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Lego Segway
Jeff Lalo writes "This Guy has built a Lego version of Dean Kamens Segway Human Transporter. This thing was constructed using only Legos, two cheap (~$40) custom sensors and some smart programing using the open source BrickOS for the Lego RCX. The LegWay, as the creator calls it, can balance itself on two wheels and follow a line. Pretty cool for few lego blocks!"
Url, anyone? I sadly never bookmarked it (shame on me). It'll be good for me, good for your karma, good for everyone.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
"Another idea is to make LegWay stand up (from a lying position) on it's own. It can't do that right now, because the center of mass is below the axle when it on it's side."
Until or unless it's articulated, this will always be true. Segway can't right itself from this position either...?
This guy used BrickOS (which is on sourceforge) to build it. Maybe when I get a few extra bucks I'll buy those Lego Mindstorms, they are quite expensive.
Karma: Bizzare (mostly affected by varying internal caffeine levels.)
This is no ordinary toy gun. This is also what I was talking about.
It would be a useful addition to Slashcode to autoreject any posts containing links to a user-configurable set of sites, and tell the user why his story was rejected.
geocities *always* hits data limits.
May we never see th
I'm impressed. I've worked on control of legged running, and a friend built a self-balancing unicycle in the 1980s. This new thing is the simplest self-balancer I've ever seen, and it does a good job. The video shows that it's quite stable.
obviously, both the lego and the original versions do pretty much the same thing. however, legway cannot guarantee that you do not fall. the segway, OTOH, pretty much does. it has to work with much higher precision sensors and much shorter update intervals. balancing on two wheels was never really difficult, it is basic robotics. making it practical and safe, however, is quite another story
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
"Robert Metcalfe, the co-inventor of the Ethernet office networking standard, who is a friend of Mr. Kamen, told me via e- mail: 'Some months ago when speculation was running high, I said that Kamen's It was more important than the Internet, but not as important as cold fusion, had cold fusion worked out. The It I was talking about, which I did not disclose, was NOT Segway. That's all I can say.'"
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Back when I was in 2nd year Uni, We had to do a similar thing. However we had to make it follow figure 8 line instead of just a track. The obvious problem here is how to make the robot cross the middle section of the figure 8. Most robots made in my year simply went bizerk when the got the cross over, started spinning, just left the track or stopped. This is an interesting problem I never found a solution to. Anyone got any idea's? Of course the materials available were only 2 optical sensors 2 motors and a bunch of lego. Anyone except this challange?
Could one of you lil' PERL monkies do us all a favor?
In the article submissions form, put a little check box titled "Slashdot can mirror locally" or some other phraseology.
Then provide the original link like you normally would, but on the last line where it says "Read More | XX of YY comments" add another link that says "Slashdot Article Mirror"
don't give the credit to the creators for design here! the whole point was to show that the segway really isn't that complicated and a simplified version can be built by amateurs.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Lower the water...don't raise the bridge.
Wherever there is an intersection, replace the cross with a circle (diameter same or less than path-mark width), and program in a delay that allows the device to continue straight whenever it sees a circle, still looking for an unbroken path that will override the temporary step.
Another method is to mount the sensors front to rear, scanning for the path itself (inside edge)...not left to right, looking for the outside edge of the path as the legway does.
Here's an artist who made a full-size playable Lego harpsichord (complete with an mp3 file).
It actually only needs one sensor. The second allows it to follow the line.
Steve Hassenplug
All he needs to do is ensure that upon a sideways fall, it will roll to where a wheel has grip. Then, running the wheel at full power can flip it onto its back (or front) where it can right itself again using quick reflexes and a little angular momentum.
The easy idea would be to place some sort of hemisphere on the outside rims of the wheels so that an unattached wheel would roll to its side. You'd also have to place some extension to the left and right at the top to prevent the unit from lying flat. As long as only one edge of the tire gripped the ground, rotating the tire at high speed in one direction or another should (messily) jerk/flip the unit in a position from which it can recover. (It should be less force than a fall at any rate)
The final piece of the puzzle would be to add some type of sensor that allows you to discern your angular orientation with respect to the ground. One or more accelerometers would be sufficient for this.
~GoRK
That's patent infringement, right there. Someone's gotta have patented the two-wheel-balance, right?
You actually think you can navigate with just your two eyes?
Yes, and I can prove it.
I sail with a friend who's inner ears were damaged by an ear infection in childhood, leaving him with no inate sense of balance. So his entire balance is now done visually.
Does it slow him up? Well he's my dads age, is an ex British Olympic Fin Class sailor, and is now blue water cruising and is an Ocean Yachmaster / Instructor.
I guess if you can cope with the heaving deck of a yacht, you can cope with anything.
The advantage of course is that motion sickness is generally caused by a conflict of 'ear' balance and 'visual' balance (for want of better terms) so he doesn't get seasick. Thats the only way I actually found out, when I mentioned in conversation that he never got sick in rough seas, you'd never ever be able to tell otherwise.
Actually the reason you get motion sickness, and those panaromic cinemas fool you into thinking you are on a roller coaster is because your eyes are very important to navigation and balance.
Of course having the two systems (ear/visual) is a very good idea evolutionary, because one compensates for the weakness in the other.
But knowing that a blind colleuge of mine doesn't fall over in a heap, and my sailing companion doesn't either, I think I can justify in saying humans can operate with only one system perfectly well
I believe you are only liable for patent infringement if you sell / distribute your replica. This is why Eli Whitney never made any money off of the cottin gin. It was so simple everyone went home and built their own, and there was notihing Eli could do about it. If they sold their home-made cottin gins or helped ohers with the process of making their own in some way, they may have been liable.
IANAPL..
- Sig
I have to admit that is incredibly cool, especially given that he's done it with a couple of cheap optical rangers. I considered something like this with a small piezo gyro (made for model helicopter usage) -- but it hadn't occured to me that this might be workable with optical rangers. Some of the Sharp units only run around $12.00 apiece. I smell a new project coming on...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot