 30, 2012
14:01
Loudest telepresence robot ever
» ‎ Hack a Day

This telepresence robot will never let your Skype callers sneak up on you. [Priit] built the project, which he calls Skype Got Legs, so that his distant friends could follow him around the house during chats. But as you can hear after the break, the electric drills used to motorize the base are extremely loud. [...]
Tags: telepresence robot Skype distant-friends electric-drills robots hacks
March 22, 2012
6:01
Robot jellyfish fueled by hydrogen from the water around it
» ‎ Hack a Day

RoboJelly is certainly not what we’re used to seeing when it comes to robots. Instead of a cold metallic skeleton, this softie is modeled after jellyfish which have no bones. But that’s not the only thing that’s unusual about it. This robot also doesn’t carry its own power source. It gets the energy needed for [...]
Tags: jellyfish hydrogen robot softie power-source robots hacks
March 21, 2012
11:01
Robotic assist helps paraplegic stand and move around
» ‎ Hack a Day

Seeing this device help a man get up out of his wheelchair makes us wonder why this hasn’t been around for ages. The design principles behind the Tek RMD greatly benefit those without use of their legs. But it’s not just to help him stand, it also serves as motorized transport that makes bulky electric [...]
Tags: device robotic stand design-principles wheelchair tek robots hacks
March 20, 2012
10:01
Humanoid robot will eventually take over the world
» ‎ Hack a Day

Over the last two years, [Mark] at the Harford (and Baltimore) Hackerspace has been building 401k, a humanoid robot that will soon be able to walk on two legs, detect objects, and fight along with its comrades in the robot insurrection that leads to the extinction of man. To get an idea of how complicated a [...]
Tags: world humanoid robot mark baltimore humanoid-robot two-legs insurrection robots hacks
March 18, 2012
11:26
Motor controller also does nyan cat
» ‎ Hack a Day

As a freshman at UC Berkeley, [Keegan] has been helping out with his school’s Pioneers in Engineering program that gives high school students some hands on experience with engineering principles, usually by building robots. This year, [Keegan]‘s project is a motor controller that just so happens to play the nyan cat song over the motor PWM output. [...]
Tags: controller motor nyan keegan berkeley building-robots uc-berkeley cat-song robots hacks
March 14, 2012
7:01
A Mannequin Head + Arduino + Webcam = Lots of Creepy Fun!
» ‎ Hack a Day

This mannequin head was purchased years ago on sale for less than $3. As with many things one sees while shopping, it didn’t have a purpose at the time, but seemed like it would be useful later. Add in an Arduino, some servos, and electronics parts that were acquire in a similar manner, and you [...]
Tags: mannequin arduino head mannequin-head servos many-things robots hacks
March 09, 2012
15:01
[Vijay Kumar's] TED talk on the state of quadcopter research
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Vijay Kumar] is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the GRASP lab where research centering around autonomous quadcopters is being met with great success. If you were intrigued by the video demonstrations seen over the last few years, you won’t want to miss the TED talk [Dr. Kumar] recently gave [...]
Tags: talk research state ted dr.-kumar vijay-kumar grasp-lab video-demonstrations robots hacks
March 07, 2012
12:01
Short and squat balancing bot is extremely stable
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Lauszus] really put together an impressive self balancing robot platform. It is virtually motionless when balancing in place, and that stability is never lost even when motoring across the room. Part of the success behind this build is the use of quality components. He’s got a really nice set of motors with built-in encoders which [...]
Tags: bot balancing lauszus robot-platform quality-components encoders robots hacks
March 03, 2012
12:23
DyIO is a huge robotics development board
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Kevin] wrote in to tell us about the robotics development platform he’s been working on for the last few years. He calls his device the DyIO, and looks like an extremely easy way to get a robot up and running quickly. Because the DyIO stands for Dynamic Input & Output, [Kevin] thought it was important [...]
Tags: dyio board development kevin dynamic-input development-platform robotics robots hacks
February 28, 2012
14:01
$15 toy becomes fully programmable robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Kevin] undertook a robot build partly for his own enjoyment, but also to include his kids in the action. He acquired a cheap toy and packed it full of programmable goodness. The starting point was a $15 toy called Rad 2.0. It’s a great starting point as it already included some motorized parts, and takes [...]
Tags: robot starting toy kevin programmable-robot great-starting-point cheap-toy robots hacks
February 27, 2012
7:01
DIY quadcopter for around $200
» ‎ Hack a Day

We think [FlorianH] did a bang-up job of prototyping his Minima Quadcopter on the cheap. The total bill comes in right around $200 and we’re very happy with the quality of parts as well as the results. Here you can see the top of the double-sided board which he etched to host all of the [...]
Tags: florianh quadcopter diy job robots hacks
February 24, 2012
14:01
All PCB quadcopter makes the most of each component
» ‎ Hack a Day

It’s difficult to contain our excitement for this tiny quadcopter project called the Picopter. [Frank] managed to pull together an impressive collection of features when developing the project. First off, the quadcopter itself uses all-PCB construction. Even the supports for the motors are PCBs with keyed slots to mate perpendicular to the main control board, [...]
Tags: pcb quadcopter project frank impressive-collection pcbs excitement robots hacks
8:53
Variable pitch quadrocopter flies upside down
» ‎ Hack a Day

Straight from the Aerospace Controls Laboratory comes a variable-pitch quadrocopter designed by [Mark Cutler] and [Jonathan P. Howe]. While real, full-sized helicopters always have variable pitch rotors, changing the pitch of the blades on remote control aircraft is a fairly uncommon modification. When it’s done right, though, being able to easily change the thrust direction of a [...]
Tags: pitch quadrocopter variable mark-cutler jonathan-p.-howe variable-pitch controls-laboratory robots hacks
February 15, 2012
14:02
Space; it’s a junkyard until the Swiss get their way
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Swiss plan to clean up the near-space environment. They just announced a debris removal device which they plan to launch in three to five years. The first goal of the program is to scoop up two satellites. Both of them are Swiss owned, but there’s something very James Bond like that pops into our heads [...]
Tags: space junkyard way bond james debris-removal two-satellites space-environment robots hacks
February 03, 2012
8:01
Dog Pod Grid one step closer to reality
» ‎ Hack a Day

What’s better than one amazingly acrobatic quadcopter? How about a swarm of acrobatic micro-quadcopters? It’s not a rhetorical question, but an experimental reality. A team at the University of Pennsylvania are showing off their latest round of hovering robots which can move in formation and alter their orientation as a swarm. You may remember us [...]
Tags: experimental-reality grid-one rhetorical-question robots hacks
January 27, 2012
13:29
[Jackson Pollock] is now a robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Even though abstract expressionism died out several decades ago, robots are still chugging along dripping nihilistic pigment onto a cold, uncaring canvas. [Liat] and [Assaf] created a robot named The Originals Factory to create paintings in the style of abstract expressionism, a style of painting that is arguably best represented by [Jackson Pollock] and his ‘drip paintings.’ [...]
Tags: pollock robot expressionism jackson drip-paintings abstract-expressionism jackson-pollock robots hacks
January 13, 2012
8:19
[Pythagoras], a Delta Robot for Drawing
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Pythagoras] is a delta robot built originally using RC servos. Humbly, [Aaron] “concedes” that the first version of his delta robot using hobby servos was easy to build. As anyone who has built any kind of robot knows though, there is definitely a lot of work involved in even the simplest robot. Coordinating three axes [...]
Tags: delta pythagoras robot aaron hobby-servos axes robots hacks
January 12, 2012
14:56
Boxie is an adorable toddler videographer
» ‎ Hack a Day

Meet Boxie. He’s a robot videographer with levels of interaction we haven’t seen outside an episode of Dora the Explorer. The project was conceived by [Alex] as his MIT thesis project to see if robots can use humans to make themselves more useful. All we know is Boxie is freaking adorable, as evidenced by this video. The [...]
Tags: boxie project videographer alex dora dora-the-explorer thesis-project robots hacks
5:01
Robot takes voice commands via open source CSR
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is Chippu, a robot that [Achu] has been working on for some time. His most recent addition was to give the robot the ability to respond to voice commands. This is accomplished using a variation of the open source Continuous Speech Recognition package called Julius. The package depends on two main parts, a set [...]
Tags: package source robot julius continuous-speech-recognition voice-commands achu robots hacks
January 06, 2012
15:01
Treaded robot modified for stair climbing
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Mike Li] is showing of his stair climbing robot. It’s a bot that cruises around on a pair of tank treads, but some interesting modifications gave him the traction needed to ascend a flight of stairs without slipping backward. The image above shows this process in great detail. You can see the unaltered treads leaving [...]
Tags: robot stair treaded mike-li flight-of-stairs traction robots hacks
January 04, 2012
13:01
Line-follower is an homage to [Homer]; plans to infringe copyrights
» ‎ Hack a Day

The Chief Knock-a-Homer robot is [Psycho Freaky's] shout out to The Simpsons. The robot design appeared in an episode where [Homer] built [Bart] a fighting robot. Since he’s not robot builder, [Homer] actually climbed inside the shell and dished out sweet vengeance while suffering some severe injuries at the same time. But [Psycho] has the skills necessary to make this [...]
Tags: robot line-follower psycho chief-knock-a- bart homer sweet-vengeance robot-builder robots hacks
9:19
Easy camera tracking with a quadrocopter
» ‎ Hack a Day

[DJ Sures] has been pulling all-nighters lately to get his AR Drone Parrot build off the ground. Now that it’s up and flying around, he managed to get it to follow objects around the room using on board cameras. For the build, [DJ Sures] used the AR Drone ’flying video game’ quadrocopter. This toy has two on [...]
Tags: sures quadrocopter drone easy-camera board-cameras robots hacks
January 03, 2012
8:01
Neural networks control a toy car
» ‎ Hack a Day

After taking the Stanford Machine Learning class offered over the Internet last year, [David Singleton] thought he could build something really cool. We have to admit that he nailed it with his neural network controlled car. There’s not much to the build; it’s just an Android phone, an Arduino and a toy car. The machine [...]
Tags: toy neural car david-singleton stanford-machine arduino robots hacks
January 02, 2012
11:00
Easy rotary encoding for your projects
» ‎ Hack a Day

Want to monitor how much a wheel has turned in your project? Then you need a rotary encoder! Here’s a way to add rotary encoding without changing the mounting method of your wheels (translated). [Jorge] added it as a way to improve the functionality of this line-following robot. It uses a paper encoder wheel which is [...]
Tags: encoder way wheel jorge line-following-robot rotary-encoder robots hacks
December 31, 2011
10:05
Zombie [Jackson] bot dances to Thriller
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Marc Cryan] built this little bugger which he calls Wendell the Robot. But what good is an animatronic piece like this unless you do something fun with it? That’s why you can catch the movements matching [Michael Jackson's] choreography from the music video Thriller in the clip after the break. This is a ground-up build [...]
Tags: zombie thriller bot marc-cryan michael-jackson wendell jackson little-bugger cryan something-fun robots
December 27, 2011
12:30
A Little Tweeting “Ewok”
» ‎ Hack a Day

Tweet Receiving, that is. This Ewok model, named “Ewen the Cheerlight,” is able to rotate its head left and right as well as show expressions. The most interesting feature of this hack, however, is that the little Ewok actually wakes up each time one tweets a “colour” to @cheerlights and lets it’s owner [Joel] know [...]
Tags: tweeting ewok little joel ewen time-one expressions robots hacks
December 26, 2011
14:56
A Robot… That Can See Through Walls!
» ‎ Hack a Day

Robots on four wheels are fun on their own merits, but one thing that most lack is the ability to see through walls. With it’s onboard radar system, this bot is equipped to see objects that a person couldn’t normally detect on the other side of the wall. Although some of the more “nuts and [...]
Tags: robots walls robot radar-system four-wheels merits hacks
December 19, 2011
7:01
Tribot robotics platform
» ‎ Hack a Day

For a number of children born of geek parents, the WowWee Tribot is sure to make an appearance underneath a Christmas tree this year. By New Year’s, though, this toy will surely make its way to the back of a closet to sit unused until spring cleaning. It’s a shame to let such an interesting [...]
Tags: year platform tribot wowwee christmas-tree robotics robots hacks
December 13, 2011
14:01
Android legs stability testing
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is [James'] latest android build, a set of legs that use gyroscopes for balance. He started off by planning the build with some LEGO pieces to get an idea of how each foot and leg joint would fit together. This let him achieve one of his goals. From the start he wanted to create [...]
Tags: testing stability android james lego-pieces stability-testing gyroscopes robots hacks
December 12, 2011
10:59
Sphere morphing hexabot is a mechanical jellyfish
» ‎ Hack a Day

Once again, we’re wowed over [Zenta]‘s robotic skill. A few months ago, [Zenta] posted a video of his MorpHex hexapod spherebot that left us awed. After a few long months, more bits of MorpHex have made it onto the chassis. [Zenta] says his project isn’t done but it’s still enough to knock our socks off. [...]
Tags: zenta sphere morphex jellyfish chassis robots hacks
December 08, 2011
7:01
[DJ Sures] digs up another 80s robot toy, makes it awesome
» ‎ Hack a Day

[DJ Sures] just can’t help himself from tinkering with robot toys built in the 80s. This time, he got his hands on an Omnibot-2000 (not to be confused with his other Omnibot hack), and updated it for the 21st century. After its obligatory run through the dishwasher, the robot was fitted with two heavy duty [...]
Tags: sures robot omnibot omnibot-2000 robot-toy robot-toys robots hacks
December 05, 2011
14:01
Update: Tiny line-follower and more
» ‎ Hack a Day

This tiny line-following robot is quite impressive. It’s [Ondrej Stanek's] second take on the design, which he calls PocketBot 2. Just like the earlier version, this robot is small enough to fit in a matchbox, but it’s received several upgrades in this iteration. The coin cells that ran the previous version have been replaced by [...]
Tags: version robot update ondrej-stanek line-follower line-following-robot coin-cells robots hacks
December 02, 2011
12:03
Micromouse wins 2011 maze race in under 4 seconds
» ‎ Hack a Day

It’s off to the races once again with the Micomouse maze solving contest at the 2011 RoboGames. This is a picture of the winner, a bot called Min7 (main page) which was built by [Ng Beng Kiat]. Using four phototransistors and a flash sensor it managed to first map the contest maze, then speed run it [...]
Tags: micromouse maze contest min robogames phototransistors kiat robots hacks
November 24, 2011
9:06
Internet controlled robotic arm
» ‎ Hack a Day

The guys over at Rusty Nail Workshop have put up an Internet controlled robotic arm for your amusement. While you’re waiting for the turkey to be done (or, you know, working), try your hand at moving some LEGO pieces around with a remote-controlled robotic arm. The build log goes through the parts needed for the [...]
Tags: workshop internet ARM rusty-nail lego-pieces robotic-arm robots hacks
November 23, 2011
5:01
Oh boy do we want to ride a giant inflatable robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

We’ve seen videos of people attaching chairs to gigantic welding robots and riding them around the shop, and while that would be fun for a little bit, the joy would be fleeting. Flight simulators built on a Stewart Platform are becoming old hat. Now there’s a new robot we want to ride. [Saul Griffith] from [...]
Tags: giant boy robot stewart-platform saul-griffith inflatable-robot flight-simulators robots hacks
November 21, 2011
5:01
TI Launchpad adds computer control to a robot arm
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Eric Gregori] had an OWI535 toy robotic arm. Although cheap (coming it at around $30) the arm is only set up to be used via a wired control box. [Eric] knew he could do better by adding computer control via a TI Launchpad and motor driver peripheral. The arm has shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints, [...]
Tags: launchpad ARM control eric eric-gregori robot-arm computer-control robotic-arm robots hacks
November 19, 2011
10:24
Strap yourself in and let this robot arm shake the bejesus out of you
» ‎ Hack a Day

This man is strapped onto the business end of a huge robotic arm. If you’ve seen videos of industrial robots on automobile assembly lines and the like, you know how fast and strong these machines are. But this isn’t headed for the factory floor, it’s a new flight simulator built do train Australian fighter pilots. Researchers at Deakin University [...]
Tags: strap ARM robot deakin-university automobile-assembly industrial-robots robots hacks
November 17, 2011
15:24
Double-pendulum spray gives this graffiti bot some style
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s an art exhibit that does its own painting. The Senseless Drawing Bot (translated) uses the back and forth motion of the wheeled based to get a double-pendulum arm swinging. At the end of the out-of-control appendage, a can of spray paint is let loose. We’re kind of surprised by the results as they don’t [...]
Tags: bot double-pendulum spray pendulum-arm spray-paint robots hacks
November 15, 2011
12:02
Snake-bot gives us the mechanical heevy-jeevies
» ‎ Hack a Day

Basilisk? Nope, just your run-of-the-mill giant serpentine robot build. This build aims to recreate Titanoboa, a prehistoric snake which measured more than fifty feet long and weighted over a ton. They’re well on their way to completing the goal, as what you see above is fully operational, lacking only cosmetic niceties which would only serve to make the [...]
Tags: giant basilisk snake-bot serpentine-robot fifty-feet robots hacks
November 14, 2011
12:01
There’s a lot packed into this BeagleBoard controlled rover
» ‎ Hack a Day

That black box is hiding all kinds of goodies that make this rover a hacking playground. [Andrey] built the device around a BeagleBoard, which offers the processing power and modules that he needed to make the rest of it work. The control unit shrinks the pilot down to the rover’s size, using a cockpit that [...]
Tags: lot beagleboard rover processing-power cockpit robots hacks
November 09, 2011
14:01
Pikachu is coming for you (especially on carpet)
» ‎ Hack a Day

If you look closely, you’ll see that Pikachu isn’t sporting a pair of funky throwing stars, but is actually suspended between there. Our furry friend is just putting a happy face on this carpet roving robot called the Carpet Monkey V5. It’s been in the works for years, and this is just one more stop [...]
Tags: carpet isn pikachu throwing-stars furry-friend happy-face robots hacks
November 04, 2011
7:01
Look, it’s a helicopter! it’s a plane! it’s a rolling robot!
» ‎ Hack a Day

The helicopter-plane-ball-bot sounds like a creation [Homer Simpson] would come up with, but it’s a fairly accurate description of what this machine can do. It was developed by researches at Japan’s ministry of defense. The single propeller lets it operate much like a helicopter. But when it needs to get somewhere quick, the body repositions [...]
Tags: robot plane helicopter japan homer homer-simpson ministry-of-defense accurate-description robots hacks
November 03, 2011
10:01
Bomb disposal robot with Lego gripper
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Krash] had a lot of fun hacking up his Spy Gear TRAKR; we’re just lucky he was able to move a suspicious Shrek doll before it detonated. The now discontinued Spy Gear TRAKR serves as the basis for [Krash]‘s build. This tiny remote-controlled toy transmits video back to its remote and makes us very jealous [...]
Tags: bomb-disposal spy-gear remote-controlled-toy robots hacks
October 28, 2011
12:01
Motor drivers: half h-bridge with brake and more
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s a nice little circuit that will drive a motor and allow you to stop its rotation, giving your robot a set of brakes. It’s part of [JM's] post about the in’s and out’s of building microcontroller friendly motor controllers (translated). This particular setup is a half H-bridge. It allows you to drive the motor in [...]
Tags: brake half motor h-bridge motor-drivers motor-controllers robots hacks
October 20, 2011
14:34
Animatronics in a box
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Knife141] built an impressive animatronic head. He uses it mostly for volunteer activities, like getting school children excited about technology. He built a carrying trunk that fits the puppet just right, making it easy to store and to transport. He started by making the parts for the head out of cardboard to make sure they [...]
Tags: head box animatronics animatronic-head volunteer-activities puppet robots hacks
13:34
Robotic farming means more corn for everyone
» ‎ Hack a Day

You know we’re all going to starve, right? If the world’s population keeps growing exponentially and food production grows linearly, we’re eventually going to find out what Soylent Green is made of. This is where [David Dorhout]‘s Prospero robot farmer comes in. [David] has come up with the idea of using small autonomous robots to [...]
Tags: corn everyone robotic david-dorhout david soylent-green autonomous-robots prospero robots hacks
October 19, 2011
6:01
Creating a voice controlled robotic arm
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Arthur] was laid up with a wrist injury, so he decided it would be a great time to hang out around the house and tinker with electronics, since most outdoor activities were out of the question. He picked up a robotic arm kit and assembled it to test out some code written for it that [...]
Tags: ARM creating voice arthur robotic-arm-kit wrist-injury tinker robots hacks
October 18, 2011
12:01
Years of robotic projects – dumped for your enjoyment
» ‎ Hack a Day

Meet tippy, just one of the multitude of robotic projects [Oneironaut] has taken on over the years. He ‘dug deep’ and put together a huge data dump of pictures and descriptions of his old robotic projects, then posted them for your enjoyment. When he wrote in to Hackaday on Monday he mentioned 33 pages of [...]
Tags: meet tippy enjoyment robotic-projects multitude robots hacks
October 11, 2011
8:01
Genetic testing with Lego
» ‎ Hack a Day

