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Cheap Robot Kits?
Defusion_Dunk asks: "Having just watched a re-run of "Short Circuit", and in particular the scene where Steve Guttenburg is teaching the robot arm to play a keyboard, I would like to know: Does anyone know where I can purchase a cheap robot arm that I can plug into my PC and do neat things with? For some reason I have always had a dream of having my computer open a can of Coke for me.... " I remember building a small robot as a science project waaay back in junior high school, and the experience of building it was educational and fun. Does anyone have any pointers to such kits that may still be available today?
I was looking on that website the tonight looking for shape memory alloys (muscle wires) and I saw a few manipulator arms.
If I remember correctly, they can only lift a few ounces, so I don't think that it will be able to pour you a soda, but I did see that they can be controlled via a serial port and a terminal program, otherwise you have to use some sort of control program written in DOS (yowza)!
How about a Mobile Arm? Then it could get the coke from the fridge too.
PigPog.
There was a feature on Slashdot some weeks back about an inexpensive robot kit. The kit is $89 and is a pretty basic robot but it has a lot of potential. The kit is complete, however, there is some assembly required (including soldering) but it does not look very difficult. Here is the link.
Probably get moderated down for offtopic, but what sort of force is required to open a can of coke? I've been playing with Mindstorms and the best I've gotten was a helicoptor that breakdances (although not in time to the beat).
Can a Lego Mindstorms bot articulate small enough to open a can? Is it strong enough?
bugger.net | MunkAndPhyber.com
It is unlikely you will get a robot arm to open a can of coke for you, being that coke cans are designed for humans to open, but I can imagine building (or buying) an arm to pour you a coke into a glass.
With that said, in answer to your question as to where to get a cheap arm, might I suggest Ebay?
Go on Ebay, and search for the words "robot" and "arm", and you will likely get a few hits every time. One caveat though:
Most of the time, these robot arms will be of the "Armatron" variety. For computer control, these arms can be converted - for the normal Armatron (the one controlled by joysticks, with the countdown timer, two blue balls, etc), it takes 6 motors, or a few solenoids (depending on if you want to open the thing up or not) - actually the six motor version is best - there is an old Radio Electronics magazine article on how to do it, and control it from a VIC-20 or C=64 - I can't remember the issue off-hand, but it is either 1983 or 84 - possibly April, May or June - I think (I have a copy - if you would like me to scan and post it somewhere, leave a reply to this message, and I will work it out).
One note on the "normal" Armatron - several versions were made - Tomy made the original (and if you see the word "vintage" and the asking price is high, say over $25.00, make sure it is a Tomy - more on that in a bit) - it was blue and grey, and had (orange?) "hoses" that connected the forearm and shoulder. Tomy later sold the rights to Radio Shack to produce the toy, they kept the same color scheme (sans hoses), but then switched to a grey and white color scheme in later (after 1990?) years. Don't believe anyone if they say it was manufactured prior to 1980 - this toy didn't appear until around 1981 or 82 from Tomy - and it is rare that you actually see a Tomy version, most of them are the RS version (if you are a collector, you want the Tomy version - with the hoses, and not the RS version). You should be able to pick up any one of these for less than $40.00 on Ebay (unless it IS a Tomy original, then who knows)...
One company actually built a mobil version of this device for the Radio Shack Color Computer, and added a video camera/digitizer to the package as well (the camera was mounted on the shoulder of the machine), and sold it through Rainbow magazine...
Radio Shack later came out with what they called the Mobile Armatron (not the same as the independent machine produced above) - it was an arm on a wheeled base, with a wired controller - very easy to hook up to a computer to control, much more so than the original Armatron (the orginal Armatron uses a complex transmission and a single motor to control all six functions of the arm - this was Tomy engineering at it's finest) - these tend to go cheap on Ebay as well.
Every once in a while you may find one of the original serial port trainer arms manufactured in the late 70's/early 80's for schools (pick up an old copy of Byte magazine from the time to see what I mean). These were meant to interface, most generally, to an Apple IIe or similar machine of that day, to the serial port. However, people on Ebay know these when they see them - many may have busted parts (like pulley strings/cables) that would have to be replaced - but a competent individual should have no problem here. By the way, if you ever find a Rhino arm - snatch it up, it was one of the original trainers.
Ever so rarely though, one may be able to bid on Ebay for an industrial robot - I have seen hydraulic, electric, and pneumatic go up for bid there, though may times for high prices (but certainly way less than what the machines would cost new!), and most of the time you have to go pick them up. But they are there for the enterprising individual.
On a final note, you can also find the full line of Tomy robots on Ebay - from the well known Omnibot (which has also been seen in a RobotWar or two), to the lesser known Verbot, Chatbot, and Omnibot 2000. For computer control, I would say the Omnibot 2000 would be the easiest. One could either rip the guts out, and control him directly, or attempt to interface to the myriad ports on the back of the robot (from what I can see on the documentation on the Omnibot 2000 I own, it looks like Tomy wanted to provide a computer interface, but it never saw the light of day), or interface through the radio control. What is interesting about the Omnibot 2000, is if you can get the serving tray with yours, the right arm can be set up and controlled to lift a coke can up to a person, and "serve" the person a coke (and from the looks of my tray, it looks like someone tried at one time to have the bot pour a coke into a glass and serve the glass, but instead spilled the coke - but what is funny, is that the Omnibot 2000's wrist can rotate, so it is possible to pick an open coke up with the arm, and rotate it to pour it out, so it should be possible in theory - or at least by design). I have thought one could take one of these and mount a couple of Quickcams in the "eyes", giving the robot vision capabilities.
Just be aware of the collector value on these robots (which is why I haven't torn mine apart) - very few of the Omnibot 2000's can be found (though much more than can be found of the Heathkit Hero line, and many, many more than the Maxx Steele programmable robot!), so the price will go up accordingly (around $300-400, sometimes $500) on the bid. I got mine for the trade of a 486 a few years back - but I got lucky.
And if you find a Topo, or an Androbot - please let me know...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon