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Stair-climbing Robot Built From R/C Car Parts
dpa writes "The ability to
climb and descend stairs (5M mpg) is one of the unexpected behaviors of this new home-brew
off-road autonomous robot platform. The robot has a custom chassis and uses standard suspension and drive components scavanged from old R/C monster trucks. Here is a
link to the build log, and here is a
link to a hi-res version of the video (20M mpg)."
(20M mpg)?
20 million miles to the gallon? I gotta get that robot!
Would this be a case of Emergent Behaviour? My First , First Post
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Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Before the video gets slashdotted, here's a summary: A 6 wheeled, 3 axle remote control car goes down some stairs with VERY shallow height, it does around some bushes, and back up the stairs. It really is rather unspectactular. There's a variety of off-the-shelf remote control vehicles that can do the same thing... probably better.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I gotta say, for an editor to accept a story with a direct HTTP link to a 20MB mpeg video, it says volumes about how little regard for the technology and the inspiration that makes the Internet great. Slash could be a good net citizen and help avoid melting servers, but no, it's a game to these editors to inflict their worst.
[
Stop downloading for a few minutes while my download finishes....
and we have a darpa winner
I fail to see why 3 axles are superiour to 2, especially since it is not articulated between the axles. Won't most obstacles just cause the wheels on one of the axles to lose contact with the ground anyway?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's relatively easy to build a robot that can do NNN (eg: Climb stairs/vacuum floor/avoid pitfalls/get a beer) but the challenge is that biological organisms do so MANY of them, so well.
Show me a robot that can climb stairs/vacuum floor/avoid pitfals/get a beer ALTOGETHER for a reasonable price, and I might get interested.
But "reasonable price" doesn't mean "more expensive than the sports car I can't afford".
PS: What kind of sadist posts a direct link to a 20 MB video on slashdot? Somebody must HATE the guy who made this!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The webserver hosting this information is able to handle the 20 meg file and also the webpage has some nice videos of some other shots of the rover. Man this is a pretty cool toy, I bet people play with these robots once they get them made. Anyway interesting story, will forward it to my robotically enthusiased friends :)
This is *not* a remote control vehicle.
Although this robot is built from remote-control car parts, it is fully autonomous using a Motorola 'brain' and inertial navigation. It also includes ultrasonic object avoidance detectors.
I think you'd be fairly hard-pushed to find an 'off the shelf' vehicle that could do that autonomously over reasonably rough terrian.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
...but will it also protect us from the terrible secret of space?
English is easier said than done.
That was a fun video to watch. I get the feeling they cut it short however when the robot decided to take a swan dive off the edge of the landing at the very last second... Ooops. So much for Mr. Brain.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They can climb stairs, but can they push Grandma down them?
Steven Wooston, Lead Programmer, J-J-J-Julius Games
Author of a CONSIDERABLE number of best-selling games
Man, I just got back from a jog and my knee hurts. Gonna have to switch to an elliptical. Anyway, I thought it serendipidous that I was just thinking that I needed a robot to go up and down stairs to fetch me things, since I'm getting old man knees. I'm going to eventually have to have some bot go up to my little attic safe to pluck out the paper on which is written "Go around the bend to see where Dr. Scrambles slinks and shambles." I wrote it to read when I get old. Now it looks like I need this robot to get it down for my crippled butt.
I was a little put-off by the fact that toy parts were only used for the drivetrain and suspension. The sensors and various gizmos are necessary, but are a little too advanced to call the thing much of a toy. It would be nice to see a robot that every kid with an old RC truck could build out of toys and maybe one or two little circuits, using free instructions.
The thing is cool, I'll give it that, but I would have been happier if it were MacGuyver'd together out of the RC truck parts, some lego robot controls for dummies, a couple protoboards or print-and-etch-your-own circuits to connect the incompatible electronics, duct tape, and rubber bands.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
It really is rather unspectactular.
Although if a Marine squad tied a Claymore mine to it and sent it up the stairs... I'd say it would it would be a bit more spectacular. Well... At least so for those at the receiving end.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Here is a link that will consume enough bandwidth to easily slashdot the heck out of their server. If that isnt enough for you, here is another link that will consume enough bandwidth the slashdot, annihilate, then set it on fire for good measure.
I must admit, I am extremely curious as to
A) where this phrase comes from (literature? your head?)
B) why you keep this in a safe in your attic for later consumption?
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
I read this as "a robotic felcher for my crippled butt". Which to be honest, sounds a lot more interesting.
fish and pipes
No it isn't, and no it wasn't. :-)
Luke
I think your sig file sums it up nicely.
You find that interesting, eh? Clubs exist, my friend...that's all I'm sayin'.
Stair grinding more likely. If these things ever become popular they'll turn our stairs into ramps.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
20 miles to a gallon is nothing.
A while back there was a model airplane that flew 1882 miles across the atlantic on less than a gallon of fuel.
Here's the article.
Luke
----
And Here's my shameless plug for my website
Stairs are much steeper (higher?) than the little steps that toybot climbed.
I was curious how a robot built from R/C truck parts would climb stairs. What sort of actuators would an R/C truck have that could be used for that?
Looking at the article, however, shows that it's a six-wheel 'bot with oversized tires. Because the tires are big relative to the stairs (and are particularly grippy), it's able to climb the stairs. Not quite what I was looking for, but it gets the job done. Not really scalable, though.
Props for the Frankenstein treatment, though.
The Daleks were already given this ability in the latest series of Doctor Who, but they did it with *much* more style that this video shows :)
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
...but how does fare against the pusher robots?
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
It IS an RC car, even my $5 car can climb 4 inch stairs. That's rediculous.
Triwheel designs do this much better (they had one in the Robot Builder's Bonanza book, which is a great read); they can go up 45 degree steps. They work by having three smaller wheels arranged into a single triangular "wheel," with only two in contact when on flat ground. When they encounter stairs, they just simply flip and go over the stairs. I think Lockheed or some company like that had a patent on the design, although it may be close to expiring. A full scale vehicle with the design was used in a Hollywood movie.
In case the original gets slashdotted, here's the 20MB version.
Mirror.
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
This is standard fare at many engineering colleges. And inertial navigation is nothing special... less than $50 worth of hardware and an afternoon of programming can give you a cheap IMU (Inertial Maneuvering Unit).
-everphilski-
I think with just a little bit more software to detect when one wheel is slipping, it may be able to take care of itself going up without making that annoying grinding noise as its wheels turn against the stair edge.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Pretty cool, but if you want to see a real stair climbing robot, check out the iBot. It was made by the same guy who invented the Segway (Dean Kamen). It's a motorized wheelchair that can climb stairs.
iBot
...welcome our stair climbing robot overlords.
This thing isn't just going to the john and back. It doesn't just get you a beer, it goes fetch!
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
This isn't the latest gadget at WalMart® If you were really interested in this sort of thing, you might consider that this is somewhat of a prototype. You know news for nerds, and all that.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
This robot is seriously cool. The thing is autonomous in every way and the guidance does not depend on external GPS signals either, yet all the people around here can do it state how umimpressive it is, how it doesn't do enough, how it's inferior to biological organisms, blah, blah, blah. For crying out loud, show a little respect for some hard work on a cool project with a high geek factor.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I made the same thing but better in 2001, but MUCH COOLER THAN THIS. It was a Lego Robotics "Dual-Diode Stairwalker", as I named it. It had 4 wheels, not six, about the same size as those in the mpeg. However, the school stair steps were twice as tall as that, so the middle of it would get stuck against the step half-way up. As well, going down the stairs was a very messy endeavor (remember, it was made of all Legos.) Yet, on those stairs in the video, it would have worked just fine.