From the dark recesses of the Internet circa 2009 comes the BioBrick-A-Bot, a liquid handling system for molecular biologists. The 2009 iGEM competition was a student competition to build devices for synthetic biology. The BioBrick-A-Bot’s goal is to build a simple, low-cost liquid handling system that sucks liquids out of petri dishes and into vials. [...]
Tags: handling biobrick-a-bot system dark-recesses molecular-biologists petri-dishes robots hacks
October 05, 2011
15:01
Student built robot chassis has something you can learn from
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is a four-wheeled robot chassis built by high school students over the summer. They were participating in workshops put on by xbot robotics in Seattle, Washington. The goal is to get them participating in events like FIRST Robotics and LEGO league, and eventually into science related careers. At first glance we thought: oh, that’s a nice [...]
Tags: robot student chassis seattle washington robot-chassis wheeled-robot first-robotics robots hacks
October 02, 2011
14:01
Robotic arm follows the movements of your own limbs
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Alejandro] and his friends recently finished a first prototype of scratch-built robotic arm. They’ve got some nice electronics bench equipment for use with a project like this, but for the actual fabrication work it’s off to the kitchen. As you can see in the video after the break, they’re using PVC as the stock material [...]
Tags: prototype ARM robotic alejandro stock-material fabrication-work robotic-arm robots hacks
12:01
Page-turning book scanner roundup
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Daniel] at diybookscanner.org posted a roundup of the best automatic book scanner builds to date. A lot of the comments on our last coverage of book scanners were summed up by [Spork] with, “No automatic page turning = no use.” Turning a page in a book with a robot is really hard, though, and these builds [...]
Tags: scanner book roundup daniel spork scanners robots hacks
September 30, 2011
14:02
New BigDog video doesn’t fail to impress
» ‎ Hack a Day

Those following the evolution of quadrupedal assist robots will recognize the specimen seen above as a relative of BigDog. This is AlphaDog, one of the latest prototypes in Boston Dynamics’ Legged Squadron Support Systems program. It’s designed to carry 400 pounds of payload, which explains the disc weights seen on either side of the torso. Like its diminutive sibling, [...]
Tags: video new bigdog boston boston-dynamics payload robots hacks
September 15, 2011
15:01
Steerable bristlebot via IR control
» ‎ Hack a Day

Looking at the size of this bristlebot the first thing we wondered is where’s the battery? All we know is that it’s a rechargeable NiMH and it must be hiding under that tiny circuit board. But [Naghi Sotoudeh] didn’t just build a mindless device that jiggles its way across a table. This vibrating robot is controllable [...]
Tags: steerable bristlebot control tiny-circuit-board rechargeable-nimh robot robots hacks
September 12, 2011
15:01
Wall-climbing bot does it with ease
» ‎ Hack a Day

Paraswift is a robot that can climb vertical surfaces with ease. Here you can see the robot motoring up the side of a building with a parachute packed on it’s back for use on the way down. The team that built the robot is calling it a base jumper, but after seeing them catch the [...]
Tags: robot ease wall-climbing vertical-surfaces parachute base-jumper robots hacks
September 07, 2011
7:09
Matchbox-sized line following robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

While they are not nearly as complex as their self-navigating brethren, building line following robots is no simple task, especially when they are this small. The creation of [Ondřej Staněk], this matchbox-sized line following robot is quite impressive. PocketBot’s 48mm x 32mm circuit board also acts as its frame, supporting the wheels, motors, microcontroller and [...]
Tags: robot line matchbox-sized stan line-following-robot 32mm microcontroller robots hacks
September 01, 2011
9:01
Using nixie tubes as robot eyes
» ‎ Hack a Day

[radmeck] on the ez-robot.com forums came up with a great use for Nixie tubes. Instead of using Nixies for clocks, or indicating values, he used them as robot eyes. He used the arduNIX Arduino-powered Nixie tube driver to power the tubes. [radmeck] was very impressed with the arduNIX kit. The kit is able to drive [...]
Tags: radmeck robot nixie robot-eyes nixie-tubes nixie-tube robots hacks
August 31, 2011
10:01
Making a line-following toy into a programmable robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Eric Gregori] picked up this little yellow robot as a kit build. It has a single PCB inside that has a pair of IR emitters and detectors pointed downward at the front of the robot. It is able to follow a dark line on a light surface based on how the infrared beam reflects back [...]
Tags: kit robot toy eric-gregori yellow-robot ir-emitters programmable-robot robots hacks
August 30, 2011
16:02
Dustbin computer lets you clean and prototype with a Neato XV-11
» ‎ Hack a Day

So you bought yourself a Neato XV-11 and your floors have never been cleaner. The only problem is that you want to hack around with the hardware without losing your floor-sweeping minion. [Hash] found a solution to the issue by building a computer inside of the dustbin module. You can see at the center of [...]
Tags: dustbin neato computer building-a-computer robots hacks
15:01
My first robot: A simple demo to get kids excited about robotics
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Will] from Revolt Lab needed a project to get the summer campers he supervises interested in electronics, but when your audience is 5 years old, your subject matter had better be simple, yet interesting enough to hold their attention at length. He settled on using a Lego NXT robot to keep their little minds engaged, [...]
Tags: revolt robot demo lego-nxt-robot summer-campers robots hacks
August 29, 2011
14:14
Chumby controlled mechanum wheel robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Madox] gutted an Insignia Infocast to use with this robot. Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand and they partnered with Chumby to make their Infocast line. If you can find a used or clearance model it’s a great way to get yourself and embedded Linux board for a project like this one. The body and [...]
Tags: robot insignia chumby wheel-robot infocast best-buy robots hacks
13:14
[Easton's] animatronic hand gets 3D printed upgrade
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Easton] as been working with [Jeremy Blum] to come up with the newest version of his animatronic hand. You may remember seeing [Easton's] first animatronic hand, with which he won his regional science fair and made a trip to nations. Since then he’s been working on improvements, and with access to [Jeremy's] Makerbot he harnessed [...]
Tags: version easton hand jeremy-blum jeremy animatronic regional-science robots hacks
August 25, 2011
12:26
How not to build a robotic lawnmower
» ‎ Hack a Day

