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NASA's Cool Robot of the Week
S.Bartfarst writes "NASA's Cool Robot of the Week
(which apparently is about a month long) has produced a huge spike of activity on our
web page from .gov and .mil domains. Most interesting are a long series of hits from
uspto.gov. Maybe looking for "prior art?" I wonder how much of this Dean Kamen already has tied up?"
You slashdotted NASA!
.. other .mil geeks browsing at work. :P I know if I'm on a duty day (when I can't go home) I tend to surf during downtime. :P
Way to go.
Get them back on track at NASA
this guy did it 2nd
yay for legway.
Not much since control systems have been balancing pool cue's since the early days of rocketry.
Seastead this.
Wow. These guys sound unhappy.
Well that didn't take very long to find
okay, did some quick babelfish translations:
;)
"Coolly robot of the NASAS of the week (those approximately a month long is apparent), produced a very large point of the activity on our 4web PAGE out gov and mil areas"
Not much better, but I'm digging that word coolly.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
I attempted to build a two-wheel self balancing robot similar to this one using the lego mindstorms kit. I had a large metal ball that would roll in a cylinder and hit sensors at either end allowing the robot to adjust when it was tilting. Unfortunately the motors could never respond quick enough to prevent the machine from falling over.
I have given several of these kits as gifts, great gift for teenagers and unemployed tech workers.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
what the hell are these black spots? black holes? those things are f'n MASSIVE. wow. back to your regularly scheduled slashdot...
moox. for a new generation.
has produced a huge spike of activity on our web page from .gov and .mil domains
.org in $REFERER
my guess is you're about to get a *lot* more from a
vodka, straight up, thank you!
"NASA's Cool Robot of the Week (which apparently is about a month long) [...]".
I guess since we're taking about a robot and NASA is involved thats a light-month?
aargh!
1: Download Mozilla Firebird
2: Install "Nuke Images" plugin
3: Click link (from home only with no kids around)
4: Quickly right-click and choose "Remove this image" on each pic. (try not to look directly at it)
5: Read article and think "how the hell can that guy do that?"
6: ???
7: Profit!
(Sorry 'bout those last two)
I didn't see any explanation on his page about how his software works. Did anyone else find info on his software to run nBot?
I always considered erector sets to be better for robotics experiments than legos, but I don't see erector set stuff much anymore. Did they go bankrupt? If so, why hasn't a Chinese toy firm resurrected the concept?
:-P
Maybe its the name
The thing that bugs me about the mindstorms kit, and LEGO(TM)(R) in general is the non-orthogonality of the bricks/components. If you want to put two bricks together at an angle, you need specially shaped bricks. In fact, the lego people make a butt load of cash just inventing new kinds of bricks to include in kits -- lose 'em, and you have to buy a new kit, or another kit that includes it.
;-)
I much preferred Construx building sets as a kid. It was much easier to put together moving parts, build voluminous structures, and to some degree work with angles. Anyone remember Construx? I suppose k'nex now fulfills this role, though it seems less sturdy. Of course, Meccano is the granddady of all, so some-one will point out that it's superior. It's just that I've never owned any
BTW, ever notices how the electrical engines in the Mindstorms set are non-lego-standard shapes and sizes? What's that about? Would an extra millimeter of plastic to make it align hurt that much??
I'm sure there are better products to construct robots, meccano offshoots or succesors combined with sensors, actuators, a PC interface and perhaps even a microcontroller-cum-batterypack like the mindstorms set. Does the slashdot crowd have any suggestions?
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, mindstorms is fscking expensive and hard to get, esp. in Europe.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
why return if you loop forever? int balance() { while(1) { /* loop forever */
angle = read_analog(TILT_SENSOR);
angle_velocity = angle - last_angle;
last_angle = angle;
wheel = read_wheel_encoder();
velocity = wheel - last_wheel;
last_wheel = wheel;
torque = (angle * K1) + (angle_velocity * K2)
+ (wheel * K3) + (wheel_velocity * K4);
pwm(torque);
msleep(40); /* sleep 40 milliseconds */
}
}
I write code.
hell yeah man! construx ownzored teh legoes. no doubt.i used to make little spaceships and buildings and such...man i miss them.... :'(
Ive seen a TV clip of a wheel chair
performing the same trick.
The demo showed a large adult sitting
in the chair which was balancing on
two wheels. The guy was thrown a weight
that made the chair wobble but it easily
recovered. This was all on a hard smooth
studio floor but still pretty impressive.
They didnt say if this was anywhere near
production.
NASA's Cool Robot of the Week (which apparently is about a month long)
Yeah, those NASA guys are always getting confused with all those different planets having days that are like a year long and whatnot.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
'Cool Robot That's Still Working Next Week'
:-)
Might end up being a short list, though.
-MT.
I've been following the advances in robotics with great interest. They've come a long way, to be sure. But still, there are no consumer level droids available. I have a lot of things around the house that could be done better and faster (and certainly easier) by a robot. But I can't get one.
Will someone please get to work on a small battery with incredible storage capacity and quick charging? Or make a fuel cell powered 'bot that can walk over to the gas tank and refuel himself. Whatever it takes, just make a droid that has a price similar to a car, and I'll buy it.
It should be able to perform normal household duties. I'm talking about cleaning, cooking, answering the phone and watching over the place while I'm gone. I don't think that's too much to ask, but maybe I'm wrong.
Here's a BitTorrent link to a tarball of the nBot movies:
http://www.mskf.org/nbot-movies.torrent
I'm running it on my own tracker, so my apologies in advance if it blows up or doesn't work.
0x0D 0x0A
In case there are lots of people reading in Nested as opposed to Newest First, here's my attempt to reduce the slashdotting of the geology.heroy.smu.edu server:
BitTorrent link to a tarball of the nBot movies:
http://www.mskf.org/nbot-movies.torrent
0x0D 0x0A
For a while I was big on K'nex (k'nex pump shotgun anyone?) but I found that for all the things that k'nex did that legos didn't, I would notice something that k'nex didn't do (typically something that could be solved by 'a piece just a bit [bigger|smaller|shorter|etc]')
To address one of your comments, knex are extremely sturdy if the frames of whatever you're building are latticed and reinforced properly, but this uses a LOT of pieces.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Yes. Follow the stories about mass production of carbon nanotubes. In particular, the holy grail is making them conductive. As soon as you get a bag of reliably conductive nanotubes, you can store hydrogen at energy densities far exceeding that of fossil fuels -- which is difficult with even liquid hydrogen storage tanks, for a number of technical reasons (you need a double-walled thermos with an internal revacumation pump; that's expensive, and even then the hydrogen embrittles most inexenssive metals and leaks through inexpensive composites.)
The wheelchair would be the iBot, which is also being made by Kamen. Thing's tied up with the FDA, which has been evaluating it for some time. Wheelchairs are medical devices, so they need to be tested as such, and that tends to take quite a bit of time. Still, I have to admit that the thing is worth it, if only to be able to look somebody in the eyes when you balance on two wheels. You can see a video at http://www.msnbc.com/news/285231.asp?cp1=1
+1 Insightful!
Corgratulations. I didn't think it could be done, but we made a story out of referrer logs.