Cat uploaded a video she took of my dual brushbot avoiding / attacking objects, during the November 15 group project meeting.  See the PARTS flickr pool.

Here are links to most of them:

http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/05/15/galileo-wheel.aspx
http://www.chilloutzone.to/video/regenwurm-roboter.html
http://io9.com/5637131/robot-opera-is-less-madame-butterfly-more-oops-i-dropped-a-butterfly-screw
http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/Robots/UBot-5
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/geek-builds-functional-wall-e-robot-using-lego
http://io9.com/5474788/the-diy-high+speed-camera-that-is-about-to-change-your-life
http://www.dinofab.com/videos.html
http://www.mikrokopter.com/ucwiki/en/MikroKopter?action=show&redirect=FrontPage
http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/movies/index-e.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WCx8_voRzY

-Pete

Scott Dixon will fill in details of how to use it.  Enjoy!

6/28, 7pm bRrainSilo

http://brainsilo.org/wiki/Location

Hope to see you there!

Monty

http://brainsilo.org/wiki/Location

How many people want to build up some BrushBotComm boards using the Tiny84 at the meeting?  (Tiny44′s are still out of stock)
If there’s enough interest, we’ll do it — please reply on the mailing list, or below, with the number of Tiny84 based boards you want to build.

For those with a board already, let’s start working on the Rx/Tx protocol now that we have the IR working, and figure out the best way to strap these boards onto the BrushBots!

See you all Monday!

Monty

It would be cool to hear about any progress with the latest (ver0.3) IR Tx/Rx code that was released a couple weeks ago though.  Anybody try it yet?

Next project meeting: June 14.

Monty

I’ve been wanting to play around with optical mouse sensors for a while, and the PARTS Indoor Challenge seemed like a good target application, so I threw some Avago ADNS-2620 sensors into the last DorkBot group order.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time this last week to do anything with them.  I figured I would need two sensors to track X, Y, and rotation since the mouse sensor doesn’t do rotation.  This certainly isn’t a new idea — mouse sensors have been used for robotics for quite a while, but I hadn’t done much research on it until now.  Here are some good links:

Precise Dead-Reckoning for Mobile Robots Using Multiple Optical Mouse Sensors (PDF)
Evaluates accuracy of two vs four mouse sensors compared to encoder-based dead reckoning.
Two sensors are significantly better than encoder-based DR if the robot speed is less than the max rate of the mouse sensors; four sensors are even bettter.
Four sensors are still significantly better than encoder-based DR even when the robot speed is greater than the max rate of the mouse sensors.
Testing was done on a felt surface, however, so the variability of the floor we’ve been running the PARTS Indoor Challenge on may require more than two sensors for robust positioning, even at slower speeds.

Cody’s Robot Optical Motion Sensor #1 (CROMS-1)
Nice writeup on hacking an optical mouse sensor, including creating a custom lens assembly for increased range.

Implementation Of An On-Chip Insect-Inspired Optic Flow Based  Navigation Sensor
NASA Tech Brief referenced by Cody’s above writeup.  Using optical mouse sensors with custom lens assemblies for flying robots (at low altitudes).  Overviews the optical design methodology and presents data from actual flight testing.  Concludes that optical mouse sensors are usable for terrain-following behavior on a robotic-flier.  Free registration is required to access the report.

Required components for optical mouse sensor (if you want to start from scratch rather than hack a mouse):
(These aren’t necessarily the best mouse sensor for robot navigation, but they are readily available.)

Avago ADNS-2620 optical mouse sensor
Data Sheet
Purchase:  Mouser 630-ADNS-2620 ($1.58, qty 1)

Avago HDNS-2100-001 lens
Data Sheet
Purchase: Mouser 630-HDNS-2100-001 ($0.18, qty 1)

Avago HDNS-2200 LED alignment clip
Data Sheet
Purchase: Mouser 630-HDNS-2200 (Non-stocked/Not available in small quantities! Grrr.  I think I can do without it.)

Avago HLMP-ED80-K0T0 LED
Data Sheet
Purchase: Mouser 630-HLMP-ED80-K0T00 ($0.39, qty 10)

More to come!

Monty

I’m currently working on a rather large robot that will use several microprocessors. I have just added AVR processors to the list of processors that I work with. Now to get them to all talk together. More later as I am sitting in the April meeting now…..

Here’s the link:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/portlandrobotics/

-Pete

This pdf does not go into detail like I would like but very interesting!

http://www.festo.com/cms/en-us_us/10290.htm

click on brochure link on the right.

I think I am going to be researching this company for the next couple of days.  Very Interesting!