[shadeydave] wanted to build his own Lawnbot, but he had no idea where to start. He purchased some DIY plans online which looked like they would get the job done, but then he strayed from the path in a big way and spent gobs of money in the process. In his Instructable writeup, he details [...]
Tags: lawnmower lawnbot shadeydave robotic-lawnmower instructable robots hacks
August 18, 2011
3:52
Morphing hexapod has us drooling
» ‎ Hack a Day

Hexapod robots seem to be a dime a dozen lately, but we think you will be hard pressed to not be wowed by [Zenta’s] latest creation. He’s built a bunch of hex and octopods before, but hasn’t tried building anything quite like this. His MorpHex bot might look like your standard hexapod, but once it [...]
Tags: hexapod morphing dime hexapod-robots octopods morphex robots hacks
August 16, 2011
14:01
Amazing 60 year old robot dog is a mystery
» ‎ Hack a Day

The robot dog you see above is a mystery. [Daneil Dennet], a professor of philosophy at Tufts University found this in an antique shop in Paris. Apparently it has no identification and no one has been able to tell him anything about it. It was made in the 50s, and that seems to be all [...]
Tags: dog robot mystery paris old-robot tufts-university shop-in-paris robots hacks
12:01
I have seen the future, and it has Swarmanoids
» ‎ Hack a Day

Imagine that you want a book that is located on a shelf several rooms over, but you do not want to get out of your chair. Short of developing telekenesis on the spot, there’s little you can do other than get up and fetch the book yourself – that is, unless you have an army [...]
Tags: swarmanoids book future telekenesis army robots hacks
August 11, 2011
9:59
Portal puppet probably won’t kill us
» ‎ Hack a Day

This incredibly detailed puppet of the Wheatley from Portal was sent into us, and we a so very happy that we’re not writing about a GLaDOS build right now. Hewn from florist foam and covered Wonderflex and Apoxie Sculpt, Wheatley pretty much tows the line as far as cosplay and prop builds go. What makes Wheatley [...]
Tags: wheatley puppet portal florist-foam wonderflex robots hacks
August 09, 2011
16:01
An “Earthcore” Hexapod with Minimal Mechanical Parts
» ‎ Hack a Day

Although hexapod robots have been featured on [HAD] many times, this one features a really cool minimalistic design. With few mechanical parts to support the three servos, the “Earthcore Hexapod Robot” has a unique gait, tending to quickly slide the driving legs rather than picking the whole robot up. Although it would probably have trouble [...]
Tags: hexapod robot earthcore hexapod-robots minimalistic-design servos robots hacks
4:05
A Robotic Turtle Platform to Buy or Build
» ‎ Hack a Day

This electric turtle bot instructable describes a fairly simple turtle-style robot meant to be laser cut out of acrylic (although other materials such as aluminum, MDF, or polycarbonate should work just as well). This frame is also optionally for sale, which should appeal to those that would like a mechanical robotics platform to play with, [...]
Tags: turtle platform robotic electric-turtle instructable polycarbonate robots hacks
August 05, 2011
10:37
Robots tends your lawn while you veg out on the couch
» ‎ Hack a Day

Most people can agree that picking weeds is not a whole lot of fun. [Dave] was not a big fan of sitting out in the heat toiling over his lawn, so he did the only rational thing and built a robot to do it for him. Nuntius, the Garden Avenger, is a remote controlled robot [...]
Tags: robots robot lawn dave avenger weeds whole-lot hacks
6:13
Basic Animatronics Tutorial: PIC Based Servo Eyebrows
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Chris] writes in to let us know about his latest animatronics tutorial, this time on robotic eyebrows! The tutorial takes us through the process of using a fairly simple PIC circuit to display various facial expressions. Since a wide array of facial expressions have unique and well understood eyebrow positions this simple hack can make [...]
Tags: pic basic tutorial chris facial-expressions animatronics eyebrows robots hacks
August 02, 2011
4:01
Robots listen only to the leader when building a roving quadcopter landing pad
» ‎ Hack a Day

Swarm robotics is really starting to produce some interesting results. This image is from the video embedded after the break that show a group of five robots creating a landing platform for a quadrotor helicopter. The four that actually make up the platform are not in contact with each other, but instead following commands from [...]
Tags: robots landing platform swarm-robotics landing-pad hacks
August 01, 2011
10:01
Robotic gardener takes its cue from bomb disposal bots
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Dave] posted some pictures and videos of his ‘Nuntius’ robot on the Propeller forums. From the pictures it’s an impressive build, but to really appreciate [Dave]‘s skill, check out the Youtube demo. The controller is a Propeller protoboard with bits of angle aluminum fastened together. Pots are positioned at the joints of the remote’s arm [...]
Tags: propeller robotic gardener dave angle-aluminum bomb-disposal protoboard robots hacks
4:00
Toy robot hand vastly improved, now more offensive
» ‎ Hack a Day

YouTube user [onefivefour] posted a video of his hacked up toy robot hand. These cheap robot hands usually only use one wire to move all five fingers. [onefivefour] improved upon the design and added five servos to allow independent control of each digit. The servos are controlled by a PICAXE microcontroller, and [onefivefour] is willing [...]
Tags: toy robot onefivefour robot-hand robot-hands picaxe-microcontroller robots hacks
July 30, 2011
13:01
R/C Hexababy is guaranteed to give you nightmares
» ‎ Hack a Day