However, the cool thing was this: The robot (monster-truck-like vehicle) had a light sensor in the front, and one in the back. I programmed it so that if you shone a flashlight on the back, it moved forward (i.e. 'pushing' it with the light). If you shone a flashlight on the forward of the truck, it went toward you (i.e. 'pulling' it with the light.) Much cooler than using wired or wireless radio. Oh, and when there was no light shining at either end, it would spin in place, about 1 rotation per 2 seconds. The light sensors were at 45 degrees so you could point the light at them standing up. Simply walk behind and shine the light at it, and it will move forward in a straight line. If you want it to turn to the left, either walk infront of it (causing it to lose the light and start spinning) and then when you're in position point the light at it as the front of it is coming into view and it will come toward you, thus following you. Or, you can push it along by walking to the spot *behind* where you want it to go, wait a second for the back to face you, and shine the light. It will notice and start moving away from you. That was pretty fun. It was great for the 10 minutes before I had to take it all apart, finally getting that (a final for a class) to work, to put the pieces of away. But, before that, after the teacher saw it, he had me 'drive' my lego dual-diode thing to the superintendent's office and show it around for 5 minutes. Heck, it was their money they were funding the class with. Man, I was the man.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
not to mention the almost obligatory webserver...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Too bad I'm not the first to say this, but this is stupid. At 1:24 you can see that they edited the clip, probably because their dumbass RC rover did a backflip. As if I cared little enough about crappy remote controlled cars in the first place, I give this a 10; and by 10 I mean -10 out of -10.
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
To really climb stairs you need legs since stairs are designed for people. If you are interested in such robots take a look here: http://www.walking-machines.org/ (btw. additions are are welcome.)
Did anyone notice that the robot climbs down stairs in a straightline but has to go diagonally when climbing the stairs so that more wheels have traction at the same time. Did they program this is in? Intelligent robot if they didnt. PS - the video is still alive.
I believe the center wheel set is to keep the chassis from bottoming out over the edge of each stair step when going back up the stairs and to provide extra traction when climing stairs. However as you can see and hear from the video it still slips and has to claw at each step to make it up. A larger wheel and ground clearance could do this better with 4 wheels instead of 6. He should have built it on a Traxxas E-Maxx platform if he wanted to climb over rought terrain and stairs easily.
If it's driving itself why does it have an antenna sticking up in the back?
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Exactly. I don't see what the big deal is over an RC Car with 6 tires. It seems that stairs, especially very shallow in height as shown here, are well with-in the reach of many wheeled vehicles. I'd even contest that those shallow stairs would pose no threat to the standard RC10-T or E-Maxx truck.
Thank you, Slashdot, for a good bit 'o morning humor. There's nothing quite as funny as seeing links to a 5Mb and 20Mb video on the front page of Slashdot. Burn server burn!
OMG that's pretty funny.
I know I just ruined your post by pointing that out... Sorry.
Oh, it's so ruined. I was going for the Pulizer with it too. And getting child-like sarcasm on slashdot upsets my whole day. wah.
Is there _anyone_ here that understands the difference between remote control and autonomous?
Oops no; I really DID think it was funny. I forgot the smiley perhaps; really, I don't know the latest cool way to indicate that you're not being sarcastic in a post.
Someday all posts will be audio instead of text; so much information is gained from voice inflection.
The only reason I thought that you were being sarcastic is because I didn't really think my comment was all that funny. But I accept the truce.
It looks like it got stuck going up the stairs! Check out time index 1:24 - 1:25 - it was edited out (present in both versions)!
While it's impressive that it's autonomous, it's not that impressive to watch, not in 2005.
Must-not-watch TV!
oops, forgot I wasn't logged in. The robot did not get stuck, but I kicked the camera and lost a few frames. Here (23M mpg) is video before the bad frames were removed. There is an accompanying obnoxious noise burst, which is why they were edited out. This version also has a funnier ending.
Looks like about 100,000 hits per hour at the peak, don't know yet how many of those were the 20M video file. I'll analyze the log files and post the results for anyone interested. We would not have submitted the story with the links if we did not think we could sustain the connections. Can't wait to look at the data! This is the same system previously describe on slashdot.