For this week’s hack, [Dino] was working on a mechanical cat toy, but the project fell apart towards the end for some reason or another. With time running out, he had to come up with something on pretty short notice, using whatever he happened to have on hand. Luckily he picks up some seriously weird [...]
Tags: week toy cat c-hexababy dino mechanical-cat cat-toy nightmares robots hacks
July 28, 2011
11:38
RC car and Beagle Board mate for a versatile robot build
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s a rover project that has plenty of power (translated) to go places. This is true not only of its locomotive capability, but processing power as well. The RC car used here (translated) is not overly expensive, but offers a lot of versatility. It’s got front and rear steering via two servo motors, as well as independent [...]
Tags: beagle power car rover-project processing-power locomotive robots hacks
7:29
Security Bot 2
» ‎ Hack a Day

[William] Had originally built a little Security Bot to roam the halls of his house while he was not at home. He wanted a little bit more and started Security Bot 2 to include a good pile of sensors and add pan and tilt control to the onboard camera. Thanks to ordering pieces from a [...]
Tags: tilt-control onboard-camera pan-and-tilt robots hacks
4:28
3D printed singularity drive platform
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Silas] is a student at Olin College and came up with a platform using the singularity drive system in his spare time. We covered a LEGO build of a singularity drive earlier this month. Instead of wheels, treads or legs, this drive system has a hemisphere spinning along its vertical axis. Interestingly, the robot does [...]
Tags: vertical-axis singularity silas robots hacks
July 26, 2011
14:22
Purdue IEEE ROV
» ‎ Hack a Day

Purdue University’s IEEE branch participated in this year’s Marine Advanced Technology Education Center Competition, taking second place for the Hybris ROV seen above. The competition included several compulsory functions, including the ability to cap an underwater oil well, collect biological samples, and take water samples at depth. What they came up with is a quick and [...]
Tags: rov purdue ieee advanced-technology-education technology-education-center marine-advanced-technology robots hacks
July 25, 2011
7:04
Robot vacuum makes cleaning into a game
» ‎ Hack a Day

This is not a Roomba hack, but a ground-up vacuum cleaner robot build. It’s the result of a class project from six students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. There’s a slew of information available in their paper, but fair warning that it’s an 8.6 MB PDF file that we couldn’t get Google [...]
Tags: vacuum game robot sweden robot-vacuum royal-institute-of-technology mb-pdf robots hacks
July 23, 2011
16:36
Cypherbot uses older uC and retro-controller
» ‎ Hack a Day

[PJ Allen] has been working on a little robot which he calls Cypherbot. The control circuitry is quite familiar; a Board of Education which features the Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller. This is an older and slower microprocessor, but it works quite well for this application since there’s no need for speed or heavy number crunching. [...]
Tags: robot cypherbot control allen basic-stamp-2 control-circuitry number-crunching robots hacks
July 22, 2011
8:03
Modded Wall-E becomes a real robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a plastic Wall-E toy and decided to build a robot that includes a camera, voice recognition, and object tracking. The result is adorable so we’re putting this video before the break: Wall-E is built around an EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller. All the software functions are handled with the complementary [...]
Tags: sures robot toy modded-wall robot-controller real-robot break-wall robots hacks
July 19, 2011
13:06
Obstacle avoiding hexapod from reused parts
» ‎ Hack a Day

[Rob] built this hexapod one day when he had some free time after work. Just like the last hexapod we saw, he based the build on the Pololu design which uses three servo motors for surprisingly reliable movement. The hardware is very straight forward. A Dorkboard serves as the brain. It’s a PCB that is wider [...]
Tags: day hexapod obstacle rob pololu dorkboard robots hacks
July 13, 2011
14:01
Omniwheel robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Like all of us, [Jonathan Guberman] has a list of projects and builds that ‘will get done when I have time.’ His Kiwi drive robot is no exception. It’s intended to be one piece of a much larger project, but he decided to document it anyway (we think in the hope of getting is rear [...]
Tags: list omniwheel robot jonathan-guberman drive-robot guberman kiwi robots hacks
July 11, 2011
12:01
Crafting a hexapod with an RC controller
» ‎ Hack a Day

Here’s a fantastic project that lets to drive a hexapod around the room using an RC controller. [YT2095] built the bot after replacing the servo motors on his robot arm during an upgrade. The three cheapies he had left over were just begging for a new project, and he says he got the first proof-of-concept [...]
Tags: controller hexapod project robot-arm proof-of-concept robots hacks
July 09, 2011
11:03
Amazing hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel robot
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Bradley University grad student [Curtis Boirum] has built a robot which uses quite a unique drive system, one we’re guessing you have never seen before. The robot uses a single motor to drive its hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel, propelling it across the floor at amazing speeds with uncanny agility. The robot uses a simple two [...]
Tags: wheel-robot university-grad bradley-university robots hacks
11:03
Amazing hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel robot
» ‎ Hack a Day

Bradley University grad student [Curtis Boirum] has built a robot which uses quite a unique drive system, one we’re guessing you have never seen before. The robot uses a single motor to drive its hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel, propelling it across the floor at amazing speeds with uncanny agility. The robot uses a simple two [...]
Tags: omnidirectional robot wheel curtis-boirum wheel-robot university-grad bradley-university robots hacks
July 08, 2011
5:01
Humanoid robot listens to music, plays along on his Theremin
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Researcher and YouTube user [mspetitegeek] along with her lab mate [Tatsuhiko Itohara] have been fortunate enough to spend some time working with the HRP-2 humanoid robot from Kawada Industries. Their research has seemingly been focused on using the robot to create real-time interactions with humans for entertainment purposes, at the very least. The program they [...]
Tags: humanoid robot music hrp entertainment-purposes robots hacks
July 06, 2011
11:57
Propeller-based robot with basic object avoidance
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The Parallax Propeller is a pretty powerful MCU as [Dino] recently discovered in his latest Hack a Week installment. He wanted to build a simple robotics platform that he could use for testing out various sensors, and he figured he might as well learn about a different type of micro controller in the process. He [...]
Tags: avoidance robot propeller-based dino object-avoidance micro-controller mcu robots hacks
July 03, 2011
6:01
Robotic Schadenfreude – quadrotor blooper reel
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While quadrotors might just become the killing machines of choice some time in the future, we’re pretty sure it will be awhile before they run amok and wipe humans off the face of the planet, if the following video is any indication. The team over at UPenn’s GRASP Lab film everything they do when it [...]
Tags: quadrotor schadenfreude robotic grasp-lab blooper-reel robots hacks
June 27, 2011
10:02
MSP430-based palm size quad copter
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[Thanh] has spent some time flying quad-copters measuring 12” motor to motor, but wanted to build something smaller so that he could fly indoors. Instead of building just one, he actually constructed five different quad-copters, with motor to motor arm spans ranging from 10” to just 3”. In his forum post, he highlights the construction [...]
Tags: msp motor palm thanh palm-size copters copter robots hacks
June 24, 2011
16:01
Building a robot without using a machine shop
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We usually avoid the prospect of buying new tools just for one project. In the long run we’re sure we’d use them again, but sometimes even with that outlook you can’t afford it. Case in point is our life-long-lust for a laser cutter; we just can’t justify the upfront cost but we sure would use [...]
Tags: machine robot shop laser-cutter case-in-point new-tools robots hacks
June 22, 2011
7:07
Converting a Roomba into a Mars rover
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When we first heard of [Dino]‘s all-terrain Roomba, we hoped the ‘stair-climbing Roomba’ problem had finally been solved, but the final build turned out much cooler. A year ago, [Dino] built a small robot based on a rocker-bogie suspension. This suspension system has been used on every Mars rover, including the huge Mars Science Labratory [...]
Tags: mars rover roomba dino mars-science labratory mars-rover robots hacks
June 19, 2011
6:00
The Party Popper “Security” Robot
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This “security” robot is based around the Lego Mindstorms NXT platform. As shown in the video after the break, this robot is capable of firing a “popper” at any intruder the owner of the robot sees fit. It takes a decent amount of force to fire a popper, so this is pretty impressive with a [...]
Tags: popper robot security lego-mindstorms-nxt party-popper intruder robots hacks
June 15, 2011
7:02
Modifying a cheap robot arm for arduino control
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Many a hacker has put together one of those cheap $30 robot arm kits you can get in just about any store with a section labeled, “science”. In an ongoing search for a cheap robot arm, [Larry] decided to modify one of them to be controlled with a PC through an Arduino. The article doubles as [...]
Tags: ARM robot arduino larry robot-arm hacker robots hacks
June 13, 2011
5:08
An Autonomous Car Using a “Webcam”
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This autonomous remote control-style car from Cornell students was designed for a senior level engineering course there. It’s main “sensor” is a low-res webcam style camera. As shown in the video after the break, this car does quite well staying within two black lines on a white surface using it’s vision processing. It also has [...]
Tags: webcam autonomous car cornell-students autonomous-car using-a-webcam robots hacks
June 10, 2011
11:16
Spherical military drone coming to a sky near you
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We’re always fascinated by flying drones around here, and this latest creation by Japan’s Ministry of Defense is no exception. The spherical drone, which looks far simpler than this drone we saw several months back, looks pretty benign at first glance. Once it starts moving however, you can see just how slick it is. Reports [...]
Tags: spherical sky drone japan first-glance ministry-of-defense robots hacks
5:07
$14 swarm robot, kilobot, is extremely cool
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Reader, [Michael Rubenstein], sent in a project he’s been working on. Kilobot, as stated in the paper(pdf), overcomes the big problems with real world swarm robotics simulations; cost, experiment setup time, and maintenance. The robot can be communicated with wirelessly, charged in bulk, and mass programmed in under a minute. Typically, robots used for swarm research [...]
Tags: swarm robot kilobot michael-rubenstein swarm-robotics experiment-setup robots hacks
June 08, 2011
12:01
Tiny transforming beer can robot
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The next time you reach for a cold one, you might want to take a look at the can to ensure that your beer won’t suddenly sprout legs and start skittering across the table. You might remember [Ron Tajima] from some of his previous creations, including this Roomba-based baby cradle and the PacMan Roomba mod. [...]
Tags: robot beer tiny ron-tajima baby-cradle cold-one tajima robots hacks
June 07, 2011
16:01
Trobot: kickstarting the 6-axis minature robot arm
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Having already made it to three hardware development versions, [Toby Baumgartner] is looking for some financial backing to make version four of this robot arm possible. He’s modelling the arm after much larger ABB industrial robots. Like those, it mounts on a stationary base, and features movement along six axes. The first couple of iterations [...]
Tags: ARM robot trobot toby-baumgartner abb-industrial robot-arm industrial-robots robots hacks
June 04, 2011
15:01
Programming robots like you would train a pet
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[Jim] has been working with a team from various Universities to develop an intuitive way to guide and train assistance robots. They focused on one particular technique, training a robot to follow on a leash in the same way you would a pet dog (PDF). He was inspired to send in a link to his research [...]
Tags: way pet Programming jim programming-robots intuitive-way robot robots hacks